A brutal but fascinating vision
George Miller’s ‘Furiosa’ is an origin story, but the film also expands his dystopian world view
After 45 years and multiple casting changes and story swerves, we should know by now not to make assumptions about George Miller’s “Mad Max” apocalyptic road movie franchise.
Yet “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” world-premiering out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, still comes as a surprise. The fifth film in the ongoing adventures of a future desert Wasteland of rogues and anti-heroes, it isn’t just the trailer-hyped origin story of title warrior Furiosa, who was played by Charlize Theron in the magnificent fourth film, “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015).
We do get that back story and, in fact, get not one but two vivid new versions of Furiosa: as a 20-something scrapper played by Anya Taylor-Joy and as a 10-year-old dynamo played by Alyla Browne. They’re both fast, furious and fabulous as they mix it up with an endless array of villainous freaks and freaky villains, the best of the latter being a teddy bear-toting bike gang boss played by Chris Hemsworth.
The tale Miller really wants to tell, it turns out, is a more expansive look at the catastrophe-altered and liquids-scarce Wasteland (otherwise known as Australia gone to hell) that he’s been exploring since Mel Gibson’s highway cop Max Rockatansky first motored into trouble in the first “Mad Max” in 1979. Gibson was succeeded in the role by Tom Hardy in the franchise revival that was “Fury Road,” but Hardy is MIA in “Furiosa,” although we get a glimpse of yet another actor playing Max.
The story is so big this time, with treks to evocatively named spots like Gas Town, the Bullet Farm and the Green Place of Many Mothers, that Miller and his co-writers Nick Lathouris and Prateek Bando have broken it into multiple chapters.
The maternal Green Place is where the movie and origin story begins. It’s an improbably lush hidden paradise where the world is a lot like it used to be, except this sylvan reserve is run by strong and empowered women. They’re determined to keep it that way and to keep outsiders away, but desperados from less-blessed locales have other ideas, as young Furiosa (Browne) is the first to find out.
While picking fruit one day, she’s kidnapped by stooges of Warlord Dementus (Hemsworth, sporting a fake nose), a verbose motorcycle messiah who is tougher than his attire of leathers, cape and teddy bear might suggest. (The teddy has symbolic family meaning, as we learn.)
Furiosa resists her abductors like a rattlesnake, and her heat-packing mama (Charlee Fraser) gives brave chase.
But Furiosa is fated to end up in the Citadel, a stronghold of water hoarder Immortan Joe (Lachy Hume), a skeleton-masked menace whom we first met in “Fury Road.” Joe, who also likes to hoard women for patriarchal predations and look-alike War Boys for muscular mayhem, is no friend of Dementus.
The power struggles between the two crime lords takes up a large part of “Furiosa,” while the title anti-heroine seeks revenge for the multiple wrongs committed against her and her family. There’s good reason some refer to her as “the fifth rider of the apocalypse.”
Furiosa falls in with a taciturn big rig driver named Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), who is like a Mad Max figure in all but name, but she’s ultimately going to have to find her own way home to the Green Place, like a battle-scarred Dorothy on a skid-marked Yellow Brick Road.
Taylor-Joy gets very few speaking lines in the film, a deliberate move by Miller to avoid any distractions, but she makes silence commanding.
Miller’s dystopian vision, set to the score’s pounding drums and sonorous cellos, has never been more brutal than it is in “Furiosa.”
His random images of the ravaged expanse that is the Wasteland include a dog gnawing on a human foot and a tree growing from the body of a man.
It gets overwhelming at times, but it’s in service of a cinematic vision that continues to fascinate all these years and changes later.
It’s fun to think of the Wasteland as Earth’s twin of the planet Arrakis in “Dune,” a place where water and fuel are equally scarce but the rides are cooler and the characters are way crazier.
Meryl tells all
The early days of Cannes 2024 have been a showcase for women of strength, from fictional onscreen characters like Furiosa to real-life movie icon Meryl Streep, who was given an honorary Palme d’Or during the fest’s opening ceremonies last Tuesday night in the Palais des Festivals.
She wore a full-length ivory dress for that occasion but switched to more casual grab of dark grey tunic and pants for her public appearance the following afternoon, for an interview called “Rendezvous With Meryl Streep” in the Debussy Theatre.
Answering questions from French journalist Didier Allouch, Streep, 74, joked about how she felt hungover from her Palme honours (“I didn’t get to bed until 3”) and how she’s more of a shy person than people might realize.
She’s the most nominated person in the history of the Academy Awards, with 21 noms and three wins, yet she told Allouch, “I live a very quiet life and don’t get any respect at home!”
The mother of four and grandmother of five said she tends not to think about or even remember the many awards she has won in her multidecade career, yet it’s apparent she has almost total recall of the films she made.
She still shudders at the thought of the horrifying decision her character has to make regarding her two children in “Sophie’s Choice,” the 1982 film set during the Second World War.
“It was upsetting. I don’t like to think about it,” she said.
She did the scene after just a single read of the lines (“It upset me so much”) and there were just two takes, the second one happening because the girl playing her daughter was distracted.
Streep, who has long fought for women’s rights, said things have definitely changed for the better for women in Hollywood over the years, with social movements such as Me Too — which is having a belated reckoning in France at the moment — and Time’s Up making a lasting impact.
“The biggest stars in the world are women right now — although Tom Cruise (as well), probably,” she said, laughing.