In cinemas this May 22, 2024. Mad Max: Furiosa features Anya Taylor-Joy in unbridled revenge. Spectacular action film, but also an even more political predecessor of Wild road.
On paper, many would argue that there is not an iota of political depth Mad Max: Furiosa. George Miller’s new film contains a tale of revenge in road rage charged with a nihilistic universe — for a massive, roaring and brutal action movie. But in cinema, nihilism is rarely wasted: what exactly is George Miller trying to tell?
Behind the world of turbulent motorcycles and vehicles, Furious is an eco-fairy tale. Behind a world made up of stupid and evil people, Furious brutally attacks masculinism. Ultimately, this new Mad Max it is much more political and critical than it appears.
Eschatology of the worst
Perhaps there is something odd about calling a Mad Max movie an environmental fable. Because, yes, the saga is based on the worst of an undesirable future, where the stakes are directed towards the nerve center that produces the fuel to power the vehicle. A place literally called Petrovville.
But Furious obeys the same radical eschatology — or even more — that Wild road, in the ultimate display of the worst. It is a monstrous mutation of humanity, emptied of its substance. The soul has become machine like the techno-capitalist system: what’s worse, that system has literally come to life in reality, like these cars that have become, almost, the protagonists (characteristic of Mad Max).
In this future there is no more meaning and glimmers of hope are as rare as water and food. Nevertheless, the film begins in a “place of plenty”. A forested, arable region that runs on renewable energy. The origin of Furiosa’s character is a lost utopia, and even torn apart by violence during her abduction on the edge of town. It is on this contrast that George Miller plays, and he is supported by the violence of the sounds.
Action scenes, deafening with the noise of engines and tires, noisy to the point of exhaustion and uprooting every thought, end in great silence. Sequence after sequence, the sound commotion is a cinematic object that follows the destruction of the living space – of characters like ours. The staging itself is a criticism.
The brutality of men
Even if a heroine wears it, Mad Max: Furiosa he is extremely masculine. They are essentially groups of people waging war against other groups of people. In Citadel, women produce milk and children. The character Furiosa, as a child, flees from sexual assault, and her mother’s killer – who subjected her to the worst abuse – claims ” protect her from lustful eyes “. Here again the worst is shown: this future oppresses women, that is a fact.
This world of men would almost be an echo of eco-feminism: patriarchy as a fundamentally oppressive, destructive, enslaving force; the brutality of one gender towards another in response to humanity’s brutality towards the planet and all other forms of life. So George Miller takes masculinism, this androcentric, misogynistic, violent, absurd ideology, and turns it into a dystopian world. Not without mockery.
Wild fields of Mad Max Furiosa adhere to profoundly stupid rules. The men of this future are complete idiots. Paradoxically, they are as funny as they are terrifying. Especially as they suffer their own brutality; no longer finding the slightest sense in their actions, except that the order of things, as they have adopted it, demands that they continue.
This is how the character played by Chris Hemsworth is none other than a wicked and not very smart weirdo, who declares that there is no room for sentimentality, but never leaves his beloved stuffed animal — from the loss of his own children, a loss caused by this world whose desolation he himself maintains.
Furiosa is devouring our living space
Script of Mad Max Furiosa is, on the surface, very light: it’s a tale of revenge in a brutal post-apocalyptic world. This action movie that never stops burning, which sometimes gets a little repetitive towards the end, is nevertheless a huge picture of human stupidity. The disintegration of the very concept of meaning, the disappearance of ethics and human dignity, are condensed into a chase that does not stop.
This headlong chase is a great spectacle, that’s for sure. But it also responds to deeply destabilizing political fears. Mad Max Furiosa it consumes our living space for 2.5 hours: a feeling we know well in the modern world, right?
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