The Beautiful Hideous

Rating: 8/10 (4 November 2015)

The Mad Max saga began in the late seventies with polarizing reception. The desolate wasteland of Beyond Thunderdome was criticized for its clash with the overly stylized life of its ruthless inhabitants. The latest chapter Fury Road marries these two elements with a skill that is rarely successful. Director George Miller takes the blinding colors and overt violence that has become a cheap thrill in many films, and put them to use to their greatest potential. What separates this film from say, a Transformers extravaganza? We care. If there is nothing else beautiful in a wasteland, the violence can be gorgeous. It could be argued that the characters in this film are in a desperate search for their own respective glimpse of beauty.
The story picks up, roughly, where the series ended in Thunderdome. Tom Hardy's Max is still a survivor of the impossible elements and is taken by the War Boys who sell him to the half dead blood breeders. From its first frame, this film is a desperate fight. Max struggles through the bowels of a labyrinthine Citadel, ruled by the imposing Immortan Joe, Hugh Keays-Byrne. Every villainous character in the film is eye-catchingly attractive, yet hideous. Regardless of the importance of these characters, they are fabulously memorable. It is a great feat indeed that the character of Immortan Joe still maintains his position as immortally memorable. With a monstrous voice and boned steam-punk breathing apparatus, he resembles a mix between Tom Hardy's Bane and a Gollum created by The Misfits. Joe controls the most important currency in the world, water. He doles it out in controlled doses like a methadone clinic to the desperate populous. Joe's second in command is the beautifully rugged Furiosa, Charlize Theron. We meet her in the middle of defying Joe in a rescue operation, attempting to smuggle his gorgeous breeding woman to a safe haven.
Max, meanwhile, has become the property of a War Boy "Nux," Nicholas Hoult, who uses Max's blood intravenously to support his own half- life while taking to the Fury Road to intercept Joe's beauties with the whole of Joe's army. The entirety of the film takes place in the white-knuckle chases on Fury Road. The situations and characters are so well established that the non-stop action functions as it should, monumentally engaging. Max, of course, finds himself with Furiosa, aiding in her scheme to steal Joe's angelic women to her former home and last known land of sanctuary. Hardy plays Max in such a low key that he sticks out in contrast to the vibrant and restless surroundings. Due to Max's almost non-existent dialogue, the character of Furiosa does occasionally upstage the dynamic, but it does nothing to hurt the story.
I will not spoil the visual crescendos that make this film unstoppably watchable. I will simply say that refraining from using the restroom mid-film is possibly worth the UTI. There is nothing profound about the plot, standard and linear. The profundity can be seen in the characters' adaptation to their hostile environment. Some find their personal beauty in the mania of battle. Others, like Joe, prefer the more traditional form that he finds in his slave women. As for Max, this world holds nothing for him. He exists because his greatest talent is his curse, survival. In any other environment his past would be an unbearably tragic tale that would isolate him. His isolation here has nothing to do with his past, it's doubtful his is better or worse than anyone else. That he is so damn good at living makes him tragic.