Mad Max: Fury Road: Eyes Wide Open

           

Not a moment is wasted in Mad Max: Fury Road and not a moment is spent anywhere else but on the edge of your seat. George Millar reboots his post-apocalyptic franchise thirtyfive years after the original Mad Max was released and spends over ten years in pre-production in order to get this film made. But the outcome is well worth the wait. George Millar constructs exhilarating visual candy with a surprisingly strong narrative. The excursion you embark on as a viewer is something entirely different from the previous Mad Max trilogy.

Mad Max harnesses the most oscar wins in the year 2016 boasting six little gold men for the visual and sound aesthetics of the film. George Millar’s wife, Margaret Sixel, leads the editing team to victory with what Millar exclaims to be the very needed “touch of a women.” Millar claims that the editing differentiates the film from every other action flick of the time. Within the 120 minute runtime there is over 2700 individual cuts compared to an average film that tops out around 700 cuts. Needless to say the film is paced at an exhilarating fast rate that doesn't give you a moments rest in the full two hours. But Mad Max is a far distant relative of any chaos cinema counterpart that can be epitomized by any Michael Bay film.

The cutting is congruent making the narrative easy and a thrill to follow. This is due to Sixel who keeps the action center framed in every cut. The viewer's point of interest never changes throughout the film, and what Millar wants the audience to see will come barreling right at them. With each cut also comes a new pulsating sound effect. In every action packed scene (almost the whole film), cuts will jump out like a jack-in-a-box. With a film that boast such visceral triumph one would imagine a lacking narrative. Simply not the case.

Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, as Furiosa and Mad Max, lead stellar cast of men and women. In a story where a group women fight against ownership from their cruel tyrant leader Immortan Joe, gender is characterized with flexibility. We are introduced to men and women in the beginning under the reign of Immortan Joe, where they are defined as objects. Men are used for war and violence while women are used for childbearing and caretaking. But as the film progress we see some many of our characters break these normative gender barriers.

Mad Max passes the Bechdel test with ease but it is important to mention that this film isn't apart of a “feminist agenda” that some point it out to be. Although it does have strong feminist tones with a staff that boasts the likes of Vagina Monologues creator Eve Ensler, its effects are subtle. Much of the films “made for feminists” make the mistake trying to advocate for the importance of women by telling audience rather than showing. Mad Max is visceral masterpiece and subtly reinforces the importance of gender equality and destruction of “normative” gender roles. Nothing feels forced. Nothing feels overdone. Mad Max: Fury Road puts audience member in A Clockwork Orange’s torture chair, eyes glued open and all, without anyone ever realizing.

Beasts of the Southern Wild: A Street Performance Brought to Life

            Watching Beasts of the Southern Wild (BOTSW) is an experience I would compare to walking through downtown and stumbling upon the greatest street performance of your life. You walk away perplexed and full of questions. Why isn’t this being performed all over the nation? Where did these performers obtain their skills? With an unknown director, an unknown cast, and unknown writers BOTSW stimulates a similar effect. An original, heart wrenching, spiritual journey, through the magical insight of a six-year old girl in a very real demise of her world.

            Narrator and protagonist of the film, six-year old, Hushpuppy captures audiences with her uplifting charisma and intuition, from moment the film begins. She is played by the unknown, Quvenzhane Wallis, who gains a well worth oscar nod and propelled acting career from her stellar debut. Wallis shares the big screen with another unknown whose performance also lands him a future career in acting. Dwight Henry makes his debut with a raw and captivating portrayal of Hushpuppy’s hot tempered father Wink. Their relationship propels the magical realism narrative that first time maestro director Benh Zeitlin navigates perfectly.

            A third unknown and arguably most important character of the film is the fictional community the Bathtub. Although not a human, the Bathtub boast more personality, life, and identity than any other character. It is where Hushpuppy and Wink reside and what gives them their identity. Zeitlin choreographs an introduction to the Bathtub (and film) that paints a beautiful picture of what a world untouched and separate from modern society would look like. A world where gender is fluid, class is singular, and race is non existent. Men wearing dresses and women wearing suits, of all ethnicities embrace each other in celebration. The celebration is abstractly light by the fireworks they light in glee, mystifying the Bathtub.The opening scene lets viewers know that this community separate from government agenda and religious creed is the work for fantasy.

            Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar choose to show the demise of a fantasy location (the Bathtub) in opposition to the clearly paralleled destruction done by Hurricane Katrina. Their decision is dexterous in reaching audiences members, fantasty can be used within narratives in order to bend the mind of it’s audience. In BOTSW this fantastical world opens audience member’s perspective to see climate change as a real threat within the narrative. Also it allows for the juxtaposition of the Bathtub to modern day America. The comparison can be seen through Hushpuppy.

            We are introduced to Hushpuppy as a part of joyous community that accepts her for who she is. Which is a tough, stubborn, fierce, compassionate, lively soul. Everything we came to understand Hushpuppy to be in the Bathtub is stripped of her when she is withdrawn from her home by the government and installed into their society. We see her dressed to be what society expects a little six-year girl should look like. Hushpuppy is stripped of her identity in order to fulfill the normative expectations of America.

     Martin Niemoller has a famous quote where he expresses the ideology of human nature to not be concerned with an issue until it’s their own, he express this using the holocaust as his platform for example. This ideology is is also institutional, the government does not concern themselves with the issues of the poor members of the Bathtub until it becomes their issue (when Hushpuppy destroys the levee). Hushpuppy understands that it is her individual duty to “take care of things smaller and sweeter than you are.” BOTSW reminds the public that we must take care of the building issues in our world today before they become catastrophe. Even if our part is small it is still important. Hushpuppy’s spiritual insight tells us that “when you're a small piece of a big puzzle, you gotta fix what you can.”

Snowpiercer: A Train Worth Exploring

What’s going to save you from the inevitable climate catastrophe that will wipe all human existence? Al Gore? Mars real estate? A time machine? Dennis Quaid? Well according to director and writer, Joon-ho Bong of the film Snowpiercer (based off the graphic novel  Le Transperceneige), it will be a train. A train that circles the earth along an endless loop, running off a self sustainable system that requires a clean up every so often. It is upon this train, run by the callous Wilford, that Bong takes us on a trip through “the whole wide train”. On this journey viewers explore a dystopian hierarchy that may cause some real world reflexive ‘autonomy’.

We are first introduced to the back of the train along with its poor scavenging residents. The back of the train compresses more filth and squalor into one claustrophobic space that you can’t imagine any part of the train getting worse. But in a sense of the word, it does. No living situation can top the back of the train. But as Bong pushes us along to the front of the train he paints a picture of a dystopian class structure that gets worse and worse. Each section of the train seems to reveal something more twisted than the last. When we finally get to meet the tyrant Wilford he explains that “everything must be in place” and in order to maintain this structure the train must be ruled by “pain, fear, and horror.”

Bong does a fantasticate job transferring this “pain, fear, and horror” onto the audience as he uses immersive visual narrative. Bong has viewers following the protagonist Curtis, played by Chris Evans, putting us in his preordained boots. At many points in the film Curtis is faced with difficult moral decisions as the leader of the rebellion. Every Frame a Painting’s video essay (link below) is keen to point out the use of Bongs camera movement from left to right in order to portray a decision that Curtis has to make. Using the camera instead of dialogue to display Custis’s options is a way to absorb the viewers to see his perspective.

The audience sympathizes with Curtis as we see him being suffocated by the limited lateral decisions he has to make. We excuse his dehumanizing decisions as he believes it to be for the greater good of the train. As the film progresses we learn the options aren't limited to forward or back. Middle passengers of the train include Namgoong and his daughter Yona played by, Kong ho-Song and Ah-sung Ko who bring an international flair and an enlightened vision to the film. Middle passengers of the train have access to windows. Contrary to front and rear passengers, they have a panoramic perspective like no other characters. They are able to see the horrors of the back of the train, the corruption of the front of the train, and wonders of the outside nature from the train. Together they realize that changing the order of the train is useless for humanity. They know the answer isn't in the front of train but rather outside the train.

           The middle passengers are used to represent the middle class. The ones who are given the the full panoramic perspective and a sufficient education. Although what we learn from the school, in the middle of the train, is that sometimes education is a facade for what is really propaganda. Bong teaches us that the best history teacher, the best educator, is the artist. The artist who is pure can teach us more than any book, this is exemplified by The Painter, played by Clark Middleton. Stay informed through the artist and pay attention to what directors like Joon-ho Bong have to show us.

 https://youtu.be/X05TDsoSg2Y