Mad Max: Fury Road

It may sound like the grumbling of an old man, but they just don’t make films like this anymore, and that is the key reason for the deserved unanimous enthusiasm that accompanies Fury Road. Against the background of today’s technology, the new Mad Max is a film from an era that has long since passed – in terms of style, it comes across as the essence of 1980s Australian trash flicks laid out in the form of an epic fresco following the example of the peak of Hollywood’s creative era of the 1970s. Fury Road is simply Miller’s Apocalypse Now or Heaven’s Gate. In the promotional campaign, the constantly emphasised appellation “visionary director” was for once not a hollow phrase, but an appropriate statement, in every sense of the word. Miller reveals himself to be not only a filmmaker with a well-though-out vision, from which he builds a portrait of a distinctive post-apocalyptic world thought out to the smallest detail, but also a filmmaker who has yielded completely to his own delirious vision, which is both absorbing and fascinating. Though Fury Road is both a variation on the original trilogy and its continuation, it thus remains fundamentally distinctive and unique. So, even though fans will identify various similarities between the new film and the trilogy, Fury Road never engages in that current pop-culture scourge, quotespotting. There is no recycling, no knowing winks at fans, no references to other films or pop culture, and not even any franchise elements. Fury Road is not exclusive and elitist like contemporary blockbusters, which create enclaves of true believers by flattering different audience segments. Into the artificial and overly sophisticated waters of the contemporary mainstream, Miller has released his own raging monster, which, with the roar of an infernal machine, cuts a path through all of the rules about the habits of the target audience, commercial trends and the producer’s calculations, and it has no regard at all for what a contemporary blockbuster is supposed to look like or what supposedly works in it and why. Like its world, the film is simultaneously disjointed and deranged, yet in spite of that, it is also completely coherent and functional. The archetypal three-act narrative concept is crushed here by a single permanent confrontation and non-stop tension (the first shot, in which the characters are not in motion or in immediate danger and are only talking to each other, seems as if it is from another world). Out of the bowels of the degenerate macho action-movie genre, a matriarchal parable has grown, with the male characters surprisingly relegated to supporting roles. And all of this is set in a pulsating world, which we don’t see from the outside, but are rather thrown into. As the characters carry us along at a frenetic pace, we see, unwittingly and literally at the edge of the field of vision, that world’s practical functioning and, primarily, its complex mystique, which emerged from omnipresent madness and pain. In an interview, Miller said that he liked the feeling he had when, as a child, he walked out of the cinema and felt like he had stepped off a roller coaster and wanted to get right back on it. Whereas the seasonal blockbusters of recent years have merely zipped passed viewers, leaving only a dim memory on the horizon, Fury Road picks up viewers at full speed and, like its protagonist, runs them paralysed and strapped to the hood through the tumult of its creator’s vision. If the post-apocalypse previously infused archetypal heroic stories with new blood and replaced the foul taste of the distant era of westerns and chivalric tales with the intoxicating promise that the age of heroes would come again in the future with the fall of civilisation, then Fury Road likewise revives the validity of the mythological epic in the destruction of the world. Though the film’s narrative has certain similarities to The Iliad and The Odyssey, its matriarchal level refers to even more ancient traditions. Even though it evidently undermines machismo and the patriarchy, it also offers a celebration of heroism and masculinity in accordance with the aforementioned revitalisation of archetypes. The appearance of those traits here, however, is not only classical in nature, but also mythically absolute and post-feministically complex in equal measure. When the roar of the engines subsides and the smoke from the explosions clears, we see the tragic and paradoxical nature of the heroism of not only Max, but primarily of the other main character, who, infatuated with the myth of patriarchy, rushed like a raging dog of war to the gates of Valhalla, but only achieved true heroism when he abandoned the father figure and accepted the role of helper and protector alongside his mother. Fury Road takes a no less complex approach to women, who, in the manner of legendary matriarchal societies, not only personify life and procreative and regenerative power, but also serve as warriors. However, they are not limited to the one-dimensional ideal of badass goddesses of war. Like the male characters, each of them has her own story and motivations, which are alluded to in the narrative, and those are what condition their heroism, which is all the more impressive thanks to its believability and inspirational nature. (05/15/2015) (less) (more)