‘Mad Max Fury Road’ packs a powerful punch

By Ryan, October 1, 2015

By Beñat Quartararo, Staff Writer//

Traditional film media in 2015 has reached something of a three-lane highway in terms of its theme and content: the Post-Apocalyptic Teen Drama (“Divergent,” “The Hunger Games”), the Dumb Bodycount/Explosion Porn Montage (every single “Transformers,” “Fast and Furious”), and the Futurist Ethics Thinkpiece-Dystopia (“Transcendence,” “Interstellar”). Each has some merit for its fan base, and I try to appreciate each for what it is worth. Every so often, we have a truly fantastic film that can balance more than one of these, the most recent (and likely best) being “The Matrix.”

“Mad Max: Fury Road” takes the best bits from all three.The film immediately drops you in the middle of the franchise’s signature desert wasteland, and almost all of the following events involve racing dilapidated machines across the sand. As anyone who has seen the marketing materials or has any familiarity with the franchise knows, it possesses, undoubtedly, the most intense car battles you will see on the silver screen. It contains its own sense of realism that miraculously smooths over the almost video game-level absurdity. Speed is the order of the day, and the barebones plot moves quickly. The titular–though nearly-anonymous–Max (Tom Hardy of “The Dark Knight Rises” fame) and Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) do not seem to require any basic human needs as they evade the infinite “War Boys” of warlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), the Vader-esque asthmatic’s stolen (read: rescued) Five Wives in tow.
There is no real exposition to soak up beyond a brief and cryptic voiceover by Max that suggests a pattern of wasting water and fuel resources is the reason why there are white-powdered lunatics murdering each other in weaponized dune buggies. This first scene is also the most he speaks in any single scene throughout the film. His main methods of communication span the vast expressive plains of grunting and hand gestures.
Yet, even in this age of saturated minimalism, the “less is more” rule functions more beautifully than I have ever seen. I’ve kept the plot summary deliberately shallow because of how satisfyingly it pulls back the curtain on this twisted universe. Director George Miller shows us, instead of telling us, and certain main character names may be missed for many minutes before they are mentioned or seen written anywhere. Perhaps that merely highlights the underlying nihilist undercarriage of “Fury Road”: your name, where you’re from, or how you’re feeling isn’t important; only your ability to survive is.
There isn’t very much real dialogue from anyone, except for one character, whose name is likely said the most frequently, Imperator Furiosa. Yes, there is an action film whose main character is an English-speaking white guy and he isn’t really the most important or interesting person around. The Five Wives are some of the last young women of childbearing age in the wasteland, and Immortan Joe is without a proper heir. This is a world of men killing and controlling other men, to prove to still more men that they are, truly, men. By denying Joe what is often considered the fundamental duty of a man with anything to show for himself, Furiosa and her small flock dismantle the whole structure of male-dominated “society” and display how much Joe is devoid despite controlling the last resources for basic human needs. Max is, more or less, there for the ride, quite literally in many parts of the film.
And it all plays out underneath the most entertaining absurdist violence in years, the sun-kissed canvas doused in the dirty blood of dead savages and black smoke of gasoline-powered war chariots who’ve been wiped out of existence. The brush that concocted this vision did so in classic fashion, with practical effects. The cars were built to be destroyed, and the explosions (for the most part) actually happen. Despite the inevitable deconstruction of many props and vehicles does not mean that detail was neglected–quite the contrary, everything repurposed pieces of the past world and functional within the new one.
“Fury Road” straps you to the front of its screaming demon drag racer and only gives you time to think once you fall off, but other films could suit that need roughly as well. It’s when the blurs going past you finally clarify after the fact that it makes maximum impact.