Mechanophile. Male name designating “an attraction, sometimes sexual, to machines, particularly those that are vehicles”says the Wiktionary. The father of the saga Mad Max would he eat this bread? The question can legitimately be asked, with regard to the care given to everything which is equipped, near or far, with a motor in the different opus of the franchise – the last two, more specifically. The cars are magnified, sublimated – some are even filmed as characters in their own right (we think of Immortan Joe’s 617-horsepower semi-trailer, in Fury Road et Furious). It’s simple: the swarm of 2-4-8 wheels are (almost) in each image, in each waterfall. But why so much vroom-vroom, George? We take stock, without stalling.
Cinema therapy?
At the roots of the Australian director’s fascination with bikes, all-terrain vehicles, and other means of transport, there is perhaps less an innate tenderness than a trauma to resolve. The thing is little known but, before filming blockbusters in spades, George Miller worked in a Sidney hospital, as an emergency doctor. The director confided that he intervened on road accident victims, and witnessed numerous crash during his youth spent in rural Queensland. Some of them having precipitated the deaths of three of his friends when he was a teenager.
Would these extreme experiences have pushed our man to embark on cinema therapy (the Mad Max 1979 is his first feature film)? As if staging vehicle disaster encounters could allow us to “regain control” over traumatic events? To assert this would be to fall into disreputable counter psychology – even if the path is undoubtedly not entirely sterile…
At the origin of Mad Max : in the oil slump, Australians are on their faces
Let’s change our approach, leaving aside Miller’s biographical journey, to look towards the very scenario of the first part Mad Max. In 2006 its author, the journalist McCausland, told the newspaper The Courier-Mail that to write the said script, he was largely inspired by the behavior of his fellow Australian citizens during the oil crisis of 1973:
“There were several signs of the kind of desperate acts people would go to in order to have some mobility. The oil shocks that paralyzed our pumps revealed the ferocity with which Australians could defend their right to fill their cars. I remember long lines at the stations – and if anyone tried to cheat, raw violence would immediately descend upon them… George and I wrote this script based on the assumption that people would do roughly anything to keep their vehicles running, in the event that, in our future, nations have not invested enough in alternative energies to avoid catastrophe”
Concretely, the Miller-McCausland duo therefore imagined a post-apocalyptic future where, failing to have been able to overcome the “ecological crisis”, humanity would be reduced to tearing itself apart over… a few barrels of gasoline. Revenge movie with eco-responsible tones, Furious illustrates this dystopian vision, putting a glaring contrast into perspective. On one side a pacified (and lost…) “green land” where Furiosia grew up herselfdominated by a settled female community, and where everything seems to grow in abundance, like the Garden of Eden. And, on the other… predominantly male clans, swallowing kilometers after kilometers, in order to scramble for the slightest drop of oil.
Make cars main caractersa useful guarantee to explode the budget
From there conclude that with Furious et Fury RoadGeorge Miller wanted to weave an eco-fable, where the male gender, a bit stereotypical, would have collectively led us to our downfall through their immoderate taste for big-trucks-that-pollute-that-consume (reminder: one of stronghold of their clan is literally called Petroville)? There is a step that we would be tempted to take. Before going even further: as the franchise Mad Max evolves over time, it becomes more and more anti-masculinist. Clearly.
In a sense, Immortan Joe’s Citadel could be interpreted as a picture – half-mocking, half-serious – of the dream world of male supremacists. Women are reduced to sexual slavery because of their gender, while men only swear by a pseudo-glorious death. “Witness me” (“be my witness”) bellow the war boysbefore killing himself hoping to reach Valhalla. The only passion of these ravaged brains? Their crates.
A taste pushed to the absurd – and stylized to the extreme by George Miller. Because yes, propelling motorized vehicles to the rank of main protagonists offers the opportunity to shoot films of very, very, great spectacle. Obviously, our director takes a childish pleasure in choreographing the stunts of the crashto capture the roar of the engines. After all, with its accelerations, its pileups, its furious screeching of tires, the car has all the makings of the ideal ally for building a action movie pure juice. So, ultimately, what does it matter why? Mad Max puts its cars in the spotlight as much.
The important thing is that we, the spectators, take in the sights. Go, Miller, go.