‘Furiosa’ is all spectacle and no vision

InGeorge Miller in 2015 Mad Max: Fury Road– a sequel to the post-apocalyptic chronicle that Miller began in the late 1970s, with Mel Gibson as a lone, disorganized warrior seeking to preserve some vestige of civilization – Charlize Theron played Emperor Furiosa, a one-armed nuthunter, attached to a single arm. objective: free a bunch of sex slaves held by a mouth-breathing warlord named Immortan Joe, who also happens to be their former boss. Although the film’s ostensible star was Tom Hardy, as Gibson’s reincarnation of Max Rockatansky, Theron gave the film its glamorous sandstorm. There are many men in Fury Road, traveling around on motorcycles and other assorted vehicles, but it is Theron’s Furiosa who dominates the film’s forgotten landscape. With her shaved head and get-it-done look, she’s a model of impatient efficiency, a badass ballerina always ready to crack a skull or two.

Theron’s character now has her own film, arriving, like a potentate on a pillow, with the pompous title Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga—is premiering, out of competition, here at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as Fury Road did, to the delight of the public, nine years ago. The character Furiosa seemingly came out of nowhere in Fury Road, but Miller had already written his story; he knew exactly who she was and why she had invested so much in this harem rescue mission. Furious fleshes out this story, with Anya Taylor-Joy playing the younger version of Theron’s character.

If, in theory, it’s easy to buy into Taylor-Joy as a future Theron, the reality is more disappointing. Furious is loaded with storytelling, which is not the same thing as telling a story. Miller is going for something majestic here, and Furious at times it looks imperiously beautiful: he and cinematographer Simon Duggan know how to make the film’s trillions of sandhills look positively silky. But despite its many, many action sequences and a symphonic cacophony of motorbikes flying across the sand, the film, divided into chapters with dull titles like “Lessons from the Wasteland,” evolves into a slog that’s working hard to convince us that that we are having fun, even though it may not actually be giving us one.

See more information: George Miller can’t get out of Mad Max

The film begins with Furiosa’s childhood; she is played at this point by a young actress named Alyla Brown, the most expressive and convincing actress in the film. Furiosa was fortunate enough to have been raised in a secret, isolated location known as Green Place, an area that has so far managed to avoid the contamination and poisoning that has turned the rest of the film’s world into a nearly uninhabitable wasteland. One day, while picking berries in the forest, she is kidnapped by a group of dirty bikers who, to her idiotic delight, have stumbled upon this shockingly fertile paradise. When Furiosa’s mother learns of her daughter’s kidnapping, she gives chase on her own motorcycle, dressed in the Eileen Fisher-style linen clothes favored by her clan, the Vuvalini, or tribe of Many Mothers, the post-apocalyptic equivalent . of coastal grandmothers.

But tragedy happens. Little Furiosa fell into the clutches of the biker gang leader, Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, exaggerating in a performance that oscillates between cruelty and silly humor). Dementus likes Furiosa; his own children have died, and as a reminder of all he’s lost, he wears his old teddy bear on a lanyard, sometimes swung happily behind him like a backpack, sometimes front and center, Flava Flav style. But Dementus is no softie, and after committing an act of cruelty that scars Furiosa forever, she silently vows revenge.

Furious is set in a land of fortresses run by men whose tempers are ready to flare at any second: The Citadel, a kind of dirty Emerald City, is ruled by Immortan Joe (played here by Lachy Hulme, replacing actor Hugh Keays-Byrne, who died in 2020). Dementus, after striking a deal with Joe, becomes lord of nearby Gastown. There is also the Bullet Farm, although it is not as prominent in the plot. Much of the action in Furious it derives from trucks that travel bumpily from one fortress to another, transporting cabbages and other miscellaneous necessities in a supposedly exciting manner. If you love traveling, this is the film for you.

The mythology of Furious will mean something to Mad Max fans; at the same time, you don’t need any previous Mad Max experience to be bored. Fury Road it had a kind of cracked majesty going for it. However Furious is dotted with dark humor, yet takes itself very seriously. And Miller’s script (co-written with Nick Lathouris and Prateek Bando) makes some strange leaps in logic: At one crucial point, Furiosa escapes captivity, though no one bothers to look for her or seems to notice that she’s gone. When she reappears years later, her former captors greet her with exaggerated shock, as if they were only just realizing that she had escaped their clutches nearly a decade ago. You’d think a heroine would be more memorable in her own story.

In some ways, Taylor-Joy was a smart choice for the younger Furiosa. Like Theron, she has ballet training and bravely takes on all the violent, dusty action the story demands of her. She also looks suitably thin and haunted for a character who never got over her childhood trauma. Still, she is more sullen than impetuous; Her favorite expression is a frown. Actresses always say they want to play strong women, women who to do things, women who defend themselves. But these are not always the most complex or satisfying functions. You cannot interpret a quality; you can only play one character. And a character’s strength – whatever that means – doesn’t necessarily make her interesting.

That’s the problem with Furiosa as Taylor-Joy plays her. Theron was the best thing about Mad Max: Fury Road. Even playing an obstinate and serious character, you could tell that she had a sense of humor, a kind of silent internal clock that prevented her from becoming noble in a monotonous way. But Taylor-Joy plays Furiosa as a dark heroic icon, and you can hear the gears clicking. For a minute, Furiosa has a love interest, Tom Burke’s rebellious and reckless Praetorian Jack. But this subtopic is quickly eliminated; I wouldn’t like this man’s film to become too feminine. Maybe it’s the script that let Taylor-Joy down – there’s certainly a lot of plot confusion surrounding her, and it can be difficult for an artist to overcome that. Furious, Filled with explosions, wild masculinity and lots and lots of direction, it’s all spectacle and no vision. Your heroine deserves better.