By Nia Edwards-Behi
A confession from the outset: I’ve never seen a Mad Max movie. It’s one of those franchises I just haven’t managed to catch up on. My excitement for Fury Road, however, escalated with each and every poster and trailer released. It reached that point where I needed to talk down the film for myself to stave disappointment. I needn’t have bothered. The film was more than I possibly could have hoped for. Both an extraordinary feat of action choreography and world design, and an effective and unpretentious narrative, Fury Road is, I feel safe to say, truly a modern masterpiece.
The world has become a desert. A traumatised man, Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), is pursued and captured by the War Boys, servants of the despot Immortan Joe (Hugh Keyes-Byrne) to be used as a permanent blood donor. Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) goes off-course while leading a supply convoy for Joe. She has taken Joe’s ‘breeders’ – a group of five women forced into marriage and pregnancy – and plans on returning with them to her childhood home, the Green Place. The feeble but determined War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult) is circulating his blood with Max when he leads the charge after Furiosa, where Max escapes. Max joins forces with the women and together they seek an escape from Immortan Joe, encountering friend and foe as they traverse the desert in search of the Green Place, and with it, a sense of hope.
Fury Road begins with a relentless, 30-minute action sequence which ellicited the first round of applause from the enthusiastic early-risers in Cannes. This screening began at 8:30am, and having been awake since 5:30am – without coffee! – that 30 minutes certainly ensured my rapt, and fully awake, attention for the next 90. This is a pure action film – in reality it’s just one, long chase sequence – but it makes the most of its short sequences of character and story development. Max is monosyllabic from the outset, frozen by an unexplained but frequently alluded to sense of guilt. Furiosa initially seems to be a typically 2D kickass woman, but soon emerges as a nuanced and subtle character, longing to escape back to her home and determined to do all she can to protect the women Joe considers property. These women – The Splendid Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whitley), Toast the Knowing (Zoe Kravitz), Capable (Riley Keogh), The Dag (Abbey Lee) and Cheedo (Courtney Eaton) – are all developed as individuals who are bound by their terrible fate. They are brave, resourceful, loyal, kind and, importantly, fallible, and so much more than just quarry or a plot-device. Nux has perhaps the fullest development arc, moving from fanatical disciple to free-thinking hero over the course of the film.
The performances are all-round excellent here with perhaps Hoult, Theron and Kravitz standing out most, but not by far, for me. Why not Hardy, as the film’s titular character? Well, the most surprising aspect of the film is the extent to which it is really not at all about Max. He’s our protagonist but his narrative is peripheral, even inconsequential, to the narrative of the band of people he joins.This is no criticism, however, and this allows for a really enriched story.
Fury Road, attentive though it is to character, is, of course, first and foremost a pure visual spectacle. Its bright yellow and orange desert, rendered blue at night, is a stark backdrop to its vehicular mayhem. The film revels in its carnage, with metal flying all over the screen, as a result of the elements, more metal, or other human means of destruction. The designs of the different vehicles are inventive and serve the ambitious action scenes without ever seeming gratuitous. The choreography of the scenes is balletic, and the attention to detail extends to the characters too. The costumes and makeup are wonderful, and the hand-to-hand action riveting. Some sequences in the end are genuinely breath-taking, requiring huge gulps of air along with the rapturous applause.
It’s recently become apparent that this film has been pissing off ‘men’s rights activists’. Good. I’m glad. It exposes how utterly ridiculous their stance and cause is that one of the best action films of all time can be ruined because it is primarily about women. Fury Road is about a lot of things, really – guilt, redemption, fanaticism, hell, even the environment – but that it’s also about women is a massive strength of the film. This isn’t just a film with one woman doing her token lady things in a broader narrative, this is a narrative about women and men fighting for their right to be free. That so much of this is done via women, and in particular women’s right to bodily autonomy – there’s one particularly unexpected and distressing, but topical, scene – made it so, so much more powerful for me. And I don’t think that’s because I’m a woman, I think it’s because we so, so rarely get to see that on a big screen, with a big budget and in a genre film. If I could ever express to George Miller my gratitude for that, I’d be even happier.
I find it difficult to imagine another film leaving me literally breathless and struggling for words at its end, this year or any time soon. The last film that did that to me was Martyrs, and though for very different reasons, I find it a very certain marker of the extent to which a film has moved and impressed me. Films like Mad Max: Fury Road showcase cinema at its absolute finest. It should be watched on the biggest screen possible, on the best sound systems, and treasured for its artistry, power and sheer joy.
Warner Bros release Mad Max: Fury Road just about everywhere from tomorrow, 14th May.