Endurance and Redemption Under Rage
For female audiences, "The Hunger Games" and "Divergent" film series have paved the way for a journey of powerful female characters on the big screen. These films feature protagonists with solid physiques and resilient hearts, often entangled in nightmares and challenging journeys. However, it wouldn't be fair to draw comparisons with these films here, as "Mad Max: Fury Road" is an entirely different beast.
The early promotional posters showed that Imperator Furiosa, the female character in this film, carries significant weight. Not only is she positioned before Max Rockatansky, but Max Rockatansky is even depicted with a "muzzle," which might raise objections from Tom Hardy, the actor portraying the male lead. However, the director pointed out that this was not intentional but a consequence of the story. "Mad Max: Fury Road" repeatedly defied my visual senses, touching upon the limits of my inner self and post-apocalyptic sentiments.
Throughout the screening, three black screens marked the end of a segment of the story, leaving the audience momentarily in the dark. I interpret this as a thoughtful pause by the director, providing everyone with a visual and emotional buffer. Every time the screen went black, I felt it would still be worth it if the movie ended there. Below, I would like to discuss my feelings about the film's breakthroughs on three levels.
The Depiction of Chaos in the Apocalypse
Apocalyptic-themed movies have been countless, but this film surpasses the standard in the most direct sensory stimulation, becoming a new peak. Two aspects of the design are particularly striking.
Firstly, the desolation of the natural environment: scorching sun, raging winds, deserts, and swamps. The film uses highly saturated bright colors, blending desolate landscapes with rich colors, highlighting the strong desire for survival among people. The starkly contrasting war boys, their bodies painted white, display fragility. At the same time, the blackened eyes suggest an empty sense of rebirth values. Educated by Immortan Joe to become war machines, they only know how to drive, fix cars, and fight desperately. They live only to die in battle to be reborn in Valhalla. They've never even seen a tree, let alone know what the word means.
The relentless red-heavy metal band in the war, acting as spiritual drugs under the golden sun and scorching environment, people's restlessness and fanaticism have already reached their peak. They only seek the thrill of killing and the suicidal liberation, with no other aspirations. By starting the film with such an extreme background and setting, the director forces everyone to think. Think about how to survive, whether you're in power, enslaved, or on the run.
Secondly, the rise of artificial materials: power and symbols, violence, and weapons. The film presents a possibility under the apocalyptic theme: humans, relying on the last water source, create perilous fortresses, raise countless war boys, defending the city while invading other territories. The people's cohesion depends on a dictatorship and an illusory belief in rebirth. Countless ignorant war boys are brainwashed, producing extreme war chariots and weapons. This violent design concept dazzles countless war vehicles and goes far beyond that. The war boys even use their bodies as slingshots, burning themselves to burn out enemies.
In such chaos, the first 15 minutes of the film let you wander into hell. The spirit and soul have already separated. After the violent first battle, the barely alive protagonist, Max Rockatansky, crawls out of the sand and sees the gradually clear picture ahead after the sandstorm—"a bathing beauty image." Perhaps it's somewhat jaw-dropping, but this is the director's finale for the apocalyptic setting.
The Transcendence of the Bottom Line of the Heart
At the film's beginning, Max Rockatansky quickly reveals his previous survival experience and is soon captured, starting a new escape round. During this period, Max Rockatansky's mind is entangled in the choice between persisting in escape or giving up. However, the instinct for survival keeps him fleeing and fighting for his life. Max Rockatansky is inevitably a loner, a survivor of the apocalypse. He won't be a messiah, only a solitary sinner, bearing the resentment of all the deceased, living alone.
So, Max Rockatansky no longer tells anyone his name. He won't establish contact with anyone, as doing so would only mean losing another friend. He flees the environment of death, escapes the enslavement of tyranny, and escapes everything. He could be considered a kind of escapism, choosing to flee for survival under the threat of life and death, a choice without any bottom line, where killing, robbing, and strategizing become his well-honed skills, survival without limits.
The film doesn't delve much into Imperator Furiosa's backstory, merely suggesting her arduous and enduring experiences through her background as a trusted female commander with a missing arm, once a baby snatched by Immortan Joe. The journey of rebirth-like experiences has endowed her with meticulous plans, unparalleled combat skills, and a firm belief in returning to her birthplace. So she takes Immortan Joe's wives and drives his oil tanker, resolutely embarking on a path of no return. She believes she can lead the wives to find the childhood "The Green Place," for this, she chooses to believe in Max Rockatansky, whom she meets in a mid-journey ambush. She also believes in the hopes and prayers of the wives, and she is deeply convinced of success because, aside from this, she has nothing else to believe in.
The parallel lines of Max Rockatansky and Imperator Furiosa, seeking escape and redemption, converge when Imperator Furiosa entrusts her cause and bravely faces death. Max Rockatansky gradually drops his guard and cooperates wholeheartedly. The two gradually share everyday pursuits and intersections, forming a new force. The trust between the two, their determination, their solidarity, from the first draw in their encounter, the unlocking of the throttle in their second meeting, the rear guard in their third solo fight, to the final battle of death.
Max Rockatansky no longer flees and hides but strangely acts as a vanguard, proposing the only survival plan. In the film, Max Rockatansky alone catches up with Furiosa's convoy, which is preparing to continue eastward, telling her that hope is not in the unknown ahead but behind us. Feeling everything is inevitable every time, the return trip is so crazy yet reasonable. This is the visible future, not the illusory hope. The depth of the heart's bottom line determines how deeply one can achieve redemption from the flesh to the soul, redeeming others and, thereby, oneself.
The Sublimation of Apocalyptic Sentiment
Survival in the apocalypse relies on the power of thought, whether fear of death or hope for survival. Nux, one of the war boys in the film, initially chased Furiosa's convoy with genuine admiration for Immortan Joe and hoped for rebirth. Yet, he eventually recognized his insignificance and the illusion of his faith through failure. His body was tortured by illness; his soul had no home, only the madness of battle. He hoped that the moment he burned his life away, someone would witness it, just like his last words, "Witness me." Fortunately, he did not die in Immortan Joe's religious faith. Still, he truly helped Furiosa and others and sacrificed himself without fear or regret. At that moment, he saw hope in his eyes, the hope of Capable leaving, the hope he had created with his own hands.
The wives of Immortan Joe are synonymous with hope. From the pregnant Splendid to the strong Toast, each swears never to return or be a baby-making machine for Immortan Joe. They are not property; they firmly follow Furiosa to find The Green Place, fighting with all their might.
Imperator Furiosa herself says that she is not looking for hope but redemption. She desperately redeems everyone, also redeeming herself. However, she never thought about the ambivalence of hope. Upon learning that her childhood, "The Green Place," had become a swamp, she knelt in grief, feeling hopeless. However, she planned to give up hope in the end. They must go east until they find The Green Place. Max Rockatansky's suggestion of returning makes her calm and reflective. She knows Max Rockatansky is right; hope sometimes makes people desperate. Instead of clinging to false hope, it's better to seize the future with their hands and create their own Green Place home.
Such apocalyptic sentiments are profound, leaving one's heart challenging to calm and breaking free from the belief in nothingness, living with hope, and then giving up the search for hope, plunging into the cruel battle once again, fighting for the right to survive. This transformation, in a series of plot advances, repeatedly overturns the audience's hearts.
The film, devoid of emotional threads or humor, unfolds with tense plotlines, leading the audience step by step along the characters' journey of hope to its end, then bringing them back along the characters' path of despair. Such dramatic reversals and understanding of reality this is the true meaning of self-redemption that the movie seeks to convey. The last time we felt such a twist was in "Cube," when everyone reached the designated escape room after enduring life and death, only to discover that the exit was their starting point.
The dramatic reversal, coupled with a grasp of reality, is what the film truly wants to convey about self-redemption. And in the end, Imperator Furiosa, alone, assassinates Immortan Joe, severely injured, completing her redemption. Max Rockatansky can only express his respect sincerely by continually reminding her of his name and removing the tourniquet he once hated the most, then inserting it directly into Furiosa's arm.
Two journeys on the same path, two entirely different blood transfusions. These two astonishing repetitions in the film's plot are simply astounding. Characters constantly walk on the edge of life and death, each time trapped and rescued, not in repeated explosions and chaos but in different brutal battles, brawls, duels, strategies, and deadlocks. Each battle has different members joining: Max Rockatansky, Nux, the wives, and the mothers, all showing people's extreme survival methods.
The suppression and rule of violence are a way of survival, but underneath it, escape and resistance from the dead end are also a way of survival. There is no right or wrong here, no good or evil. Resources determine everything, and the judgment between people is only about strength and weakness, depending on the resources in your hands: weapons, war vehicles, oil, and drinking water.
Finally, about women and the next generation. When a person gains power, there is always a fatal weakness beneath the muscular appearance. This is the law of nature and the inevitable fate. Immortan Joe's weakness lies in healthy offspring. Once people have survived and gained power, they will selfishly pave the way for their offspring. There have been numerous examples throughout history, and this trait has driven Immortan Joe to extremes, ultimately leading to his self-destruction.
At the film's end, Furiosa and her group bring Immortan Joe's body into the citadel, returning to the actual "homeland." Max Rockatansky quietly walks into the crowd and disappears. Before turning away, he and Furiosa exchange a glance, a simple farewell. The film bids farewell to the audience here, leading them on a furious journey on the angry road, surviving in the desert of hope and finally finding comfort in the self-redemption of the characters. This "Mad Max: Fury Road" will surely leave a profound mark on every viewer's cinematic history.
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