Based upon characters and situations created by George Miller
Screenplay Written by George Miller & Nico Lathouris
Directed by George Miller
**** (four stars)
RATED R
There have consistently been factors, elements and entire cinematic landscapes that feel pulled and plucked from the realm of nightmares within the films of Writer/Director George Miller.
I remember "The Witches of Eastwick" (1987), Miller's rousing adaptation of of the John Updike novel was by turns filled with a darkly comic eroticism submerged in the rightfully demonic as well as the often vomitous. "Lorenzo's Oil" (1992) fashioned a parent/child medical drama with the existential terror and velocity of a horror film. Even his children's films were not off limits as "Babe: Pig In The City" (1998), his extraordinary sequel to the charming "Babe" (1995), possessed a feverish creativity filled with a dream logic by way of a classic Grimm's fairy tale. Even the gentle musical "Happy Feet" (2006) took a sharp detour into a harrowing sequence of environmental collapse. And certainly there was his superior installment in 'Twilight Zone: The Movie" (1983), starring a thoroughly unhinged John Lithgow as a tormented airline passenger in Miller's remake of the television episode "Nightmare At 10,000 Feet."
Yet, out of his entire filmography, what clearly stands tallest is the nightmare of the downfall of civilization itself and its full descent into complete barbarianism in his pre and post apocalyptic "Mad Max" series, unquestionably is greatest and most signature cinematic achievement(s). It has been almost ten full years since we were last thrust into the automotive carnage of the desolate Australian wasteland with George Miller's superlative fourth installment "Mad Max: Fury Road" (2015), a work that revitalized and re-introduced his rapacious vision to audiences with a vicious, visceral skill that succeeded the iconic second installment "The Road Warrior" (1981) into something truly operatic in scope and purpose.
With the fifth installment, "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," George Miller devises a prequel, giving us the full backstory of the title character first introduced to us via the titanic presence and performance of Charlize Theron in the previous film. Wisely, Miller does not attempt to just create a repeat of road rage and call it a day.
Don't get me wrong. There is more than enough of his trademark and kinetic car chases, stunt work and largely practical effects at tremendous work. This time, Miller expands his world building even further, bringing a pathos and poetry to the blistering and bombastic, ensuring that "Fury Road" and "Furiosa" work seamlessly as a whole while also existing as two distinct and complete experiences, each one complimenting the other while telling a full story. What results is something especially extraordinary, considering that we are drowning in all manner of sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes and re-imaginings. "Furiosa" feels as if this was a film that sprung directly from George Miller's bones...more than apt as it unquestionably rattled mine.
George Miller's "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," set decades after the apocalypse and decades before the events of "Mad Max: Fury Road," opens at the Green Place of Many Mothers, one of the last remaining areas of fresh agriculture and water, hidden away from the desert wasteland, and birthplace of Furiosa (Alyla Browne). While attempting to sabotage the arrival of marauders from discovering her home, Furiosa is captured and taken to the warlord Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), who soon murders her Mother and "adopts" her as his pseudo/daughter with the hopes she will lead him to the Green Place.
What follows is Furiosa's journey from existing in Dementus' capture to witnessing Dementus' thirst for ultimate power over the wasteland through his attempts to infiltrate and take over Gas Town, the Bullet Farm and finally, the Citadel, run by Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his fanatical army of War Boys. Furiosa is eventually enslaved by Immortan Joe and for over a decade, as she grows into adulthood (now played by Anya Taylor-Joy), she struggles to survive while also plotting her revenge against Dementus.
While the film does not necessarily deliver any sense of surprises regarding the backstory of the character of Furiosa (although all of the holes are indeed filled), George Miller's "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" beautifully widens and deepens the canvas of this chaotic universe unlike any of the previous installments. Like its predecessors, most notably "Fury Road," it is a thrilling production that showcases Miller's astonishing skill and heft as a visual stylist and storyteller. Tremendous applause must be served to Miller's entire team, with special mentions to Cinematographer Simon Duggan, Editors Eliot Knapmann and Margaret Sixel, Composer Tom Holkenbrg's booming, doom laden score, and of course, the entire stunt team, all of whom combine to bring every moment to brutally bracing life.
Admittedly, I was a tad confused when Anya Taylor-Joy was initially cast as Furiosa solely due to her physical characteristics and facial features being different enough from Charlize Theron that I was unable to envision her as this younger version. I needed not have worried. For a character that is often silent, Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa gives a performance that is simultaneously interior and explosive. She conveys a world of emotion, pathos, turmoil, loss, grit, tenacity and an unending sense of purpose within her survivalist determination to the point where she is referred to as being "the fifth rider of the apocalypse."
Since we are dealing with the state of being told a myth, whomever is weaving the myth is key and in doing so, certain details can become malleable--especially regarding the exact appearance of someone. And so, it really doesn't matter that the actresses who portray Furiosa over the two films have differing features for it is in their inherent delivery and personality that we are always seeing one figure and we are submerged in her story.
This really struck me during a section of the film where Furiosa forges an alliance with Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), the driver of the Citadel's first War Rig and who also bears a striking resemblance to a certain road warrior we already know. Certainly this relationship serves as the mirror Furiosa will create with Max (Tom Hardy) years later in "Fury Road," but additionally, those lines of mythology were effectively blurred, making me wonder just whom was entering whose story and when.
That being said, George Miller was wise to not try to craft an experience that would either out-do "Fury Road" as an action spectacle, although the action set pieces presented gloriously in their white knuckle intensity. "Furiosa" is no mere retread. In fact, what I found remarkable is that this film and "Fury Road" are the most interconnected, playing off of each other while telling one complete story in two distinct halves.
In fact, I often thought of Writer/Director Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill Volume 1" (2003) and "Kill Bill Volume 2" (2004), a cinematic duet that consisted of two wildly fulfilling and completely idiosyncratic film experiences that ultimately chronicled, and therefore coalesced into, one entire conception. As with Tarantino's films, where the first film was the pulse ponding, blood thirsty action epic, the second film was its pulsating soul--while not dialing down on the action one bit.
With "Furiosa," George Miller has infused his entire quintet of film with tremendous sense of moral urgency and outrage that infuses a richer amalgamation of his post apocalyptic Western aesthetic with a greater sense of mythology and myth making. While "Furiosa" functions as a prequel, I was extremely pleased that the film never felt as if it was overworking itself to reverse engineer plot points and aesthetic elements to ensure the parts between the two films connected properly. This success is entirely due to the fact that Miller wrote and storyboarded "Furiosa" (as well as a potential film entitled "Max In The Wasteland"--set in between these two films) before "Fury Road" was even filmed, largely for the purpose of allowing himself to become completely immersed in the story's arc as well as for Charlize Theron to embody the character and her psychology as deeply as possible--and as we have already witnessed in "Fury Road," Theron accomplished this feat to a magnetically harrowing degree.
Where the timespan of "Fury Road" is essentially over perhaps two days and consists of the structure of a chase and then, a race with Furiosa's mission to emancipate the enslaved Women of Imperator Joe as the...ahem...engine, "Furiosa" becomes the grander epic. Spanning decades and evolving over five episodic chapters, "Furiosa" is given its most literary tenor, thus making the titular character function over both films akin to Odysseus and his quest to return home after the Trojan War in Homer's The Odyssey just as she longs to return to her home, the Green Place Of Many Mothers.
Furiosa's journey delves into the heart of her battle against Dementus as well as the entire quintet of films as it is a philosophical debate of what could prevail after the end of the world. Hate or hope in an unforgiving environment where bottomless rage is ruled by grief. For Furiosa, is it through the loss of her home and Mother as she was born into this post apocalyptic world. Yet, for Dementus, it could be inferred that his backstory and what fuels his sense of rage occurred either before or after the apocalypse. And as for Max, is rage exists on the edge of pre and post apocalypse...and it is that edge where he remains, yet somehow still unearths a sense of mercy.
The stuff of this specific set of George Miller nightmares arrives with an environmental disaster (or several) combined with--and caused by--the downfall of humanity. Yet, over and again, and evidenced heroically in "Furiosa," even when the world is gone, there is still empathy, there is still trust, there is still love, and there is still hope--the hope to just survive one moment longer in a nightmare world where the nightmares never end. Every time Furiosa seems to evade danger, she is scooped right up into it all over again. She is captured, escapes, is captured and escapes and is captured again and again...and still, she resists and summons resilience.
The constant state of dread never felt more palpable to me within this series than right now with George Miller's "Furiosa." For in the earlier installments, I was seeing a terrifying world that I could not believe--it was cinematic awe. Yet, with the human element placed at the forefront with "Furiosa," which therefore increases the human element of "Fury Road," I see George Miller's vision more clearly and with a greater sense of terror--possibly due to the overwhelming sense of inhumanity occurring in our very real world, and that feeling of hungering for blood in the water is hanging heavily in the air.
With so much in a precarious balance between societal order and chaos and the endless cruelty show being rewarded and kindness is seen as weakness, perhaps what George Miller has been devising all along has been a warning.
"Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" is one of my favorite films of 2024.
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