At 79 years old, George Miller hasn’t put away cars. The Australian director returns to the Croisette with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. The fifth part of a cinematic myth often imitated but never equaled. We will know on Wednesday May 15, the day of its world premiere before its theatrical release on May 22, if the creator of Mad Max still has gasoline in the engine or if it is good for the scrapyard. Miller recounts the youth of his one-armed heroine (Anya Taylor-Joy), when she still had both arms and revenge was already in her skin. Everything but a walk in the park at the sight of the first images. In the meantime, back to a saga of blood and screaming metal.
At the end of the 1970s, George Miller, from a small town in Queensland, was an emergency doctor. He treats victims of road accidents, a true national sport in a country like Australia, which has the cult of the automobile. Miller is also a movie nut. He burns his savings to make Mad Max, a wild rodeo filmed on the highways of the outskirts of Melbourne. A brutal, nihilistic first opus, and the revelation of a lethal weapon: Mel Gibson. As Max Rockatansky, a revenge-loving cop and widower, he bursts onto the screen. A myth is born. “The French have always been great defenders of Mad Max. At the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, the enthusiastic critics called my film a western on wheels,” confided to Le Figaro George Miller in May 2015. The French are not the only ones to take a slap in the face. Hollywood and the world look at these crazy dogs with a mixture of admiration and revulsion.
Miller is no longer the new kid. Three years after Mad Max, he is expected to turn the corner. With Mad Max: The Challenge, he perhaps signs his masterpiece. And the matrix of an entire science fiction cinema at the turn of the 21st century. Film, video game, comic book, the entire post-apocalyptic imagination of the last thirty years begins or ends on an Outback road. Humanity is killing each other over a jerrycan of gasoline. The world is in agony. Hordes of leather-clad motorized warriors fight across a desert as far as the eye can see. Miller’s pessimism doesn’t get any better. Its staging gains in scope. His mastery of time and space is impressive. The climax is a spectacular chase, with Max behind the wheel of a tanker truck and angry punks on his heels. Among the fans, James Cameron. “When I saw Mad Max 2: The Challenge, I said to myself: that Miller had read my mind,” the Avatar director confided to Le Figaro last April. I said to my neighbor in the room, who I didn’t know, “That’s great! » I was addicted to cars, I even did street racing. I’ve crashed a lot of cars! We find this adrenaline in Terminator. » With Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford and Philip Noyce, Miller now embodies the golden age of Australian cinema.
The unloved episode of the saga. Civilization is always on the verge of extinction after a nuclear war, but this time Mel Gibson has long hair. Tina Turner plays Entity, a charismatic figure in the methane-fueled town of Bartertown. Part of the plot takes place underground (the World Below), where Miller seems cramped. The duels to the death under the “Thunderdome” lack the adrenaline of the original chases. A villain in the form of a mentally retarded colossus topped by a very intelligent dwarf, a troop of lost children… The characters are more ridiculous than frightening. Upon arrival, this third part is more kitsch than rock.
Thirty years after its last appearance on screen, Mad Max is back. Without Mel Gibson. Mad Max Fury Road hits the Croisette to open the festival – it will win six Oscars in the end. Miller, 70 years old on the clock, accelerates again and loses his pursuers. For Truffaut, films are trains that move through the night. For Miller, these are tanker trucks speeding through the day. The chase remains his favorite figure of speech. Movement, action, speed. There is indeed a vague issue here other than that of saving one’s skin (liberating the Citadel where the last humans are dying of thirst). This time, everyone is chasing water, not oil. Above all, Miller robbed the bank ($150 million budget) to afford even more insane toys. Customized vehicles from the sick mind of a sadistic mechanic. They are sold with a variety of accessories (poles, flamethrowers, crossbows, electric guitar, harpoons, plows, etc.). No digital tricks but Dantesque fights, without ever applying the handbrake. “Globular” Max spends a good part of the journey wearing a steel muzzle. No doubt a bad joke from Miller, who tells Tom Hardy that Max only has one face, that of Mel Gibson. He growls like a pig. He mainly plays the role of stooge. Charlize Theron is behind the wheel. Even among the followers of No Future, women are the future of men. An Amazon with a shaved head, one arm amputated, her Furiosa proves that with only one hand you can not be one-armed. Miller, for his part, does not lift his foot in the deserts of Namibia. “The first Mad Max was a small group of rockers in a garage, this one is a bombastic rock opera,” says Miller. With Furiosa, this year, you shouldn’t expect chamber music.