The idea of a relentless thrust through 2 hours of near-silent cinema with laconic characters who let the cars do the snarling is an enticing one, one that sets its own challenge. How can a film maintain its momentum when every scene is an explosive set piece, stacked-up against the last and precision-engineered to top whatever came before? The fuel needs to be pure and Mad Max: Fury Road certainly draws its own world with a set of bold visual ideas followed through to their absurd conclusions. It’s a great starting point.
Max is the least capable of the heroes we’re bound to. His initial attempts to escape the clutches of the weird-faced tyrant Immortan Joe are easily thwarted and he is still being used as an unwilling blood donor (strapped to the front of a car) even when the film is well on the road. He can’t shoot straight, nor is he particularly adept a driver as far as we can tell. Agency belongs to the females of the piece, in particular Imperator Furiosa whose journey back to the ‘green land’ of her youth provides the film its narrative arch. However, that Max is the eponym – and not Furiosa – rather highlights his philosophy “hope is a mistake” amid all this elusive struggling towards a better place. The film needs to pretend itself a direction, hence the diversionary storyline of Furiosa and the Wives that we, and Max himself, are riding with. But by having the directionless hero at its centre, the hero whose only drive is survival, its makers have nailed their colours to the darker corner of this dystopian nightmare. Hope is a mistake.
The more I think about it, the more I realise that I liked the film despite sometimes feeling on the wrong end of one of its blood transfusions. Everything about its design is immaculately cohesive, from the ridiculous teal/orange colour grading to the grinding gears and grinning martyrs that populate its fiery dust storms. It is a singular vision and gloriously female-led at times. The only problem, on the first viewing, is pacing. 2 hours 10 minutes of this stuff is too exhausting – it mars the final half hour of the film, which in any case is a kind of journey home that should have begun at its midpoint anyway. The editing of the action is expertly done, but add a little more punctuation here and there and we’re laughing (maniacally into the void). ((With silver spray-painted mouths.))
Jon Bates Writes 