another uninnocent elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

This movie had me from the moment I saw the graffiti the women scrawled across their prison: WE ARE NOT THINGS. We are not things, said the women of the movie, and then spent two hours saying it again and proving it and fighting for it. Just--holy shit. I was not expecting this, of all movies, to be one of the most explicitly feminist movies I've seen in ages.

THE SPLENDID ANGHARAD. ALL OF THE WIVES. I admire the fuck out of them. There are SO MANY different women in this movie, and they are all exemplars of the different ways to be a woman, the different strengths and weaknesses, so none of them is carrying the weight of being the One Woman. 

I got teary eyed so many times thanks to these women. The Wives, the Vuvalini, Furiosa. The Splendid Angharad using her pregnant body as a shield, triumph on her face. Capable meeting Nux with compassion and mercy. The Dag and her sharp words and seeds. Toast the Knowing and her ferocity, her willingness to fight. Cheedo the Fragile and how she quailed, but then rallied. The Valkyrie, my god, she was glorious. And the Vuvalini, old women who were strong and fucked shit up and held on to the hope of the future.

Poor Nux. The shining example of the failures of toxic masculinity and the patriarchy, who redeems himself so beautifully.

I am just so astonished that this movie, lean and spare and full of explosions as it is, was so utterly clear in its condemnation of the patriarchy and toxic masculinity. This is a movie that has thought about those things, and says its piece about them through all showing and almost no telling.

Speaking of showing and not telling, what a fucking masterclass in it. There's probably like ten pages of dialogue in this movie, at least three of them Max grunting and hmming, and still it says so much.

Like when Furiosa calls Max reliable. On the surface, it seems like damning with faint praise. Like, you can't think of any other way to compliment someone so you go with "reliable." But in the society Furiosa and the other women live in, "reliable" is a hell of a compliment. A man, who is able to be relied upon! When all the other men we see are, variously, a) a horrifying warlord who rapes women, and other monstrous men, b) a mass of sickly, fanatical warboys whose only purpose is to die in battle, and c) assorted unfortunates scrabbling for water. Can any of these men be relied upon? Can women expect anything of them other than violence enacted against women and others? It's a careful word choice. Furiosa could have used any number of other descriptors: good fighter, strong, brave, helpful, safe, whatever. But no, she chose reliable, and in that you can tell what she and the other women value. Reliable is not a quality at all associated with the destructive patriarchy of Immortan Joe, it's not a quality valued by the society of the Citadel as led by Joe. To say Max is reliable is to say he's not like those other men. He has proven that he can be relied upon.

AHAHAHA MAX TELLING FURIOSA HIS NAME, LEAVE ME TO DIE. My adoration of that scene cannot be textually rendered. Just--his almost baffled tenderness, the way he is giving her everything he has that is of any real value: his blood, his name, his tenderness. This movie did not need to have a romance, when it has a moment of such astonishing intimacy that's entirely unsexualized. 

All the gorgeous, not especially subtle symbolism! I think this is a movie that works on the level of myth, and the symbols of myth are not subtle, they're in your face. So we have the main liquids: mother's milk, blood, guzzoline, water. The first time we see the wives they're bathing in water, Max washes blood off his face with mother's milk, blood taken by force sustains the warboys and blood given freely saves Furiosa. All the breaking of chains/ties: the wives breaking the chains of their chastity belts, the wives using the bolt cutters on other chains, Max needing to file off his own mask because the wives can't break the chains for him.

OH HEY, there is precious little male gaze in this movie! There's a little bit of it when we first see the wives, and that's it. So refreshing.

My mom loved this movie. She's usually not a fan of action movies. SUCH IS THE POWER OF MAD MAX AND IMPERATOR FURIOSA.

However, my mom also wondered: whither the people of color? Which, point, mother. I mean, there's Toast the Knowing and Cheedo the Fragile, but it's a pretty white movie. (As an aside, this past Year in TV Diversity has clearly made its mark with my mother, because I inflicted Fresh Off the Boat and The Mindy Project and Empire and Jane the Virgin on her and it's clearly made her dubious about shows lacking in POC. Yessssssss.)

This article from Grantland pinpoints some of why I found myself much more engrossed in Mad Max's action scenes than Age of Ultron's. Outside of a few cool team fighting moments, I was pretty uninterested in AOU's action set pieces. They were all very obviously CGI and stunt doubles, without the novelty of the first Avengers to carry you through it or much in the way of emotional stakes. Cap 2 didn't have that problem because its action set pieces were mostly person-on-person fights with personal stakes. Iron Man 3 had Tony mostly out of the suit. Mad Max was almost all practical effects, which upped the stakes and added the element of gritty realism. Plus, Mad Max was beautifully and coherently shot, which is more than I can say for AOU.

Speaking of beautifully shot: all those gorgeous desert vistas! The lovely blue of the night scenes! Absolutely worth seeing on a big screen for more than just the explosions.