There is a beauty in the honesty of George Miller’s films whether we are talking about the children’s classic, Babe, or the wonderful Mad Max films. But I’ll admit to being a little blown away during a recent trip to the movies where Fury Road was releasing its second promotional trailer—and it was something to marvel at. The images, the content, and the way it was orchestrated together looked and sounded like the exact constructs of my daily thoughts and it was hauntingly surreal. Likely most people may not be quite so affected by it, but for me, it was a religious experience. Suddenly Fury Road is the film I am most eager to see in 2015. When the smoke clears, it is likely going to be that film that will be the stand out most to my liking. Check it out for yourself and welcome to the world of my thoughts.
What I have always loved about Miller’s over-the-top villains is that they are attempts at the honesty which manifests inside the typical collective brute and his Max stands against the tide of such swarms with minimalistic viciousness that is entirely appropriate. Specifically, take the average person who puts on a nice face and attends a funeral, or wants to be a Facebook buddy, and you are getting one of these vile Miller villains most of the time disguised behind one of their social masks. The moment—the exact moment that society strips away its convention, they deregulate themselves into anarchy and chaos insanely fast and leave in their wake destruction and pain.
You can see the cracks in the corners of civility among our own youth with the tattoo culture that has emerged among them in a struggle to show personal identity, along with the body piercings. Underneath their thin layers of social maintenance is the brute of Miller’s villains—the type of people functioning just above the social condition of a typical animal. Yet the piercings and tattoos are a form of radical tribalism that is directly associated with collective identity, not individual merit.
Years ago—2009/2010 I was in the process of putting together information for a motorcycle documentary showing why motorcyclists were America’s backbone of independence. However the more I looked into the collectivism that embodies most people in motorcycle groups, from criminal gangs down to the simple enthusiast organization—you get at their core an animal seeking its place in the pecking order of the forest and awaiting its time and place to die in the theater of existence. So I abandoned the project out of sheer disappointment. It is no wonder that shows like Sons of Anarchy did so well on cable television. I can’t relate to them in any way, yet I ride motorcycles more than most gang members will ever dream of. I spend more time on a motorcycle than most of the hardest core riders who make yearly pilgrimages to Sturgis. Yet I can’t relate to a single one of those riders because the essence of their experience is rooted in the collective goo of animal concerns, and not the plight of the individual against the thug. Most people at their core are thugs by choice.
In the new Max film it is said that the main protagonist only has about ten lines of dialogue through the entire picture. This too is like me most of the time. I have a lot to say obviously if left to my own individual endeavors but once I have to make a decision to mix with others functioning from animal needs, I say very little and watch the clock frequently for the first moment that I can part company. The reason is that there is no way a common thug or the average person whose sole purpose in life is to “fit in” can possibly understand anything I am saying—so I don’t even waste my time.
Miller’s basic premise is that the moment society strips away that thin veil of orthodox European civility backed by Christian righteousness that mankind quickly falls from grace into the kind of characters in his Mad Max films. And I agree with him emphatically. The common thug is quick to invent new religions to formulate their social aims of collectivism, they are quick to attack like insects the foundations of individualism and the worst of the characters are those with the most piercings, and most elaborate tattoos, because it is they who are most prone to assimilation into collective opinion.
It is not hard to imagine characters as vile as the ones Miller places into his movies because the masks which conceal the tendency is not very well hidden and is easily removed. It wouldn’t take much to plunge our society into the world of Mad Max if one looks at it honestly. Fury Road if it is like the other Mad Max films will undoubtedly take an honest look into the nightmares capable by the human mind and explore the role of collectivism in all the worst forms with color and spectacle that is unmatched anywhere.
I understand why Mad Max works by himself. I understand why he is weary to have connections to people, and why he spends most of his life as a solitary figure only helping people occasionally out of compassion—which always puts him in peril. Now that Miller has a reputation as a filmmaker with great commercial successes like Babe, Happy Feet, and of course the previous three Mad Max films—he can pretty much make the film he has always dreamed of. After all, he may not ever get a chance like this again, so he might as well take his shot and it looks like he succeeded.
There is something beautifully honest about symphonic music applied to the absolute brutality of the animalistic human and its desire for bare essentials, food, sex, and tribal approval. In the Mad Max films gasoline means food—or the ability to get it—so it’s at the heart of all car cultures, particularly those in Fury Road. In the Max films the protagonist is often the only one who is truly sane—the only one capable of survival because he is free of that collectivist viewpoint. So the commentary of the plot lines is particularly potent. The films are popular because they touch on an honesty which many can perceive but fail to properly identify. But after so many years of manifesting in the mind of a great writer/director, George Miller looks to have been given the opportunity to conduct a great fortissimo on the human experience the moment that convention is stripped away.
I know many beautiful people who are every bit the thug from Fury Road. I know many smiling faces that are just as vile as the worst shown in that series of clips promoting Fury Road. You can see them on Facebook discussions, you can see them in protests, you can see them at the traffic light texting nobody on their phone while somebody sits next to them wanting companionship. You can see them in the tattoo parlors as helpless parents pull at the skin of their faces and wonder how and why they failed their children then to hide their crime of upbringing failure—promote that they too will join their children in getting a tattoo on their ass—so to make the whole thing seem more appropriate. You can see the thugs of Fury Road fresh out of their suits and into their golf cloths renting a cart for a quick afternoon game. The Fury Road thugs are in their eyes there too as they flip through Internet porn on their cell phones and the young girls shown there between golf swings while the lady of the house buys new diamond earrings at a jewelry complex ahead of the next charity event. After all, one must show off their current social status within the tribe—no matter if it is a motorcycle gang or a fundraiser for political candidates. They are all thugs. And nobody gets to the heart of the matter better than George Miller.
I can’t wait for his new film. I’m sure it will be one of my absolute favorites.
Rich Hoffman
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