Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)

Spoilers!

Awesome, insane, kinetic, and damned loud. This is probably the most fun I’ve had in the cinema in ages. Miller takes the Mad Max concept (more Road Warrior than the original) and throws every technique he can at the screen – and it all sticks. The plot is paper thin but who cares when it runs you over with such effectiveness.

What little plot there is resembles a classic chase Western – Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) is attempting to escape the clutches of ugly heavy breather, Immortan Joe. She’s taking his brides with her, a set of vogue models who look a little out of place in the desert. Max (Tom Hardy) ends up helping out. And that’s it really. Cars chase trucks. Motorbikes chase trucks. People jump, scream, and get killed in various amusing ways. The soundtrack (part diegetic through Immortan’s peripatetic drummers and flame-throwing guitarist) booms at you, driving the film relentlessly forwards. It’s pure cinema – all movement.

Hardy, taking over from Mad Mel, is virtually silent. But it befits the role – he is action, a machine as much as any of the cars. Theron dazzles and owns much of the movie. Some internet trolls are sad about the strong women who fight a male society that exploits and brainwashes (including Nicholas Hoult’s excellent Nux), but I’m just happy to see interesting female characters in the film. Is there a feminist subtext? Sure. It says women shouldn’t be treated as objects, as Immortan’s breeding stock. It also suggests that when masculinity goes feral it’s not a great time to be alive. Looking at history I’m pretty comfortable with both those statements. What does surprise is that Miller got $150 million from Warner Bros. for the film. There are no concessions to PG-13 here. The film displays a wonderful aesthetic, lingering on obscene details (such as a milk farm, pumping the breasts of mothers) and twisted facial features. At times the landscapes are gorgeous, but often the people are damned ugly. All this, though, brings character and visual fascination to the piece. More surprising though, than the action, the feminism, or Miller’s uncompromising direction, are the clearly Marxist undertones. Immortan uses a religion (with the promise of Valhalla) to control the War Boys, his personal army. He controls the water and food (the literal means of production) and suppresses the poor in his Citadel through their supply. The movie ends with the War Boys’ religion revealed as the controlling myth it always was, and the water taps are turned on full for the poor. The elite of society, those who have perpetuated war, pollution and oppression, are dead.

Thank you George Miller; how you got away with this I do not know.

Columbo: A Marxist Fable

I know I’m bending the rules by putting a TV show on the blog, but Columbo is really a series of Movies, just TV Movies. Besides Spielberg directed a couple.

Anyway, I’m a Columbo fan. It’s a great way to while away a quiet afternoon watching the excellent, and sadly departed, Peter Falk trick another unsuspecting big shot into thinking he’s an idiot, when all the while he’s working the whole thing out. It’s structurally entertaining, shifting the drama to a battle of wits, by revealing the murderer’s identity in the first third, rather than following the traditional structure laid down by Agatha Christie, et al. It also contains some wonderful cameos, with each episode throwing us another Hollywood name who is either on their uppers, or just enjoyed the fun of the role.

What occurred to me the other day was the realization that it wasn’t just the show’s structure that made it different – it was its politics. Here is a mainstream American show that espouses a Marxist viewpoint (bear with me). Each episode of Columbo begins with a member of high society (the bourgeoisie) committing what they think is the perfect murder. The motive is invariably for financial gain, for the acquisition of capital. In walks Columbo, a classic member of the proletariat. He dresses badly, has a terrible car, and seems oblivious to the codes of behavior of ‘high society’. But through application of thought alone, and using his shabby status to expose the prejudices of the bourgeoisie (how could such a scruffy man possibly represent a threat?) he exposes the hollow, money grabbing elite for what they are. The show flips the assumptions of Capitalist society, that worth only comes through acquisition of capital, and shows how capitalist desire leads to an abandonment of moral principals. Columbo is above all a moral figure, loyal to his job, his wife and his dog. Set against this are the money grabbers, willing to kill anyone who comes in the way of their advancement.

PS. It’s also an example of the Daoist idea of the virtue of the small. Read the Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff for more of this.