FURIOSA: Who tells the story of the Wasteland

Why narration matters in the world of "Mad Max". (!!!SPOILERS!!!)

By: Josh McCormack

“No one knows what is true anymore.”

 

These are the first lines spoken in director George Miller’s latest film in the “Mad Max” saga; “Furiosa”. 

 

Like most of the “Mad Max” films that preceded it, this story begins with the words of a narrator. In this case we are hearing the words of the unnamed History Man, an elderly figure who tattoos the history of the Wasteland onto his body and recounts what he is told by other inhabitants in his travels. The character initially seems like nothing more than another one of the quirky background characters that Miller’s post-apocalyptic saga is famous for. Yet, while watching the film I was struck by the very deliberate use of narration not only in this film, but also in the “Mad Max” films leading up to “Furiosa”. 

 

Over the course of the 45 year long history of “Mad Max”, Miller has continuously used narration as a framing device to not only introduce audiences to the world of the film, but to acclimate them to the unique tone of each entry in this saga.These shifting tones are not only the result of the constantly evolving visual language that favors variety over narrative continuity, it’s also the result of who is narrating each story. 

 

The first “Mad Max” film (simply titled “Mad Max”) is the only film in the saga with no narration. A stripped down piece of late 70s Ozploitation, the first film is the most grounded of the series. While that’s mostly a result of a limited budget and first time director who wasn’t yet thinking of a more fantastical world, its lack of narration makes it an interesting object of analysis compared to the greater series’ canon. While set in a dystopian future, the film looks somewhat comparable to our world. Where there is almost nothing but desert in the later movies, this proto-Wasteland is punctuated with some flourishes of greens and even features some functioning vestiges of civilization. This feels like a more digestible and realistic depiction of what the beginning stages of societal collapse might look like and with no assigned narrator, the film doesn’t have a specific vision as the later films will.

 

Fast forward to 1981’s “The Road Warrior”. One of the most influential pieces of action filmmaking ever produced, the second “Mad Max” film introduces so much of the narrative elements and iconography that would be associated with (and ripped off from) the franchise moving forward. Desert landscapes. Evil BDSM inspired bikers. Over-the-top warlords. And of course, a prominent narration that begins and ends the film. This framing device does a lot to turn the Wasteland of “Mad Max” from a hellish reality to some kind of post-apocalyptic cinematic fable. Max (played in the first three films by a once badass Mel Gibson) is no longer the talkative grieving husband but is now the Wasteland’s equivalent of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. Given the title of “Road Warrior” by the film’s narrator, we are introduced to him framed against a dusk sky posing like some sort of Greek hero on a desolate stretch of road. The narration provides the bare minimum of Max’s tragic backstory from the first film (“In the roar of an engine he lost everything”), but it doesn’t dwell on it. Nor does this narration dwell on how the world went from hanging onto the last semblances of civilization to an almost barren world.  

 

Much has been spoken about how George Miller does not seem to care for continuity within the “Mad Max” series. Details about characters’ pasts or how the world fell apart tend to vary from film to film. This is also evident in his casting choices. Different actors will play characters that we’ve already been introduced to or sometimes performers who played a certain character in one film will play a completely different character in the next film (think Bruce Spence playing both the Gyro Captain in “The Road Warrior” and Jebediah in “Beyond Thunderdome”). And while I do think there’s a bit of truth to Miller’s aversion to some sort of set canon, I also think this speaks to the director's fascination with how each individual’s interpretation of events dictates the way in which they tell these stories.

 

In both “The Road Warrior” and its follow up, “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome”, the narration is from the point of view of those who met Max in their youth. As a result, I would argue that Max is at his most mythic in both of these films. It helps that the young Mel Gibson is arguably at the height of his movie stardom, but even with the personal flaws he must overcome in both films, Max is framed like a samurai on wheels as opposed to the relatable man we saw in the first movie. The Feral Boy in “The Road Warrior” (who we learn by the film’s end has grown up to be the narrator telling us this story) tends to look at Gibson’s Max with absolute awe. He never sees him again after the events of this film, but his limited interactions with him planted a very specific idea of Max as a silent protector. While only being featured at the film’s tail end, “Beyond Thunderdome”’s brief use of narration is revealed to be the leader of the tribe of lost youths at the center of that film. Sitting amongst a group of children who Max helped save in the movie’s, she is revealed to be telling the story of her time with Max to the captive, wide eyed audience. While her interaction with Max may have been tumultuous, the final image she has of the Road Warrior is him seemingly sacrificing himself to the Wasteland in order to let this next generation live. If this is her telling the story, then one can’t help but think that she now feels more inclined to promote the myth of the hero Max as opposed to the more flawed human being.

 

It’s worth noting that George Miller has been quoted for years talking about how the world’s reaction to the first “Mad Max” really opened his eyes to ways in which we all interpret stories.The French critics told him it was a futuristic allegory for the American western and Japanese audiences said it was a modern day retelling of the samurai films of Akria Kurosowa. People were seeing different things in what he mostly believed to just be a simple car chase movie. Ever since then, a common theme in Miller’s work is the function of storytelling and the role of the storyteller. Something like his two “Babe” films act as both celebrations and analyses of children’s fairy tales. And even one of his most recent films, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is about the importance of stories and even argues that storytelling and mythmaking are at the heart of all existence. With his two most recent “Mad Max” films, Miller pushes his fascination with storytellers and storytelling experimentations into two very uniquely ambitious directions.

 

 

The opening narration of the fourth “Mad Max” film, “Mad Max: Fury Road” does not come from a child of the Wasteland, a quirky side character or an unseen bystander. It instead comes from the mouth of Max Rockatansky himself.

 

Against a dark screen and punctuated by the sounds of miscellaneous newscasts proclaiming the end of the world, we hear these words spoken by our main character:

 

“My name is Max. My world is fire and blood.”

 

What ensues is two hours of the most viscerally thrilling visual storytelling ever displayed in mainstream cinema. A film where exposition is replaced by character-defining acts of violence atop vehicles that are speeding 100 miles per hour down a toxic shell of a world. It is indeed a world of fire and blood as we were promised and this is because the story is filtered through the madness of our main character. 

 

Max is a survivor of this world, but he has no patience for or understanding of the politics and religious cults that have spread out of this environment. For all of his time spent enduring this land’s hardship, he is always a stranger when he comes across some new faction, making him the perfect vessel for audiences to identify with in what is the most wonderfully bizarre depiction of this world we have yet seen. Many critics have spoken about how one of the best elements of “Fury Road” is its aversion to holding the audience’s hand in order to contextualize the beautiful chaos that’s on screen. It’s one of the things that makes “Fury Road” so rewarding on rewatches is that you begin to understand the unique Wasteland slang and thoroughly detailed rituals as you put it all into a greater context. However, I don’t think I’ve seen many people talk about how perfectly that fits within the framework of Max being our narrator. If we are to believe that Max is telling us this story, then it makes perfect sense that he would have no prior understanding or context to Immortan Joe’s cult of War Boys or domain over the water. These characters are nothing more than obstacles to cross in order to continue surviving. However, like Max, we develop an affinity for the new character Furiosa and the batch of runaway wives she is transporting to the fabled green place. “Fury Road”’s lean and mean storytelling is not only wonderfully economical, it immerses us into a very specific world view of the Wasteland. 

 

This fictional setting is undoubtedly dense with lore, but we only get it from a perspective of a man who’s seeing it in the periphery. And while we don’t get the full backstory of Furiosa (YET), Max begins to put enough of the pieces together to get a semblance of what is right and what is wrong in this portion of the Wasteland. As a result, he acts on his very basic understanding of the events surrounding him to fight for good. Max might be at his most mute in “Fury Road”, but thanks to the opening narration, we are invited to see this world as he sees it, as barbaric as it might be.

It’s all the more fascinating that the most recent film, “Furiosa”, practically utilizes an opposite narrative framing device. No longer in the mind of a reverential child of the wasteland or a mentally disturbed main character, the role of the History Man is to tell us the story that is both a combination of what he saw and what was passed down to him. Separated into chapters and laid out more like a patient, sprawling odyssey as opposed to “Fury Road”’s relentless pace, “Furiosa” is the most vivid portrait of the Wasteland that George Miller has ever conceived. 

 

The latest film also places more emphasis than ever on the fact that no real digital or filmic records exist of the world before the time of the Wasteland. There are a few still old enough to remember a time before the chaos (the film’s narrator, for one), but all they can do is tell the story of the once thriving world as they remember it. Aside from the suped up motorbikes and monster trucks of the Wasteland, everything has been reduced to something more primal, including how stories are told across the world. There is no objective truth, only myth. When you really start to take that in, you begin to question everything you have ever been told in not only “Furiosa”, but every single “Mad Max” film that’s come before.

 

This all culminates in one of most fascinating finales in Miller’s filmography. Focusing on the lifelong journey of vengeance Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy)  takes to finally dispatch the warlord who killed her mother, Dementus (a wonderfully sinister Chris Hemsworth), the story finally reaches its apex when the two characters meet squarely on the outskirts of the Wasteland. No fancy car chases, no “John Wick” style shootouts, but merely a dialogue driven confrontation searing with rage and sorrow. As the two characters give into the inevitability of what’s about to happen, the narrator does something they’ve never done in any of these other films; he gives us different outcomes.

 

First we see Furiosa shoot Dementus in the head. Then we see the warlord crucified on a tree. Then again, we also see him being dragged behind Furiosa’s hot rod.

 

“There are those who prefer that she did more than shoot him,” we hear the History Man say over these images of violence. “They claim that she ended him in ways more fitting.”

 

But then we see one more alternative. This alternative is the one that the History Man believes to be true. 

 

“But this is the truth. Whispered to me by Furiosa, herself”.

 

We see what the History Man believes to be the definitive way in which Furiosa dispatched of Dementus; by planting the last gift given to her by her mother–the seed of a peach tree–into his body and having it grow atop him as he is still living. 

 

It’s a wonderfully ironic and powerful image; one fit for a Wasteland fairy tale.

 

But is it the truth? Does Furiosa’s word constitute fact? How can we even be sure it was actually Furiosa’s word? And does any of this even matter if myth is more powerful than truth? 

 

It all goes back to the opening line of the film; “No one knows what is true anymore”. George Miller may not be interested in the truth, but he sure as hell is interested in telling a compelling story, no matter where it comes from or how true it may be.

 

That might just be the true testament of how immersive George Miller’s post-apocalyptic saga really is. It’s a series of contradictions, different perspectives and stories that may or may not be shedding light on the truth. But…none of it is true. It’s all fake. The Wasteland of “Mad Max” is either a desert road in Australia, a rock formation in Namibia or a back-lot filled with green screen, but it’s not a real place. And yet, even within this objectively fake world, Miller crafts tales that build off of each other and are in dialogue with each other. Stories that seem as though they are being passed down to you through even the most seemingly insignificant inhabitant of this fantasy world. 

 

The opening narrations of each “Mad Max” film not only invite audiences to escape into the Wasteland, they make them feel as though they are garnering different perspectives and being told stories as if they are already inhabitants to this dangerous world, themselves. It’s one of the many reasons why George Miller is one of our most unique storytellers working in the medium and why–as long as he wants and is able to tell the stories of “Mad Max”--you can be certain they’ll never be repetitive.