The new Mad Max is probably the loudest silent movie ever made. Yes, I know it isn't silent in any real sense. Far from it. The engines throb and roar like Formula One on steroids, but its conception is in the silent movies that creator George Miller studied as a young filmmaker.
His favourites were Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and they taught him the basics of what he likes to call "pure cinema". There's no such thing, but I know what he means. Pure, as in it does not rely on words and dialogue (Max, now played by Tom Hardy, has only a few lines in the film); pure, as in its reliance on movement and placement within the frame to communicate meaning and emotion; pure, as in its return to a belief in the basic principles of editing, by which one plus one doesn't equal two, but three. It's a bit like cooking: onions and garlic alone are unpalatable. Whack them together with heat and you're on to something.
The really interesting thing about this new movie, made by a 70-year-old with the heart of a teenager, is that it offers a chance to reform the big, loud action movie – which is in dire need of it. Superheroes and CG effects have brought action low, even as they have made a gazillion dollars for the studios, by packaging action as an artificial series of stimulants in the manner of video games – like electronic prodding by computer. Plot, action, kinetic energy and the skills that were necessary to do action before the age of computers have all been forgotten. Directors now "do it in post". Capturing action in camera is becoming a lost art, partly because it's easier and safer to do it by computer. Mad Max also uses CG effects – rather too many for my liking – although Miller has said it is less then 10 per cent of the film. But it's his return to the first principles of action, as learned from Keaton, that is winning so much love.
The reviews are unprecedented. When it was shown at Cannes Film Festival two weeks ago, to a theatre full of hard-to-please critics from all over, the response was unlike anything I have seen there. The shouts and applause came during the film, rather than just at the end – so excited was the audience. Miller set out to make a film that was a continuous road chase. Once he has established the rules of this part of the future, where petrol and human blood are bought and sold, he takes the show on the road in a big rig driven by the one-armed woman, Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron. She pretty much steals the show from Hardy, which is another radical part of the film's conception.
Action movies are no longer a man's world. With the success of the Hunger Games franchise, the Divergent franchise, the Kick-Ass franchise and the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo franchise, women have never been more empowered in action, nor more violent. Mad Mad: Fury Road actually had a feminist adviser on set in Namibia. Eve Ensler, who wrote The Vagina Monologues, joined the crew for a week, presumably to help Miller walk the delicate line between exploitation and equality in the dramatisation of the five beautiful young women whom Furiosa wants to save. Clad in very little, their entrance is another type of "pure cinema", more in the vein of Roger Corman: five babes in the desert, washing themselves down with a big fat phallic water hose. Hoo dawgie. How Miller manages the transition from a futuristic wet T-shirt contest to a story about redemption and rebirth is one of the many paradoxes, but he does.
The emotional story, based on these five "breeder" women, packs un unexpected punch, especially after he adds a couple of old women to the mix – the pugnacious femme warriors known as Vuvalini. They are willing to die to save the future and they turn this into a feminist fable for all ages. By the end, Max is made virtually redundant by all these fabulous fighting females. What's next, Mad Maxine?
In terms of world cinema, no other Australian film comes close to the impact of this series. The original film was dubbed into American accents for its US release, and it failed. The legend took time to grow, and the series has become less and less Australian as American money has poured into the sequels. No 4 was largely filmed offshore so it is worth asking if there is anything Australian left in it? I would say yes, but it's not obvious. The original film was pure larrikinism, made without public money. It was rude and violent and out of step with the costume-drama pleasantries of the late 1970s. It was a wrench aimed at the head of a corporate Australian cinema that was trying too hard to be liked in high places, like Cannes.
Mad Max was never aiming to be respectable, which makes the reception in Cannes two weeks ago so ironic. That mischievous radicalism remains in the new movie, despite the big budget and the international cast. It's the last remnant of the original idea, born on the flat Queensland blacktop around Chinchilla, where Miller grew up. In that sense, the film is as Australian as a dead 'roo on the side of the road.
Twitter: @ptbyrnes
