Why Mad Max: Fury Road Is The Most Amazing Movie Ever
This is a long ramble. This movie is worth it. For those about to read this in its entirety, I thank you. This hasn’t been edited. It’s right from my brain pan to your eye sockets. Livin’ dangerously!
Two parts to this monster:
Part The First: Creative and Technical Merit
Part The Second: Jungian Psychology
So, to begin:
Part The First: Creative and Technical Merit
There are a couple of principles that good cinema is built on:
Show, don’t tell.
For every action, there is a reaction.
Be as concise as possible (macro and micro).
In late, out early.
Have interesting and wide arcs for your main characters.
Pivot the plot (reversals) in unexpected ways.
MM:FR has this all in spades. By my estimation, from a technical and creative aspect, it is one of the tightest movies ever made. There is hardly ANY wasted screen time: each shot, each spoken line, each cut, conveys a necessary detail that keeps the movie moving in a forward direction. Some examples of each of the above:
1. Show, don’t tell.
Well, the whole movie is based on this. The largest amount of exposition is in the scene with the Many Mothers, and even then it’s only a few lines spoken off-camera. If you look at the nature of the alliances throughout the movie and how they swing (Furiosa learning to trust Max, Max deciding to stay with her and the Breeders, Nux’s change of heart, the Many Mothers coming along for the ride) they all happen largely without dialog. They are set-up by circumstance, and usually conveyed by a look, or simple action. We never learn about so much, it just IS and is taken as fact. How do they farm bullets? How was the aqua-cola pumped up? Etc etc. No need to explain, everyone in the MM:FR universe believes in it, thus so do we.
2. For every action, there is a reaction.
This can be considered on two levels: what is shown on screen (the action) and then how it is cut together (the editing).
First, the action. For anything that happens onscreen, there is a reaction. If someone shoots something, you see the result of that. If someone hits someone, you see the result of it. If someone insults someone, you see the result of that. And generally, the actions/reactions are so tightly knit that they bleed together to create a steady flow of forward movement (both specially and emotionally). The amount of planning that had to take place at the story board level is staggering.
Considering the massive amount of cuts that are made in an action movie, and the sheer amount of spectacle and movement and amount of objects to tackle, I am not sure how the fuck George Miller is able to keep the user anchored in the action, but a lot of it is by matching action within the frame and across cuts. This is a tough concept to explain without having the movie in front of us, so I think I’ll leave it here.
3. Be as concise as possible (macro and micro).
The movie is tight. There is no lingering. It makes a point, and instantly moves on. The movie does it at a high level (taking place across an afternoon, a night and morning) and at the shot level: it never belabors or repeats a point. It makes it, and moves on. It does this by making sure that a shot, even if it is only a second long, conveys the information necessary for the viewer to understand what has happened. Furiosa grimacing as she removes the knife, the straps popping on her prosthetic arm holding onto Max, the look of dismay on Toast the Knowing (Zoe Kravitz) as she is captive in Immortan Joe’s truck. That 30 second sequence is so brilliantly executed it makes the hairs stand up on my neck every time I see it.
4. In late, out early.
The audience doesn’t need every set-up, and doesn’t need every resolution. MM:FR keeps us going at a good clip. It takes us 15 minutes to figure out what the hell Furiosa is up to, and even then we need to piece it together for ourselves. Max collapses in the tornado-mega-storm, but we don’t need to see the storm die out. Furiosa collapses on the dune, but we don’t wait around to see people consoling her or any of that gobbled-gook: we see the emotional notes that matter, and we get out at the peak.
5. Have interesting and wide arcs for your main characters.
Max goes from raving lunatic without a name to a fully-restored Max. Furiosa goes from homeless and without a family to having a home and a family. Nux realizes his destiny (to die in War) but does it for the right reasons (to save lives, not end them). There are some brilliant arcs in this movie, and the fact that they develop and are conveyed with such minimal dialog and in the midst of massive amounts of action, is genius.
6. Pivot the plot (reversals) in unexpected ways.
Max and Furiosa go from enemies to allies literally in two shots. Once faced with superior forces, they need to work together. The green place is dead. Oh, let’s go back, its green there. The journey ends where it begins, but all is changed. So good.
Part The Second: Jungian Psychology
OK. This aspect of the movie is utterly brilliant, and provides an amazing amount of depth and nuance. I have a feeling you might think I am blazingly nuts, but I swear on a stack of bibles that 1) what I am about to say is all true and 2) I have zero doubt this was all very much intentional and excruciatingly mapped out.
So, on the surface, this movie is about Max’s journey from insanity to sanity. But. How the movie maps to a patient’s journey, and the processes going on within the psyche, is rich in allegory and archetype, spanning Jungian philosophy, Faustian imagery and modern psychology. Bear with me, this is a bit of a mess, but I’ll do the best I can to keep it orderly.
We first meet Max (this is bookended with the last scene, so keep this in mind). We meet Max on his own, in a wilderness. He’s stark raving mad. He’s hearing voices, eating lizards, crazy-eyed and unkempt. He’s captured by the War Boys. As he is led away in chains, his hat falls off which is a fairly common metaphor for losing one’s mind / identity (hats are widely accepted as a way to hide thoughts or persona, and in a wider sense represent the mind. People who are looking to change themselves often will turn to hats, or doing extreme things with their hair: cutting, dying, etc.) Right then, we know Max has totally gone insane.
This is reinforced as he is chased through the Citadel. He’s hallucinating, hearing voices. He truly has been reduced to an instinct. There is no super-ego left. He’s pure impulse.
The Citadel itself is a metaphor for the mind. Hear me out. In dream psychology, water is used to represent the sub-conscious. Things in water are taken to be ‘hidden’ in the subconscious. Moving water usually means contents are being shared between the conscious and the subconscious. Angry water (big waves, rushing rivers) can represent strong division or stresses in the psyche. As a model of the mind, the Citadel is chugging away. It is bringing subconscious contents up from the deep, and storing them. But there is a crazed asshole running the citadel, and he’s is blocking these contents from getting to the places it needs to. You have the mega maniacal and ultra-testosterone warlord in charge of the mind. All the feminine parts are slaves to him. No good. This is a lack of balance and this leads to psychosis, and yes, you can see that the society that exists under Immortan Joe is barely functional. Definitely not rational.
It’s also worthy to note a few more details about the Citadel: the room where they Wives were kept was large and dome shaped, like the brain pan (even with a little pool of water in the middle, running out of where the mouth would be) and locked in a vault in the back of this room is a vault full of books (memories!), guarded by a feminine aspect (Ms. Kitty).
OK. So. We are introduced to Furiosa. She is the anima. The anima is the female part of Max. Every man has an anima. It is the female part of the male psyche. It lives in the subconscious, is considered an autonomous personality, and it can be argued it totally rules us (females have the animus, which is a male personality, and it runs the same way). Now, the anima is wiley. It is mischievous and tough to tame, and when it is out of balance with the ego, all sorts of problems arise. Obviously, Max, in his crazy state, is totally out of whack with his anima (Furiosa).
As we head out of the Citadel, we are really heading into Max’s psyche. This is his journey, and his attempt to heal. With him are going all of the psychological agents that comprise him: his anima (Furiosa), the better angels (or feminine aspects) the Wives, and he is hunted by dominant male elements that represent rage, and machismo, and all manner of things he really already has in spades; in other words, the other part of him that doesn’t want to heal.
Jump to the first time Max sees the Wives, standing beside the truck. This is the first step in his healing. How do we know? Well, there is water here, and although it is just a trickle (a hose), it means that elements in Max’s subconscious are starting to flow, even just a little bit. Splendid brings him the hose, held in front of her pregnant belly. The water represents rebirth: in this water is the power to be reborn, to heal. Max drinks of it greedily (he desires to be well), but he’s not nearly ready for this step: his anima attacks him (which the anima is want to do! it is tricky and treacherous!) and he responds like an animal. His first attempt at healing results in him getting his ass kicked. He would be done in by the anima if he didn’t get a bit of help from Nux and the threat of death (killing the anima, which would end poorly for everyone.) He doesn’t and we move on.
Furiosa and Max make an uneasy alliance before going into the canyon lands. They are forced into it out of necessity: they are now hunted by three massive search parties, and they have no choice if the organism is to survive (an easy way to think of this is that everyone in the War Rig is an aspect of Max’s psyche.) Max, and the anima, has realized that in order to survive, it has to find a way to work with the other. The canyon land is a metaphor for a maze, for the torturous path that this represents. There is no easy way (in fact, Max says, “No, stay outta there”. He doesn’t want to face this ordeal, these memories, its too painful and difficult) but they have no choice. The organism doesn’t want to be destroyed.
The death of Splendid is another shedding and a step forward. She’s pregnant with a boy. While it is rebirth, it is Immortan’s child, and as such is malignant. Splendid and the child have to be removed (like a cancer). The imperfection of Splendid is also reflected in her scarred face. She’s carrying a link back to the original crazy, and that link has to be severed. And so it is, when Splendid falls from the War Rig and is run over by Immortan Joe.
We go through some more struggles as Max continues his journey deeper into his psyche and into the subconscious. The chase through the marsh, the bleeding and the bathing in mother’s milk (a ritual cleansing?), the finding of the tree (growth and rebirth, as above so below [branches and roots, heaven and hell, conscious and subsconsious], a rich symbol of rebirth and growth in dream imagery and in alchemy) which in this case is dead but still proves instrumental in continuing Max’s spiritual journey.
And finally he reaches the green place. The subconscious. But in this case it is dead. Toxic. Black and infested by crows. This shouldn’t be a surprise: Max is crazy, and has hidden all sorts of terrible stuff down there. Of course nothing can live there. But, just because this is so, doesn’t mean it can’t be salvaged. And so they push through and come to…
The Many Mothers. Goethe’s Faust introduces the concept. From Wikipedia: “Faust enters the "realm of the mothers" — variously described as the depths of the psyche or the womb — in order to bring back the "ideal form" of beauty for the Emperor's delight.” Mephistopheles warns Faust to “take courage, for the danger’s great.” The realm of the mothers is fraught with peril.
And so it is in Max’s world. He’s reached the end of himself. The deepest part of his subconscious. All that is there is barren sand and the Many Mothers. They’ve never met anyone out there they haven’t killed. “Headshots. All of them. Snap. Right in the medulla.” Talk about danger. But luckily, Max at this point has befriended his feminine aspects and his anima, and they vouch for him.
And what also do they find there?
Seeds. The potential for regrowth. Healthy seeds, and so many kinds. But these fresh, viable psychic contents can’t flourish this far down. They need water and light and room to grow. They need to be brought back to the conscious so they can flourish. But, at least Max has found the treasure, the keys, as it were, to regrowth.
He almost loses it when the entire party decides to keep going deeper. Like the idea of limbo in Inception, there is a point where going “down” simply isn’t productive. There isn’t anything there. In Mad Max, it is thousands upon thousands of miles of salt. The ocean floor. Literally, nothing. You can’t delve any deeper than the Mothers. There is only one way back to sanity: and that is the way you came: up.
Luckily, Max has now assembled all the parts he needs to repair his psyche. He still has to install them in their rightful places and as such has a tough journey, but at least he’s got a chance. And so the party begins the journey back to the Citadel (or the brain, or consciousness, if you will).
I’ll skip ahead now to the exit of the canyon lands. Much of the negative overwhelmingly destructive male bits are killed (culminating in the spectacular death of uber idiot-manchild Rictus and Nux’s sacrifice to that the part can be reborn. They exit the canyon land in what is not-very-subtle birth, coming out of the pelvis of the rock arches as they collapse.
It is interesting to note that they are now in Immortan Joe’s truck, which is very quick and silver. Quicksilver, aka mercury, was a favorite of the alchemists, and a powerful symbol of psychic transformation and transferral of libido–psychic energy moving between the conscious and subconscious.
At this point however, the anima is almost dead. In taming that portion of him and bringing her to the conscious, Furiosa has been spent. Bled dry. She murmurs “home”, realizing that her true home is the conscious (the Citadel), not hidden down in the subconscious with the Mothers. And it is with this realization that enables Max to finally join with her, fusing the male and female portions of himself and creating a healthy unity. This unity is carried out quite literally through a blood transfusion, thus in some ways you could say Max and Furiosa bodily become one, if not spiritually.
And as they unite, Max is finally healed and remembers his name and identity. Max. My name is Max.
(Which is how the movie starts, with the VO introducing Max, “My name is Max”, before he loses his hat, and sanity, in the early scene).
But we are not quite done. We have to come out of the psychic world and back into the real one. As all of these united elements are carried aloft to the Citadel (brain, self, ego), Max steps from the platform. Where he was previously standing, is now to be found a little lumpy curiously twisted creature, the physical manifestation of Max’s insanity. But he’s left it behind. He’s healed, and so we come OUT of Max’s psychic world (just as we entered it at the beginning of the movie) and we find Max on his own. But this time, he’s no longer in a wasteland, but instead in a sea of people, and he’s grinning. Max has found his way back into the world.
The movie ends with a quote:
"Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves?" -The First History Man
The answer of course, which the movie has just spent 100 minutes exploring, is “deep within our selves”. That’s the only place where you can find a better you, for if you don’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane.
