Fury Road is
buzzing. Easily one of the best action films of the decade, or the
action film of the decade, critics have been ringing up its “live
stunt” merits, its ingenious action sequences, and its feminist
core. But what exactly makes Fury Road so effective? To put
it simply, it’s the writing. Yes, film writing is only part of the
success, you have to actual film what you write, right? And act it,
and so forth... Fury Road is a successful Film (with a capital
F) because the writers do not pander to the groundlings. George
Miller, Brendan McCarthy (known for comics and TV work), and Nico
Lathouris (an actor/ TV writer who had a bit part in the original Mad
Max) craft a world without Basil Exposition. If you are prone to
long bathroom breaks you just might miss an image crucial to the
plot.
Is this a
groundbreaking filmmaking technique, to let the pictures do the
talking? Hardly. Just one rarely used in Hollywood. Hollywood likes
to scaffold a big budget film so that everyone is on the same
footing. The Avengers, Age of Ultron, which debuted the
previous week, featured plenty of Basil Exposition for the
uninitiated. For example, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner explain the
nuances of artificial intelligence, dropping sci-fi gobbledygook
jargon to boost the audience's appreciation of Ultron, and later the
Vision. But scaffolding can obscure a film. Christopher Nolan’s
Interstellar, which I had high hopes for, is a long slough of
mansplaining, combined with story threads that lead nowhere (remember
the robotic combines that re-direct themselves to McConaughey's front
door?). One could argue that Interstellar’s problem was the
editing, but let’s be real...it was the script, the didactic
dialogue, and excessive plot points that beached that whale. And the
Avengers? Well, it’s target audience is kids, and dads, and
geeks. If you haven’t picked up a comic in a while, let me tell
you….it’s full of Basil Exposition.
Miller created the
diesel punk movement long before steampunk became a cultural
phenomenon. The first three Mad Max films are full of
steampunk staples, goggles, do-it-yourself armor, and inventive
clothing reminiscent of an earlier time. Miller’s visual palette
established a whole culture of dystopian and post apocalyptic
entertainment for the next thirty years. And he didn’t scaffold the
originals either. The first time I saw Mad Max I didn’t know
when it took place because Miller never bothered to tell us. Miller
left clues, let the costumes do the talking, let air into the
dialogue, so to speak, and didn't look back.
Fury Road is
the bareback knuckles of dystopian film. There isn't any pandering
here. Mad Max gives us a voice over in the first three minutes, just
enough for the uninitiated, but not enough to drag us down. Mad Max
doesn’t tell us who the bad guys are, he doesn’t tell us where he
is. He doesn’t offer a clue as to what is to come. That all becomes
apparent as soon as the first chase begins.
And yes, Fury
Road is simply an over the top gonzo chase movie. It’s an
action film. So why all the fuss? But it is also a movie about the
one percent controlling all of the resources (in this case, water,
breast milk, and healthy women). It’s also a film about the rich vs
the poor, and it is also a film about the search for physical
perfection.
Fury Road is
Charlize Theron's movie, Tom Hardy is a grunting, stoic action hero,
but one who ultimately serves Theron. As Imperator Furiosa, Theron is
damaged goods, either through birth defect or accident. Either is
likely; Furiosa is outfitted with a cool prosthetic arm. How she came
to have it is not important. She is not perfect enough to serve as a
breeder for Immortan Joe’s patriarchy, but she is good enough to
lead his troops.
What is important is
that Furiosa is planning a daring escape, a coup of sorts against
Immortan Joe, whose grotesque body is encased in a type of armor, and
whose lungs are damaged enough to require a breathing apparatus
creepier than that of Darth Vader or Bane (Miller handles micing
Joe’s mask way better than Nolan handled micing Tom Hardy's Bane’s
mask in his final Batman film.). Joe spouts Viking macho-isms to his
War Boys and gear heads who worship the war machines that make up the
fractured myth of their post apocalyptic world. None of it is
explained. It just is. You watch, you learn.
Much has been
written about the feminist agenda in Fury Road, and my buddy
Nate of Alpine
Strangers over at
Nerdshed has chimed in already, and touches on the
inherent “Hollywood feminism” of the film. And he’s got a
point. Charlize Theron, sans arm, is still Charlize Theron, and easy
on the eyes in her tight leather end-of-the-world pants. Still, she's
not sexualized like the breeders, whom she smuggles to the Green
Place, and is the exigency of her escape. The breeders, whose flowing
gauzy strips of clothing sometimes evoke women of the Middle East,
are the reason for the escape. They are pretty women, young, and
undamaged, for the most part. They are alien and precious in the post
apocalyptic world.
We are not talking
political diatribe feminism. Obviously, we are discussing the bare
bones right to have control of your own body, to have control over
your own reproductive system, and to have control over your own
sexual partner. Miller does not mansplain any of this, it is told
visually. If you blink you will miss the shark teeth chastity belts
worn by the breeders, a subversion of the vagina
dentata by Joe in order to control "his girls.”
If you blink you’ll miss the women’s secret world. The books,
their graffiti. Joe keeps everything under lock and key. Women,
breast milk (pumped from rubenesque women whose one job is to produce
milk), vegetables, water, and blood bags (prisoners, who are
genetically clean or healthy and kept alive for the singular purpose
of blood transfusions) are all controlled by him and his fat cats of
the post apocalyptic world. He allows his War Boys to consume some of
his goods (breast milk is the energy drink of Fury Road) but
tortures the lowly poor citadel dwellers with allowances.
Miller could have
cast less beatific women as the wives, but since their beauty is
symbolic, or metaphorical (and likely to please the target
demographic) the feminism of Fury Road is arguably glossy, and
“Hollywood.” But again, their beauty is a symbol of health.
Furiosa steals them away, and Joe is hopping mad.
They are off to The
Green Place, where we later find out is Furiosa’s home, and was the
last known place in the wastes where people grew crops. It is there
we find a more Democratic, all inclusive, band of feminist warriors.
The women of the Green Place are tired, weathered, and as dangerous
as the War Boys and outlaws lying outside of Joe’s citadel. When we
meet them, they are ready to spring a trap upon the war rig, and
probably kill everyone on board. These women are quick to act. They
are also keepers of seed, and of knowledge of the old world. Together
with Furiosa's party, they decide to cross the salts for new ground.
Fury Road would
have been successful without Max. It’s written that way. Max is
witness. Max is an observer. Heck, for the first act of the film Max
is a blood bag strapped to a War Boy’s war rig, immobile,
emasculated. Max doesn't really want to help the women, the ghost of
his dead little girl certainly does, but he isn’t so sure. He’s
mad with grief, and you get the feeling that Max would be as happy
making his way alone in the world. Tom Hardy embodies the angry
grief with charisma. He doesn’t speak much (Gibson was as stoic in
the originals) and it isn’t until the second half that Max begins
to pull his own weight w/r/t to Furiosa's “plan.” One of his
best moments is when Hardy has a bit of competitive spitting with a
War Boy trying to overtake Furiosa’s rig. The War Boy and Max are
on their respective hoods spitting gasoline (that’s right) into the
intake of their respective rigs so their vehicles can maintain top
speed. In the film Max exists to be muscle, not to be a rescuer of
women, but an ally. The women in Fury Road do all their own
heavy lifting.
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