Favorite Mad Max: Fury Road Moments

I'd say my favorite things, but THEY ARE NOT THINGS.

I've now seen George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road at the theater three times. (The only other movie I've seen three times in theaters is The Dark Knight...is it the brooding heroes and guys painted white?) It keeps getting better - I notice more small details, I feel closer to crying by the end, I can make out more of the Straya slang, etc.

Clearly I'm not alone. Mad Max: Fury Road might not be the biggest moneymaker this summer, but the intelligent, visually stunning, brilliantly edited action film has impressed critics and won the devotion of fans. Comic artists were especially inspired by Charlize Theron's Furiosa. Comic book shops found they, and the printer, had greatly underestimated the demand for the first issue of the tie-in comic. At least one person has made a flamethrower ukulele.

There's been a lot written about this movie, and I'm not going to add my own huge screed. I just wanted to catalog/gush over all my favorite things* about it, because that's really the reason I have this blog. In case it's not obvious, this will be approximately 100% spoilers.

*The Doof Warrior, of course, goes without saying.

Come on.

Favorite Moments in Mad Max: Fury Road

Max's failed escape: When Max is captured by Immortan Joe's scavengers, he attempts the daring escape expected of any action hero: he breaks his bonds and fights off an endless supply of anonymous goons while dashing through the evil lair, then jumps to an improbably convenient hanging rope. But instead of completing a nail-biting and exhilarating swing to safety, he's simply pulled back inside the Citadel. Sure, at least one or two of the minions died, but mostly Max's attempt just took five minutes out of everyone's work day. The expectation-defying sequence sets the tone for the film.

Chain fight: The Furiosa versus Max and Nux (who are chained together and not on good terms) fight. I'm always in awe of well choreographed battles, and this one was especially impressive. 

Spit fight: Super mature Nux spiting back at Furiosa after she spits at him. Really hope we get some blooper reel of that. (We have been teased about one.)

Whoops: Nux tripping on the war rig. I purposefully avoided reading much about the movie before watching, so I didn't know how large a role Nicholas Hoult's Nux played. When we first see Nux, he's just one of many in the swarm of War Boys. When he straps muzzled "blood bag" Max to the front of his car so he can go into battle while getting a blood transfusion, I expected we'd shortly get a scene of Max avenging the humiliation with a quick kill. When Nux survives being thrown off the rig by the wives (after surviving his own kamikaze attempt), I then assumed he'd be the "thorn in our heroes' side" character. But then he falls down like a total klutz in front of his idol in his moment of glory.

I'm lazy, so I'd be fine with mediocre.

Thumbs-up: Max's grudging thumbs-up when Angharad avoids being crushed by a giant rock. I want Tom Hardy to give me that thumbs-up. I just don't want to fall under a repurposed oil tanker immediately after.

The wives: The women's relationships. The bond between the five wives (Angharad, the Dag, Toast, Cheedo, and Capable) is strong and authentic. They've been through hell together. It's easy to imagine how a lesser filmmaker might have taken a misstep here, thoughtlessly making them either uniformly passive or catty, but this movie doesn't do thoughtless. As Riley Keough (Capable) said about the preparation for the role "“Emailing George about the part, you realized there’s more going on than, ‘Here’s hot girl number one and hot girl number two'". 

Subtle smile: Speaking of which, Capable's contemplative, secret smile when she's back in the rig after finding Nux.

Leaving the The Fault in Our Stars kids in the dust.

Facial: Max taking a split second to weigh "face covered in other guy's blood" with "face cleaned with breastmilk." He goes with the breastmilk. You do what you gotta do, Max.

Boot: Max giving Nux a boot. Nux hasn't uttered a word of complaint about only having one boot, but Max still remembers to grab him one after slaughtering the Bullet Farmer's convoy. How...sweet? (Sure he could have given Nux his actual boot back, but he's not quite there yet - he will later swoop in rather than let Nux suffer while siphoning fuel.) It's a small, wordless indication of how Max is gradually letting himself care for others again. At the beginning of the film, he was so hurt and mistrusting that he was willing to take the rig and abandon the women in the desert, but interacting with Furiosa and the others is bringing him back to his noble self.

Tandem: Max and Furiosa's teamwork. Max is still hoarding weapons, worried Furiosa might try to off him, when he's completely caught off guard by her trusting him to start the rig if her deal in the canyon goes bad. Her trust is rewarded, and they start working together seamlessly.

From here.

Road trip: Cheedo, Toast, the Dag, Capable, and Nux all curled up asleep like kittens in the back while mom 'n' pop Furiosa and Max take turns driving through the night. Update: Please check out Joanne Kwan's awesome Mad Max family roadtrip fan art.

Uncouth ladies: The blunt Dag's understanding with the blunt Keeper of the Seeds. Age is no barrier to friendship when you're a smartass.

Pa: The characters say almost nothing about the considerable traumas they've all experienced, but we know from the first Mad Max film that Max had a infant son who was murdered. Max's PTSD flashbacks mostly involve a different young child he was unable to save, but when he's watching his new friends leave across the salt he hears, "Come on, Pa!" Wrenching. Whether you knew about his son beforehand or just put it together, it's a punch in the gut.


Favorite Moment That Wasn't Actually in Mad Max: Fury Road That I Wish Was Actually in Mad Max: Fury Road

On the way back to the Citadel, Furiosa slows the rig to a halt. Max looks at her with a wordless question. She silently indicates with her head, and he follows her gaze. There's a giant billboard reading "Aussie Al's OBGYN and Cancer Center (and Waterpark)." Max grunts and looks back at Furiosa. Furiosa looks at Max. Max shrugs deferentially. Furiosa starts the rig again and follows the sign.

Janet Delaney: South of Market

Painting Mural, Langton Street, 1980 by Janet Delaney

A few weekends ago, I spent a Saturday helping with an office move. The next day, to relax after hauling boxes and packing/unpacking seemingly endless office supplies, I went to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.

The reason I went was actually to see Botticelli to Braque: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland, but while there, I remembered there was another exhibition I'd been meaning to see: Janet Delaney: South of Market, an exhibition of photographs of the SOMA neighborhood.

The timing was fortuitous, because the office move I'd just worked on was a relocation from SOMA (South of Market/South Of Market Area) to the Financial District. The Financial District, as its name implies, is has historically been the core of San Francisco business. However, the past few decades have seen more and more office buildings rise on the other side of Market Street, joining the previously quite solitary Pacific Telephone Building at 140 New Montgomery. Now, with SOMA being the desired HQ for many tech companies, the amount of skyscrapers being built for business and luxury living is staggering.

Photo I took in July 2014, looking northeast over the Transbay Transit Center.

With this influx of tech companies and their highest-paid beneficiaries have come steeply rising rents. One bedroom apartments at Tower 2 of One Rincon Hill, the second tower from right in the photo above, currently start at 613 sq. ft. and  > $3000.

So Janet Delaney: South of Market, is especially timely. Delaney moved to SOMA in 1978, just as redevelopment was starting, and she soon began documenting the neighborhood's transition. This exhibition displays her resulting photographs of SOMA in the late 70s and early 80s: a SOMA with diverse residents who are feeling - rightfully - threatened by the construction growing around them.

Detail from Langton between Folsom and Harrison Streets, 1979.

Delaney's images are deeply affecting, especially for those familiar with the area. A few older visitors I saw seemed overwhelmed with emotion. I felt a mix of melancholy and guilt. The just-completed office move meant I would no longer spend my lunch breaks in South Park or Yerba Buena Gardens, where I walked, read, and wrote. But the only reason I had had access to those places was because of my job's location, which was linked to the development that displaced so many.

Excerpts of Delaney's interviews with residents are on display. Their concerns are strikingly familiar: fears of being pushed out of the Bay Area entirely, frustration at the changing landscape, and the stress of living under an absentee landlord who might indirectly evict you at any time by drastically raising your rent. Although I'm not in as dire straits as most of those interviewed, being able to stay in the Bay Area, where I was born and raised, seems less and less sure.

Sorry, as always, for my awful photos. 

Whether it brings grim consolation or just despair, Delaney's work highlights that there's nothing new about the constantly changing nature of neighborhoods and the constancy of instability for and artists and those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. While looking at the photographs and reading the stories, I thought of how the poor were displaced in Paris under Haussmann and in New York City under Giuliani. I wondered where those who work in the Bay Area but are increasingly unable to afford living here are supposed to go. Will areas inaccessible now someday be feasible again? SOMA landmark South Park was built in the 1850s as an exclusive square for the wealthy. Since then it has risen and fallen in real estate value multiple times. Currently, the park hosts a mix of tech workers, homeless, and dog owners of various income brackets, and is slated for a renovation.

Yerba Buena Gardens, part of what was unsuccessfully fought against in the pamphlet below, is a beautiful public space where a diverse crowd can find some tranquility in the city. Office workers, families, passersby, schoolchildren, and residents from assisted care facilities attend their free summer entertainment. It also shuts down occasionally for private, grandiose tech events. In one of Delaney's photographs, the area that is now the Yerba Buena Gardens and Jessie Square in front of the Contemporary Jewish Museum consists of a parking lot - and razed blocks. Now the surrounding neighborhood is one of the most expensive in the country.

Contemporary flyers, articles, and letters are on display.

Janet Delaney: South of Market has been popular - so popular, in fact, that the accompanying photo book was sold out when I visited, but the FAMSF-published book will be out mid-May. The exhibition runs until July 19th.

Delaney has since returned to SOMA to photograph. Her series SoMa Now is on her website.

Image info:
Painting Mural, Langton Street, 1980 - Janet Delaney's website
All other photos - mine, all but July 2014 taken at exhibition

Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play

Ryan Williams French in production photo by Kevin Berne

I've never been a huge fan of The Simpsons, the Matt Groening cartoon that has been running for 25 seasons and counting. Not "not a huge fan" in that I dislike it, but "not a huge fan" in comparison to how it is possible to define a huge fan. A huge fan of the Simpsons is someone like my friend E., who can pretty much quote any episode verbatim, even though the show started just five years after our birth and we are now thirty.

But even though I've only seen a handful of full episodes, I know much more about the Simpsons than what is in those episodes, and not only because I've known E. for nearly twenty years. I remember a youth pastor ranting about Bart's disrespectful behavior when I went to a friend's church camp that turned out to be way more conservative than my usual church camp. When learning about satire in honors English, we discussed the Simpsons. I've seen the memes, and I know Nelson's "ha ha!" I don't think I've ever seen Comic Book Guy in action, but each comic book Wednesday, when on the way home from work I get that week's comic book and then walk across the street to the donut shop while wishing it were just attached to the comic shop for my convenience, I feel like Comic Book Guy, despite being a 120lb woman.

Comics and donuts should be sold together.

If you live in America, and even if you don't (last month Bolivian Simpsons fans protested a schedule change), the Simpsons has probably become a part of your culture, like it or not (interestingly, a search for clips on Youtube makes it clear how zealously Fox holds that copyright). It is this shared culture that is explored in playwright Anne Washburn's Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, currently playing at A.C.T. through March 15. I saw this play recently (with E., of course), and found it funny, moving, and thought-provoking.

Washburn takes on that specifically post-atomic genre, the post-apocalyptic piece. Once we realized we had the power to truly destroy the world, we began creating art to cope with and explore that fact. The utterly devastating Threads, the gallows humor of Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Seuss's Cold-War-for-kids The Butter Battle Book, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Carolyn See's Golden Days, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake are all part of this tradition.

In Washburn's play, survivors of a catastrophic event involving nuclear power plants sit around a campfire, trying to remember the Simpsons' "Cape Feare" episode. Some of the survivors are Simpsons devotees, and others have not seen an episode yet still know certain quotable lines. As the story progresses, we see how vital stories are and how they shift with the times while staying timeless at their core. Characters merge by design or accident, and circumstances change to reflect the teller's current reality. By the third act, the "Cape Feare" episode has transformed into something both brutal and uplifting.

If you're in the SF Bay Area and have a chance to see Mr. Burns this week, I recommend it.




Images:
Production photo: A.C.T./Kevin Berne
Comic Book Guy: "The Simpsons-Jeff Albertson" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia