George Miller’s explosively powerful new film, Mad Max: Fury Road is creating a worldwide debate about its utter disregard for the masculine grandstanding its previous outings were known for. But then George Miller is the kind of a director who really does not play by the rules. He can go from the sweaty and steely grit of the Mad Max franchise to the melting sweetness of a talking pig (Babe) to a true story of two parents in a tireless search for a cure for their son’s adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) in Lorenzo’s Oil to grave environmental concerns voiced by animated penguins in Happy Feet.
So in Mad Max-Fury Road, instead of creating another version of an undefeated hero in a leather jacket, he would have us know that only in a pre-apocalyptic world, can we strut around, being macho. And feel like we control the planet and its resources. And channel the inner Mad Max, conjure our version of heaven and hell because we don’t yet know what it would be like to live without the things we take for granted. Things like an earth that greens itself with just a little coaxing. Human existence that still has hope for a better tomorrow. But then he lets us see a world without hope. A world where Max Rockatansky, yes, the maddest one of them all is reduced to a “blood bag”, a kind of a universal blood donor serving a pallid, brainless army. A world where hope is a mistake.
The reason why Mad Max: Fury Road is more than just a big budget crowd pleaser is because it forces you to see the consequences of human greed and violence. It also subverts the idea of masculinity and femininity in a barely there future following a nuclear war where everything is sand and waste and blood and the idea of civilisation has been reduced to a naked need for survival. There are no predefined gender roles possible in this world and that is why a bunch of ‘wives’ being appropriated body, mind and soul for the sole purpose of breeding by a warlord escape with someone called Imperator Furiosa, a woman who has been beaten back so much and broken so many times that now, she fears nothing and somehow wants to reach the “green place”, where earth mothers guard a sacred piece of fertile land. Furiosa is the protector of the runaway women and Max, their accidental companion is the brother-in-arms, the extra weapon and finally the man who takes them all back to the hell they ran away from so that they can get through to the other side where life still has a chance. And hope is not such a bad idea after all. But he is not the hero. He is a co-traveller. A facilitator. It is Furiosa and a bunch of fearless old women who power the escape with their bravado, their desire to reclaim their own inviolable selves.
A lot of ire and misogyny has been directed towards the film for underplaying the ideal of a male hero and giving the women so much prominence but then for Miller, this film never was about taking the franchise forward without adapting it to the world we live in today and the world we may have to live in one day if we allow war and greed to run us over. He shows us how when the warlords have consumed and destroyed everything and only water, fuel and bullets are having the last word, it will be an old woman with a box full of green seedlings who will give the world something to look forward to including a sense of home that all of Miller’s protagonists long for. Be it the oddball penguin or a wistful pig. Miller was quoted as saying, “The last thing I wanted to do is another Mad Max.” Well, he didn’t.
With questions being raised about how festivals like Cannes perpetuate myths about female decorativeness by imposing a ban on flat shoes and actors like Scarlett Johansson asking out loud why only women are asked questions about their clothes and fitness regimens on the red carpet and in press calls even if they are playing superheroes, we may now see more spaces where women play heroes and co-creators of a plot rather than just props.
Recently, actor Mark Ruffalo also hit out at the “I am not a feminist” Internet phenomenon that targets the idea of gender equality in films and in life. He said, “First of all, it’s clear you don’t know what feminism is. But I’m not going to explain it to you. You can google it.But here is what I think you should know.You’re insulting every woman who was forcibly restrained in a jail cell with a feeding tube down her throat for your right to vote, less than 100 years ago.You’re degrading every woman who has accessed a rape crisis center, which wouldn’t exist without the feminist movement. In short, you know not what you speak of. You reap the rewards of these women’s sacrifices every day of your life. When you grin with your cutesy sign about how you’re not a feminist, you ignorantly spit on the sacred struggle of the past 200 years. You bite the hand that has fed you freedom, safety, and a voice.”
Films like Mad Max: Fury Road celebrate this pioneering spirit of women and it is not surprising that Miller had invited playwright Eve Ensler to act as an on-set adviser. The fact that the film has been universally acclaimed bodes well for similar stories and when The New York Times wrote, “Miller has reminded us that blockbusters have the potential to not only be art, but radically visionary,” a door was kicked open, never to close again in the face of characters like Imperator Furiosa.
with The New Indian Express Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and just be silent with her cats.