A colourless rendition of George Miller’s action symphony was
rumoured back in 2015, but it wasn’t until the end of last year that it
would become a reality. Now released in cinemas for one day only, and
coming to Blu-ray soon after, the “Black & Chrome” edition –
editorially untouched but carefully re-graded – is more than a simple
twiddling of knobs.
Monochrome may seem like a strange choice for a sun-saturated epic so
rich and, well, colourful in its depiction of desolation. And while it
may not become the default viewing experience like, say, Frank
Darabont’s drained version of The Mist, it is a fascinating new
perspective. It is also a good excuse to re-watch – and re-examine the
underlying themes of – the greatest action movie of the decade so far.
Fury Road’s story is simple. The wasteland
overlord Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) controls the water that
sustains his people. When one of his subjects, Imperator Furiosa
(Charlize Theron), goes rogue and steals away his breeder-wives to go in
search of the mythic “Green Place”, Joe takes an army of his “War Boys”
and pursues. Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), a guilt-drenched drifter
focused solely on his own survival, becomes embroiled in the women’s
escape. He, along with the shamed War Boy Nux (Nicholas Hoult) find
themselves helping Furiosa to find her homeland, and ultimately
redemption.
For long sections, Fury Road is an example
of almost pure visual storytelling. The dialogue is often delivered in
snatches: “Water”, “Redemption”, “You!” etc. Miller set out to make a
virtually silent film and the larger-than-life performances are
consistent with silent cinema – as is the limewash makeup of the War
Boys. Those doomed War Boys, promised a short “half-life” before
martyrdom, are pale white as if already ghosts.
You don’t need to have seen the previous Mad Max
instalments, though the references are numerous. From the original we
have a stolen boot, a hissing bad guy, and a shotgun-wielding old lady.
From Mad Max 2 we get a child’s music box, a shotgun misfire,
and a binocular/telescope combo. And from the third film there’s a
prison modelled on the Thunderdome, and instead of an Aunty we have a Daddy. Max, meanwhile, is the constant in this rapidly rad-mutating world.
Nux could be seen as the spiritual continuation of Johnny the Boy from the original Mad Max. Johnny is a child soldier, too, who desperately wants to impress the boss (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne in both films). In Fury Road,
Max is haunted by the guilt of his actions. The cruel killing of Johnny
(offering him the choice to hack off his foot to save his own life) was
born of rage, therefore a prime source of such guilt. The fact that Nux
and Max strike an alliance can be seen as Max’s way of vanquishing the
guilt of killing Johnny. Redemption begins with forgiveness of the self.
In Fury Road, Max is depicted as a kind of
angel: an inspiration rather than an out-and-out hero. There are
numerous parallels with the Christ fable. Max is virtually pinned to a
cross for the first sequence, and his blood is literally the saviour of
Nux. The idea of the Green Land recalls the hymn “There is a Green Hill
Far Away”, which includes the line “trust in his redeeming blood”.
Furiosa, who states that she seeks redemption, is literally saved by
Max’s blood.
The explicitly heroic heavy lifting is done by Furiosa. It’s
something of a cinematic role reversal as it’s usually the male who gets
the glory, assisted by the female. Max even gets to play nurse to
Furiosa. Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days was perhaps the last
action movie to have this much fun with such a direct switch of
expectations. Yet, on practical level, Max and Furiosa are
interchangeable without gender being a factor, because neither is
defined by their gender or their sexuality. It is a truly feminist
aspect.
Indeed, this is the zenith of Miller’s consistent portrayal of
powerful female characters in this saga, whether it’s Jessie, Warrior
Woman, or Aunty Entity. And Max is the archetypal lone wanderer. He
is not a solely male archetype, even if “men’s rights” groups would like
to adopt him as such.
Beyond newsreel snatches, the apocalypse is never explicitly portrayed in any Mad Max
film. It’s symbolic. Max’s family represents the last nuclear family.
The death of the family is the apocalypse, and the wasteland is Max’s
grief. Upon the plains of that grief Max fights his battles – and
however hard he tries to isolate himself he always ends up involved in
some power struggle, and (from Road Warrior onwards) he is
always reminded of the goodness of humanity. Max is not seeking revenge,
he’s seeking a retreat. But his socially-natured species keeps inviting
him back into the fold.
That Max is running, rather than revenging, makes his idea of returning to the Citadel at the end of Fury Road profound.
When he says “Hope is a mistake” he is really saying that hope is the
last, prayerful roll of the dice for those who have nothing. Rather than
merely hoping, Max is saying, take action. Max has always been running
from the guilt of failing to protect his family. He doesn’t want to see
Furiosa make the same mistake – betray her family – so he persuades her
to turn around and confront her trauma. And that trauma is Immortan Joe
and the Citadel. All that the women would have on the Salt Flats is
hope, which is not real; what lies in the Citadel is green,
which is real.
The reason Max struggles so badly with Furiosa’s near-death is not
just because he believes that everyone he gets close to will die, but
because he was helpless when his wife was once brought to hospital. Note
how, in the first Mad Max film, when we see Max’s wife on the hospital bed after she’s attacked, she has lost an arm. Just like Furiosa.
The internet furore over Fury Road’s
perceived “gender agenda” needs to be identified for what it was. Female
casting shouldn’t be a talking point in itself. No one bats an eyelid
when action movies are entirely populated by men. I also don’t believe
that anyone would have cried “feminism” (as if it were a dirty word) if
every major character except the wives had been male. No, the issue is
Furiosa: specifically, how she supposedly sidelines the male title
character.
First, let’s remember that Max has never been fully front-and-centre anyway (famously he spoke fewer than 20 lines in Road Warrior),
and also remind ourselves that he is in fact vital to the success of
Furiosa’s mission. But there is no denying that by the time Furiosa
reaches her tribe of elder females there is a clear statement being made
about gender. There is a reason Miller employed Eve Ensler as an on-set
adviser. “Who killed the world?” Splendid (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley)
asks. Men is the answer, needless to say.
In Miller’s world, men rule through possessing the lives of others.
Possession of the body (breeding boys for war; controlling the water);
possession of the mind (inciting fear of “addiction” to water); and
possession of the spirit (“I live, I die, I live again” – the promise of
immortality). There’s always a transaction: the subject must give
something up for the right to be subjugated. Men are takers in Fury Road’s
wasteland, while women are the symbolic givers of life. Two of the
“wives” are pregnant, and even the women too old to conceive carry
seeds.
Old-school patriarchy is also evident in the fact that Joe’s
favourite Splendid wears a wedding dress (while the others are
bridesmaids). Marriage is an institution fashioned by patriarchy, with
the woman traditionally being a possession to be “given away” by her
father. Joe’s wives also wear chastity belts. No doubt these were fitted
by males, but the presence of teeth suggest a masculine anxiety about
female sexuality, as if it’s a caged beast. Why go to such lengths to
control your subjects, unless you are afraid?
Maternal imagery abounds in Fury Road, in
glimpses such as the shot of Toast (Zoe Kravitz) straddling the bag of
guns (the suggestion being that the wives may birth a new generation of
warlords); or when Max emerges from the darkness, head bloodied, and
washes himself in mother’s milk. In this moment he is reborn in the eyes
of Furiosa: not only was he willing to sacrifice himself for her quest,
he also chose to come back. (And to think there are those who would
doubt he is a hero!)
But there’s more to the wives than motherhood. Furiosa’s search for
redemption may be to do with shame. It’s encapsulated in the scene where
the youngest wife, Cheedo (Courtney Eaton), starts running back toward
the Citadel, toward Immortan Joe, crying, “He will forgive us!” This
kind of guilt is common in abused children who have been treated as a
possession. I’m not sure Furiosa is even aware of the redemption she is
seeking – and so it takes the intervention of Max to direct her to her
destiny: redeeming the Citadel.
Immortan Joe is a quasi-religious leader whose War Boys’ honour
system is built on the promise of martyrdom. It’s not enough to simply
die; it must be dramatic. Everyone has their “show”. The parallels with
suicide bombers, indoctrinated to believe their death is more meaningful
than their life, is clear. Joe presents himself as living proof that
death is a liberating process: a mythic figure who supposedly transcends
death. “I live, I die, I live again.” Citadel citizens believe that
Immortan Joe has been through the process of death and out the other
side – hence, when they see his corpse they realise they’ve been
betrayed by a mortal, and they are angry.
There is a parallel with Max here. Max is himself a mythic figure
(see how the War Boy takes his V8 from the revered tree of steering
wheels) – but the difference is that his myth is not of his own making.
In the original Mad Max, his police superiors were jostling to secure
him as their Interceptor poster boy, while he was trying to jostle his
way out of the service. His reluctance as a hero is what makes him so
interesting, so conflicted, and ultimately so heroic.
So, how about this Black & Chrome Edition? For me, the
monochrome adds and subtracts in equal measure. Some of the stiller,
simpler shots – the convoy silhouetted against the sunset; Furiosa
yelling to the sky – seem starker and bolder, focusing the eye on the
lovely framing. And the War Boys’ skeletal appearance is stunningly
enhanced. The look is less successful when the pieces start to move and
the editing hastens. It was in these (let’s face it, plentiful) moments
that I missed the richness of the original colouring. During that
astonishing shot of the exploding tanker, as Max clings desperately and
hilariously to a swaying pole, my eyes were left yearning.
Still, nothing can suppress the energy, imagination, depth, and
sustained visceral thrill of Miller’s mad masterpiece. It’s a movie of
magnificent mayhem; a celebration of perfectly-calibrated framing, sound
design, and editing, which is delightful in a million colours or a
million shades of grey.
Mad Max: Fury Road – Black & Chrome Edition is out on Blu-ray now.
