Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior

Happy Saturday, everybody! With less than a week to go until Fury Road hits, I am continuing on with my Mad Max retrospective with a look at 1981's sequel, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Buckle up, because the crazy really gets turned on high in this one.

After the events of Mad Max, Max is aimlessly roaming the desert, looking for fuel for his car. He meets up with a gyro pilot (Bruce Spence) who tells him of a fortified refinery still producing gasoline, but that is under siege by a band of crazies led by Lord Humungus. If you aren't sold now, I guess you never will be.

There could hardly be a greater difference between the first and second installments of a film series. Where Mad Max had a fair level of emotional grounding driving it on, Road Warrior feels like some kind of waking hallucination. The gyro pilot was weaponized snakes as booby traps and dresses in bright yellow long johns. One of the residents of the refinery is a feral kid who wields a metal boomerang. And Lord Humungus wears a hockey mask and a leather diaper with suspenders.

Director George Miller doubles down on the spectacular stunts and crashes introduced in the first film while scaling back to almost zero any humanity that might have remained. The road sequences are really pretty awesome, all the more so because of the obvious lack of artificial effects and the terrible lack of covering clothes many of the crazies have as they jump from car to car.

All of which is, of course, what makes the film such a bizarre delight. Although we are given something of  a backstory in the form of stock footage montage, there is still no real explanation for the behavior of all these riveted-leather crazies. They just are. And in a way, that's all that can really be said about this movie without straining yourself. It just exists. We could say that the film functions as a metaphor and catharsis for the grief Max feels from earlier, or that we are all just as crazy in our own way as either the dedicated refiners looking for a better life or the maniacs trying to get their gas, but statements like that just fall apart. 

And so, you will either love it or not care at all. The only people reading this are the ones who care, and as such this is probably a futile exercise, but I am going to write anyway since it is rainy outside and yardwork is impossible. But if it is new to you, I really think you should give it a try. There are lots worse things you could watch this week.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior features Mel Gibson, Bruce Spence, Michael Preston and Kjell Nilsson, and is rated R for the same thing as the first one, only more so.

Written by Terry Hayes, Brian Hannant and George Miller

Directed by George Miller

Here's the trailer, this time without awful American dubbing.

Mad Max

As you may or may not be aware, George Miller's insanityfest Mad Max: Fury Road is due out here in a couple of weeks. To help you get adequately excited for it (like you need help if you've seen a trailer) I've decided to take a look back at the series leading up to the new film's release.

The little movie that started it all is 1979's Mad Max, staring a very young Mel Gibson. He plays the titular Max, a police officer in a not very distant future where nearly all order has collapsed and crazy road gangs roam the Australian desert. He is moved to vengeance when a gang led by Toecutter (seriously) brutally attacks his partner.

Let me be clear from the get go: Mad Max is not a great movie in terms of story, acting, or emotional resonance. It is, however, as gleeful a post-apocalyptic car chase revenge movie as you could ask for (barring, of course, the next two installments) with some really daring camerawork and awesome crashes. It looks like it was shot for as much money as it took to buy and modify the cars and bikes used. It is low and in-your-face and as utterly unapologetic in its lack of exposition and explanation as it is in its absolute revelry in insanity. It has some really awesome chase sequences throughout, and truly impressive stuntwork considering they are not only jumping onto, say, moving trucks, but doing so like sunbaked lunatics. 

This, of course, is what draws you to watch it: there is nothing quite like Mad Max. He is a genre unto himself. Where else can you find such madness for its own sake? In this world there is no answer, no getting better. Everybody in it is as adjusted to it as people working in a boring office for 20 years are to their environment. Violent crashes often elicit no more grief than would, say, running out of toner. Miller creates one of the few post-apocalyptic environments that doesn't feel temporary or foreign; it just looks like rural Australia aged a few years and everyone in charge went on permanent holiday.

For all the crazy going on, Max's relationship with his wife (Joanne Samuel) and son feels super real. Indeed, it functions as the one tether binding him and us to rationality. Even though there are a few kind of tacky "aw" moments between them, Gibson and Samuel make it feel genuine. It provides something a jolt of reality and is the one shred of the spirit of human endurance that Miller allows into his film.

Although in many ways Miller is just getting his wheels going, Mad Max is still a solid distillation of what will become one of the craziest film series ever. It was a huge anomaly for 1979, and while others tried to do it again, it would only really be done by Miller when he pulled out the next chapter in 1981's Road Warrior.

Mad Max features Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne and Tim Burns, and is rated R for crazy people killing people with motorcycles, etc, and some swears.

Written by James McCausland and George Miller

Directed by George Miller

Here's a trailer for the American release with kinda bad American-accent dubbing. I would find an Australian version if I were you.

4 Reasons Why 'The Village' Is My Favorite Shyamalan Movie

This week my home viewing has been concentrated on the work of M. Night Shyamalan, whose first four major movies (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and The Village) were some of the first reasons why I began really loving movies in the first place. To be honest, I find it difficult to defend his latter work, and for many people this begins with The Village–for them a convoluted period monster flic that slowly bleeds out what little believability it begins with until it limps, dying and confused, into its closing credits. But I am here today to proclaim that not only is it my favorite of Shyamalan's films, but it might be his best work altogether. 

Reason #1: Dat Music, Tho

The films mentioned above all have superior music gifted to us by James Newton Howard. But the jewel in the collection is the beautifully melancholic suite he composed for violinist Hilary Hahn on The Village. Each note is full of sorrow and hope and loss, and the score is one of the greatest meditations on those themes in music. As a soundtrack it is risky, because it runs the possibility of overrunning the screen image it is meant to support, but it never overplays its hand or becomes pedantic. Indeed the music is the perfect accompaniment to the photography, and the mood which it carefully creates and maintains. Speaking of which... 

Reason #2: Roger

I know, praising the work of master cinematographer Roger Deakins is like saying bacon is tasty, but that doesn't mean it can't be done genuinely. Of Shyamalan's films this is by far the best looking (although Eduardo Serra does some cool stuff in Unbreakable.) I mean, tell me that just the still frame of that chair on the porch doesn't make you want to cry. Tell me (if you've seen the movie, of course) that it doesn't infinitesimally increase your understanding of and sympathy for the characters. Tell me his use of color (while often brought to our attention by the dialog) never feels immaturely attention seeking in itself. Indeed, it is the images Deakins captures, together with Howard's music, that floats the picture when the rest of it is shaky. This brings me to...

Reason #3: The Reason Most People Don't Like It

*This section gets spoilery.* While it is a solid aesthetic achievement, what really gets me (in a good way) about this film is how poorly its internal logic works out. And this is why most people don't like it. "Gee," they say, "it sure seems flimsy that they could live indefinitely in a wildlife refuge and no one would know." "Wouldn't Ivy immediately figure out that it was Noah and not a creature that she killed?" "Why do the elders speak in the weird 1890's speak even when they are alone?" "Couldn't they have brought modern medical supplies with them? No one born there would know the difference. Actually, why did they pretend to be homesteaders in the first place?" And so on.

The point is, I think that this flimsy logic is the point. Misreading it (and therefore being disappointed with the movie) comes out of misunderstanding what the movie is about. It is a love story above everything else. It is also an exploration of fear and guilt, and how those intersect with love. And to me, the fact that a story that they invented to preserve love from the corrosion of fear and guilt makes no sense at all, but that they desperately cling to it anyway, only adds to the poignancy of the whole thing. It is a kind of tragedy of whose sibling I cannot come up with another example. Brendan Gleeson's character says of Ivy, after she has gone, to let her run toward hope. The beauty of the place is that she is free to do it, and if it is worthy, she will be successful. The tragedy is that the place is not worthy, but she will come back anyway and think that it is.

So I take for subtlety what others take for poor plotting. The film manages to tell a very sobering and melancholy tale without ever being despairing. It preaches earnestly and sincerely about love, its powers and wonders. And it turns around and mourns over the false hopes that love can inspire. I cannot think of another movie that makes me feel the way that it does. In doing so it reaches a tonal ambiguity that isn't found in the rest of Shyamalan's work. In that regard it is his most artistically satisfying piece for me, and the one that I can come back to most often. Finally...

Reason #4: Just Because

I know that the film is not without its faults. The dialect is sometimes clunky and distracting and the editing near the end cannot decide whether it is brilliant or just confusing. And I have tried to elucidate real reasons why I love this movie. But I think it comes down to the fact that I love it, just because I love it. Maybe it's because it came at just the right moment in my life: earlier and I would have ignored it, later and I would have scorned it. Maybe it's because it was the first movie that I ever sat through the credits of, thinking that I didn't know what I was feeling. Maybe it's because everyone has to have a terrible movie that they love, and this is mine. I don't know. But I hope you have at least one that you love and you cannot explain why, even when IMDb tells you that it is worse than that last Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Seriously. Look it up.

And here's a selection from the score, in case you didn't believe me earlier.

How the West Was Won, Once Upon a Time

Well, loyal readers, I'm back after something of a hiatus. However, I'm back in something of a different context, being in what might be something of a cinematic sequester for a few months, for timely theatrical viewing, at any rate. But for these next couple of months I am going to indulge in some more studied and intentional home viewing, and all seven of you get to be on the receiving end of that.

First up will be a discussion of the two great mythology-beatifying westerns: How the West Was Won, and Once Upon a Time in the West. Both films are stunningly beautiful examples of the totally disparate schools that produced them and obvious high-water marks in the genre. In comparing the two, I want to look at individual merit as well as overall impact on the genre, especially since we live in a largely post-"western" world. First up will be the first of the films to be released, 1963's How the West Was Won.

The film is almost equal parts hubristic passion project and insane National Parks PR campaign, and indeed, the film is almost as large as its subject matter: the West. ALL OF IT. From early expansion in Ohio through the gold rush, Civil War, Indian conflicts and railroad encroachment up to glorious Boomer-era capitalist triumph. It boasts an impressive cast featuring anyone who had ever been in a western, and was co-directed by 3 giants of the genre. It was shot and originally presented using the new panoramic "Cinerama" technology, which used three cameras and three projectors launching three synchronized images onto a huge concave screen for a more enveloping experience. It was a mammoth picture.

And, looking back at it with a few days' insulation, it is the picture's mammoth-ness that most sticks with this writer more than anything else. The photography is a little overwhelming. Of course it is beautiful (as evidenced above) but it is not a film that can really be transferred for home viewing. Because of the original panoramic nature of the projection, when this is seen on a flat screen it is a little dizzying. Sometimes there are two points of focus on the horizon, and almost always more than the human eye normally takes in. After a while one wishes (for the only time ever) for some kind of reduction in presentation ratio.

As a landmark in the western canon, the film functions as more of a toast and tribute than anything else. It celebrates the triumph of good old wholesome American-ness, in an era when such was being questioned and criticized more than ever. And, really, what else could it have been? The western up to that point was never anything less than that, from Stagecoach to High Noon to The Searchers. The film is the culminating statement in the decades-long treatise chronicling the subjugation of all nature and people by the righteous white man. And few films make that statement less ambiguously than How the West Was Won.

Contrast that with Sergio Leone's 1968 masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in the West. (Yes, it's even better, maybe, than The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Maybe.) It is an operatic fairy tale, incorporating Wagnerian leitmotifs perfectly with Leone's quintessential grit. It is a film of stark beauty and deep melancholy: a eulogy where How the West Was Won was a celebration.

The image that ties the two films together is the subduing of landscape by the railroad. This was the only "spaghetti" western to shoot outside of Europe, and there is some spectacular photography of Monument Valley. Here, the railroad brings corruption, greed, and an end to what innocence the West had notwithstanding its inherent violence. It brings new life as well, embodied by the film's heroine Jill, but she is hardly the kind of Eve found in How the West Was Won. In that film, the railroad was only ever a good thing, bringing together all good and hardy people for the last great colonization of the last frontier. That film ends with a showcase of the railroad's modern technological descendants; Once Upon a Time closes with the departure of the last man of his kind as the train pulls into the station, no longer welcome in his only environment.

But the film, notwithstanding its melancholy and occasional mourning, is not cynical. It canonizes rugged individualism of a different kind than its more patriotic cousin. That film is clean and bloodless in its conflict; this uses grit and dust and blood as its medium to paint a final portrait of the kind of American that no longer is.

So I say that Once Upon a Time in the West is probably the better film, although they are both worthy of viewing. But its artistry is more lasting and resonant, and its impact more appropriate given the landscape of our American west today.

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Here's the main theme from Ennio Morricone's overwhelming score for Once Upon a Time in the West. I put it easily in the top 10 film scores of all time. In case you don't believe how seriously beautiful of a movie this is.

Fury

Hello movie lovers! Or likers, or it's-complicateders or just-frienders or whatever you do. I'm back to sort out my thoughts about Fury, the Brad Pitt-starring WWII drama that came out over the weekend. It has had me thinking since I saw it on Monday, and I think you should give it a look as well.

In Greek mythology, furies, or erinyes, were the female deities of vengeance. They would often violently punish oath-breakers and the insolent. They are also sometimes an "embodiment of the act of self-cursing." Thank you, Wikipedia.

I went on this pseudo-research bend after I saw Fury, because as it finished it seemed to me that it isn't really a war movie, at least as far as making a politicalish statement is concerned. Plot-wise,  of course, it totally is: Pitt leads an American tank crew through Germany as the war ends. But resonance-wise, it feels different. This is vague, so allow me to explain.

On paper, Fury is often as conventional a WWII movie as there is. Pitt is the grizzled leader of a tight tank crew, which includes the religious guy, the Mexican guy, the Alabamian guy, and the scared new guy. This hardy troupe encounter the kinds of experiences with anonymous and faceless German soldiers you might think they would, and there is a healthy but not overbearing dose of postmodern skepticism thrown in to taste. But, all that aside, it is not really a war movie.

The movie is about the primeval in us, more than anything else. Nobility and honor in a war movie are things we stopped doing with Vietnam (with the exception of Saving Private Ryan,) but Fury tries to take it a step further: there isn't even right and wrong. Here, what is awakened in the man who finds himself in battle far predates any conception of what is good or not. Stephen Crane talked about it in The Red Badge of Courage, the animalization of a man driven to survive the insane situation of 10,000 of his fellows trying to kill him. No other species attempts its own genocide. Perhaps that is the fury referred to in the title: the fury of the complacent, easy, "natural" man against the bloody and counterintuitive taxes of life required of his "civilized" generation. 

One of the more moving scenes takes place in a German home which two of our tank crew have adopted after a battle. The women make them food; together they eat and sing and make love and try to enjoy something "normal." But these men are as out of place there as they would be flyfishing on the moon. The scene ends with a call to battle, and a return the belly of the tank, the only home they understand anymore. They claim, ruefully, ironically, but undeniably, that the war is "the best job they ever had." I would say then that, more accurately, the fury the film is concerned with is more of the self-cursing variety.

Fury is haunting and grim and at times contradictory, or at least tonally complicated. It is an interesting counterbalance to the idealistic tone struck in Monuments Men, from earlier this year. Though probably stick with that one for your feel-better-about-life movie night.

Fury features Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman, Michael Peña, and Jon Bernthal, and is rated R for tank-related killing and many swears.

Written & directed by David Ayer