YES, FURIOSA REALLY IS ALL THAT

 

I'm still reeling from the experience of seeing Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga at the SIFF Downtown Theater  (formerly the Seattle Cinerama) in downtown Seattle on Monday afternoon (May 27). Given the disparity of reviews from writers I like I respect (Stephanie Zacharek, Odie Henderson and Owen Gleiberman check in for the negative, while Justin Chang, Robert Daniels, Manohla Dargis and Keith Uhlich rank on the enthusiastic side), I had defiintely adjusted my expectations going in, intrigued at the prospect of a movie that could end up being even more interesting because of the diversity of those reactions.

But you can count me with the yea-sayers on this one. Despite a couple of narrative rough patches, Furiosa is, I think, a perverse, hellacious masterpiece, its roots set in a despoiled garden of Eden, its multiple branches of humanity distended, twisted, gnarled by a relentless Wasteland Armageddon, its inhabitants cosplaying their worst savage instincts in a (yes) furious drive not just to survive, but to survive and dominate and extinguish-- not exactly an unfamiliar scenario given our own current modern geopolitical reality. (Eden and Apocalypse are united near the end in one of the most gasp-inducing images of decay and rebirth I can remember ever seeing, especially in a big action film released by a major studio.

Director/cowriter George Miller has made a brilliant career out of crafting demanding cult entertainment that has somehow wormed its way into the collective moviegoing imagination without ever actually taking the box office by storm. (I would include another masterpiece, Babe: Pig in the City, within that assessment.) The writer-director builds on what he started in 1979, yet even after three great action classics (Mad Max, The Road Warrior and Mad Max: Fury Road) and one dud (Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome), he still busy refashioning the familiar and upping the ante on is signature action style into a film that feels of a piece and yet distinct from the others in pacing, in structure, in its overall effect. Ten minutes in, you sense that this is a movie that was never destined to be a crowd-pleasing blockbuster-- it's too profoundly, defiantly weird for that.

Even so, it is a constantly surprising movie too. Charlize Theron's Furiosa in Fury Road was a real original, but Anya Taylor-Joy thrives in her shadow nonetheless. (And so does Ayla Browne, who plays one of two younger incarnations of this soon-to-be-war-rig-driving warrior.) Yet the biggest surprise, performance-wise, is delivered by Chris Hemsworth, whose over-the-top tyrannical posturing as Dementus (here seen in his Red phase) is far more nuanced and strangely moving (at times) than clips you may have seen could ever have suggested. (Similarly, the film is an eye-popping rejoinder to its own CG-heavy trailers-- Miller and company's integration of CG with physical action is sublimely rendered, almost painterly, sometimes imperfect, and not at all weighted toward the sort of absurdly artificial landscapes and physics-defying nonsense of either those trailers or the majority of modern action epics.)

Furiosa's relatively underwhelming box-office performance, duly noted by wags and pundits and other media vulture types, has more to do with Hollywood studios reaping what they have sown, in terms of loading their slates with giant movies that have to make $500 million in order to even come close to making a profit, than the audience somehow sniffing it out and deciding in advance that Miller's grand undertaking was somehow no good. These mega-budgeted, underperforming "sure things" are also being unleashed at a time when, in order to keep up with those soaring costs created by Hollywood's make-or-break strategy, going to the movies has become prohibitively expensive for many people (unless you're Nicole Kidman, I guess). So who can blame audiences when, taking their cue from the studios' incredibly fucked-up business model, they decide to move on the implicit promise that if they just hold tight, they be able to catch Furiosa (or Barbie, or  Oppenheimer) on Max or Netflix in a month or so. So, no worries! (Two days after I originally posted this piece, on May 29, New York magazine film critic Bilge Ebiri agreed in his piece entitled "Movies Like Furiosa Were Never Meant to Save Hollywood.")

And Furiosa really does need to be seen in a theater-- I saw it with a packed house in that magnificent theater in Seattle and it was one of the most overwhelming sonic and visual presentations I've ever been lucky enough to attend, easily the equal of anything available in the best theaters in Hollywood. (Critic Charles Taylor was right-- that screen is a pisser. And my second screening this past Sunday at my lovely Rose Theatre in downtown Port Townsend was a surprisingly potent presentation as well.) I haven't shaken either experience yet, nearly two weeks after that first showing-- only Miller could, or apparently would even care to infuse the end of the world with this much nerve-jangling exhilaration (tempered by a refusal to suggest that this really is anything but the end of the world), and Furiosa sent me out of the theater on the sort of big-budget movie high the likes of which I haven't experienced since, well Mad Max: Fury Road.

But it also ends on an ambivalent emotional note, of the recognition of a wounded soul set out on a journey that cannot possibly hold anything remotely like the promise of redemption or fulfillment, even despite what we may know from the 2015 film that this one leads directly into. I left Furiosa knowing I saw exactly the movie its creators intended, knowing that I would think about it for days (I have), knowing I'd be back to see it again-- I did, with my daughters. Don't wait for this Max. See this Mad Max saga on the biggest screen you can find. And don't put it off-- Furiosa may soon disappear into a Wasteland dust storm of endless, streaming choices where the hope for anything like the overwhelming technical presentation this movie deserves will be as rare as stumbling upon a Citadel filled with fresh water and food, or a giant tanker filled with guzzoline just waiting to be claimed.

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