Dementus Undertaking

We went to see FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA, something apparently not too many people are doing. Why not? it’s fun!

Weirdly, since the film is like a catalogue of trauma, it didn’t produce the hysterical anxiety in me FURY ROAD conjured up. And i think part of the reason for this, and the box-office underperformance, is that we have seen a lot of this before now. MM:FR was the familiar George Miller stuff but with added hundreds of millions, new locations, new CG, and a hyped-up alienness and aggression. FURIOSA has more of the same — the shock is gone.

The new elements — Anya Taylor-Joy, seeing the previously-alluded-to Gastown and Bullet Farm — are not overwhelming in the same way. The element which DOES kick things up a notch, however, is Chris Hemsworth as Dementus, a in a strutting performance of balls-out wackadoodery, extremely entertaining and detestable and even a little human.

What’s missing is the thread of emotion, slender though it was, running through MM:FR, the growing trust between Max and Furiosa. The “relationship” between Furiosa and Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) is lacking — it hasn’t been written, and the only moment it’s granted is a look between the two of them followed by an abrupt pull-out. If this is a hint at sex, it changes nothing in the way they relate going forward. I respect Miller’s refusal to use reams of dialogue (though he quite likes letting Dementus ramble on) but he hasn’t found an alternative way to express affection, tenderness, lust, respect, any of the qualities that would bolster this significant element of his story, give it a touch of reality.

If Furiosa isn’t moving here the way she is in her CharlizeTheron incarnation, I don’t think it’s the fault of the excellent Anya Taylor-Joy (who has proven she can invoke empathy multiple times, notably in Queen’s Gambit). Her long traumatic backstory (and the film does feel like a backstory much of the time, rather than, you know, a story) requires the role to be split with Alyla Browne (Furiosa as a child), requires the child to be bad-ass and rarely childlike (apart from one admittedly strong reaction), gives her no time to spend with her mother (we just have to accept that mothers are important generically), and requires her to spend much of the film not engaged in a quest for revenge, just sort of getting along.

Oh, unexpectedly the film has intertitles, in the form of chapter titles, and the last one is (no big spoiler here) Beyond Revenge. I would like to see a film that goes Beyond Revenge (Beyond is a good MAD MAX word, of course). Miller, unlike Tarantino I think, has thought a bit about vengeance and knows it doesn’t really help you move on from trauma. (That’s why Max doesn’t join Furiosa in the citadel at the end of MM:FR — he still hasn’t moved on from the first film, back when he was a different actor.) Unfortunately, recent movies which try to problematise revenge, like REVENANT, still feel the need to provide a smam-bang nasty finish, so the revenge still has to happen. REVENANT is particularly dishonest in the way it tries to make the hero move past revenge while still, you know, getting it. See WITCHFINDER GENERAL for one solution to this admittedly tricky narrative problem.

But see FURIOSA — despite all my niggling above, it’s a fun time. (Also, not enough people saw THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING, which is magnificent — the unlikely conjunction of Miller and A.S. Byatt proves very fruitful.)

FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA stars Emma Woodhouse; Thor; Orson Welles; Young Alithea; The Old Storyteller; Sultan Suleiman; Bob Jelly; Tucker; Reiko; Col. William Stryker; Archangel; Griffin; Ozmet the Jocular; Ghoul; Baraka; Doone; Dr. Torture; Sid ‘Kicker’ Kelly; Sputty; The Bookmaker; Seducer; Quick Change Boy; and Hilarus (most of whom sound like MAD MAX characters)