Am I 9 years late for Mad Max Fury Road? I don’t care.
By João Guilherme Fidelis
Back in 2015, when I was 13 years old, I was deeply invested in super-heroes, especially the Avengers. They were my mythology and I just didn’t care about anything else because there was a second one coming out that year. Same for Star Wars. The Force Awakens marked the return of the most famous movie saga of all time and my gateway into that galaxy and between my soul being sold really soon to Mickey Mouse’s properties, there were the whispers of Mad Max Fury on the back of my mind. Everyone said it was one of the best movies of all time, a groundbreaking piece of filmmaking, coolest action movie ever made. When I sat down to watch it, all that mattered to me was the cool cars and nothing else. I didn’t understand and it was too weird for me during that time of my life.
Why am I telling you this?
Because now I’m 22. George Miller’s Furiosa is on theaters and watching it on a big screen felt like entering the gates of Valhalla. Miller’s style wormed its way into the black matters of my brain. No spoilers, but when a shot that resembles Jesus Christ’s crucification and Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus tells a young girl that she has to watch the tragedy and can’t turn away, I knew that I belonged to Wasteland. The experience of witnessing it in an empty theater where it was just me and a movie on an intimate meeting was bittersweet. Bitter because the movie is struggling on the box office and I need more of this world. Sweet because it felt like losing my virginity for two hours and twenty eight minutes (Yes, I stayed to watch credits). I knew that there was only one thing to do after I walked out that theater and came back home:
Revisit Fury Road.
And so I did. As soon as the narration started with: “My name is Max. My world is fire and blood.” I knew that the whispers of my teenagehood were right: This is one of the best movies of all time and I was just too young to get it. You could say: “So did you regret giving money to Joss Whedon?” Every day since November of 2017, but that’s not the point. FURY ROAD IS ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME. It feels like hyperbole saying that. It is and it is the truth. I understand Hideo Kojima now. George Miller is indeed god and Mad Max is indeed the bible.
It wasn’t just the cars that attracted me this time (All of them would be killer Transformers figures), it was every single thing and it was beautiful. I had no idea this film could be so powerful. The brilliant action perfectly edited by Margaret Sixel and directed by Miller, the electric and epic score by Junkie XL, the way all characters, all characters, from the ones who have a big or a small role, are all fascinating. I mean, look at Slit, right after he says Max is gonna lose is head, he says “Decapito!”. It’s funny every time I watch it and the humor comes not from the movie stopping what it’s doing, but simply being the characters that they are. Even though Furiosa’s solo film is in my head right now, a lot of the triumph from this film’ is not dump you with information. All the rules are understood by action.
Miller understands that cinema is audiovisual and he shows it to you and he shows the limitations in it. I’m in love (with the whole movie) with that scene where Max gets up and as he tries to blows up Nux’s arm, the gun fails and later when Furiosa confronts him and she grabs the gun, we forget that the weapon is malfunctioning and we remember immediately when she’s not able to blow his brains. “That’s something really simple.” but it’s awesome. It is awesome. You’re not getting it. It is fucking amazing.
Miller’s economical storytelling benefits the movie greatly. It’s more impactful to see Max disappearing into the fog and returning covered by the enemy’s blood than seeing him taking him out, it builds up a mythical and mysterious aurea surrounding the character, but my favorite example of this economical storytelling is after Max tells Furiosa there is no hope and we cut to him standing on the desert hearing the voice of his child saying: “Where are you, Max? Let’s go, dad.” and right after that, Max is already commited to help the women and has a plan. Instead of a long scene where Max struggles over his choices, it’s simple: The child in his head is his guide.
And speaking of child…
This movie sure has a lot of to do with children, not only through the wives who are seen by Immortan Joe as his properties because they can give him health babies, but within Max’s and Furiosa’s characters as well. As I mentioned, the voice of Max’s child consistently works as a guide and questions where he is. At one point of the film, Splendid dies and one of the wives asks him to turn back, a flashback of his child dead in his arms appears and he answers no. Max doesn’t want to go back. He wants to just wander because going back means confronting the pain.
Furiosa is not hunted by visions of a dead child. She is the dead child who is trying to keep herself alive. Her origin tale works as the darker half to Fury Road. “My mother. My childhood. I want them back.” and even after everything that transpires in the prequel, she still wants that inner child back and this is all represented by her search for The Green Place. As she says after Splendid’s death: “We keep moving.” and it is a devastating thing when she finds out that the paradise no longer exists. And if the paradise no longer exists, what is the point of everything?
And this is where it emotionally touched me. These protagonists want to keep going forward to find redemption, but Max, thanks to his child guidance realizes that the only way to get that, to get freedom, to start a new life, is to turn back. There lies my favorite metaphor in the film: Our demons, our fears is not the road ahead us, but the road behind us, the only way to face them is to go back.
The paradise might not exist, but in the citadel, in that imperfect place, you can plant the seeds and transform your own sense of hope and create your own paradise. It’s so meaningful to me that in the last shot of the movie, Furiosa is ascending instead of descending. If in her solo film she was the darkest of angels, she is now the brightest of angels.
As for Max, even though he does not stay in the new paradise, his ending is not hopeless. He is still in search of his better self. He might find it ort he might not find it and the beauty of it is not knowing.
I wish I had seen how hopeful this film was when I was 13, but I’m so glad that I only understood it now. I’m on my fifth watch and it just keeps fascinating me in so many ways and inspiring me to see my own pain, my own desper and transform into something else.
What a movie. What a lovely movie.