Film Quadrupling — A Film Festival For The Pessimists

My most recent film festival post was about the light-hearted Thin Man films. I hope you enjoyed them because the party’s over.  Enough happy films. Let’s take a trip though Dystopia with the four Mad Max films, each a portrait of desolation and revenge. Masterfully directed or should I say choreographed by George Miller, these are the ultimate in motorized chases, explosions and brutality. Sadly, they seem to suggest where, as a society we are going with our increasingly dominant philosophy of survival of the fittest (or meanest).

Mad Max (1979) —Can’t miss this one.  This is the set up for all that follows. A young and still altruistic cop loses his wife and child to a gang of punked-out outlaws. The crime is senseless and all his focus is now on revenge. Whether or not you approve of Mel Gibson and whether or not an hour and half of relentless violence is an appealing way to spend an evening, this is a classic story and most likely an historically important film.  In this first Mad Max out of the chute, we witness digital-less filmmaking at its boldest.  The stunts are done by real people in real space and time. Gibson here, young and pretty, doesn’t say much and doesn’t need to. Events age him, harden him. But what’s left after revenge has been taken? The answer is in the second film. Max is all but dead.

Mad Max: Road Warrior (1981) — A tougher Mad Max has little more going for him than a basic instinct to survive. Though, in what reminded me of A Boy and His Dog, an earlier apocalyptic tale, Max now has a dog to ride with him on the barren landscape is search of gasoline. It’s a kind of  “we have to keep going to get gasoline so we can keep going to get gasoline kind of thing.  But it works.  In fact, this is my favorite of the quartet largely because it takes outlandish villainy to a new level.  Using the look of heavy metal and the symbolic manifestations of sado-masochism, the film has a unique and powerful look and feel.  What really makes this one stand out for me is the addition of a couple of fascinating characters. One is a slimy, slightly crazy crackpot who has built a  primitive helicopter and has taken a liking to Max.  The second is a feral kid, who steals any scene he’s in. Despite the body count, the movie comes to a fine, satisfying end.

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) — This one is the outlier.  It has a different sensibility about it.  Yes, there are the usual chase scenes, brutal fights. Certainly there is evil to be righted, the least of which is Bartertown run by a corrupt boss played Tina Turner. But the movie seems dialed down. A little comedy had crept in to Road Warrior.  And it was welcomed.  However, the sustained intensity of action remained.  Here, I almost expected everyone to break out in song. Though certainly a competent, sometimes imaginative undertaking, unlike the others, Thunderdrome might not keep you on the edge of your seat.

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) — I would have really liked to see an aging Mel Gibson in this one.   In Gibson’s seeming exile, Tom Hardy took the role and pulled his weight as the suffering hero of few words. Very few words, in large part because he wore a metal grate mask for most of the action. The fact is this wasn’t Max’s movie, anyway.  It belonged to Carlize Theron as Furiosa, a fierce warrior who seeks to return to the all-woman Utopia she remembers from her youth. As all the Max films do, Fury Road plays on events in the real world, the brutal and endless fight among the great powers for water and oil. And its amazing how much the desert of Australia looks like those of the Mid East with all the primitive, barely post-industrial battles that go on there. At first glance, one might think it is current news footage from battles in Iraq.

One might also think that the best drink for these movies would be a can of 10W30.  It’s all about oil.  In the end, these are beer movies. Maybe a little sparkling lemonade for those experiencing a desert thirst but have to drive more civilly than the various tribes of road warriors.

Film Pairings — Intrigue In The Tropics, Politics And Strange Bedfellows

As cold weather approaches, this might be the time to entertain a couple of politically challenging films set where perspiration is more likely than goose pimples and a dramatic glimpse into recent history provokes thoughts about how our actions in foreign lands are more serious than we might think.  What does our government do when we’re not paying attention?

The Extraordinary Linda Hunt

The Year of Living Dangerously tells the story of an Australian journalist (Mel Gibson) who arrives in Indonesia during increasing public unrest, which finally results in the overthrow of its corrupt President Sukarno.  The question pits a hungry, get-the-scoop journalist against understanding the deeper issues that affect a population being undermined by its leaders.  Not too incidentally, he must choose between his career and the woman he loves.  Tough choices.  Linda Hunt gives her academy award performance as a young male dwarf concerned about the victims of corrupt leadership and Sigourney Weaver is the woman in the ambitious reporter's life.  The steamy, smart sexy, adventurous film directed by Peter Weir was released in 1982.  It was based on the book by Christopher Koch.

The parallels between this film and the film of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American are worth noticing. Director Phillip Noyce initially wanted to do The Year of Living Dangerously before losing out to Weir.  Here, we have CIA intervention in the affairs of 1950s Vietnam while the French were struggling with colonizing it, all supposedly part of domino theory that would again raise its ugly head in the 1960s with the U.S. trying to get rid of the “red menace.”

In this case, Michael Caine plays a cynical journalist posted to Saigon during the French occupation.    The U.S., which escaped culpability in Weir’s version of the Sukarno affair, doesn’t fair so well in The Quiet American.  In fact, this is a remake.  The first film, (1958) starring American war hero Audie Murphy, was virtually disowned by Greene as an American propaganda film.  This one (2002) was more faithful to Greene’s intent.  When we meet Brendan Fraser’s character, we believe he is an innocent do-gooder, a contrast to the older, wizened character played by Caine.  Things, we learn, aren’t always what they seem and right and wrong, as it is in both movies, aren’t necessarily easy to discern. The idea of “collateral damage” is brought up here and is just as serious and controversial today as are CIA dirty tricks. Both films have, a their heart, both doing right on a deeply personal level with those we love and doing right for a cause greater than ourselves.  And when are abominable acts justified in order to achieve a so-called greater good? Do Thi Hai Yen is the beautiful Vietnamese woman who symbolizes both the personal and the universal.

These are two perfect films for those who love history and politics mixed with a little steamy sex.  And if cold, gray winter has descended on your household, take a trip to places closer to the equator.  Turn up the heat and drink something that requires ice and a lime or a lemon.