Almost ten years after the bustling Fury Road, George Miller returns to asphalt with a prequel dedicated to the character of Furiosa, highlighted in 2015 in the unexpected come-back of the franchise Mad Max. Cursed director never really made the box office take off despite his indelible trace left in the post-nuke imagination, George Miller took a new turn with Furiosa. How does this new variation of myth fit into the heart of a saga that has passed through generations over almost fifty years? Far from duplicating his predecessors, the last born of Wasteland Is he on the road?
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The Fifth Horseman of Revelation
New movie, new era? Exit Charlize Theron for the role of Furiosa, this is Anya Taylor-Joy which has been chosen to embody the youth of the Pretorian of Immortan Joe. Rather than a simple follow-up to the unequal Fury Road, the Australian director preferred to opt for the form of prequel, a perilous exercise that fills the dead corners of heroin history at the origin of the citadel revolution. By returning 15 years back, George Miller begins its story just before the collapse of the golden age. For the first images of this origin story, we discover the young Furiosa extending her arm towards a glowing apple perched at the top of a tree. It is the forbidden fruit that will condemn the Men of Paradise lost as demanded by the genesis of Adam and Eve. Nothing would have happened without this casual gesture.
This Green Earth, oasis of hope in the middle of the desert, Fury Road It was already grieving at the end of a race-prosecution conceived as a complete revolution in the literal sense of the term (see article of Monday morning on repair logic). A return to the tragic conclusion: this abundant territory has long been consumed by the desert, a metaphor for humanity's failure. Like all these characters broken and presented as « already dead » by Dementus, a new demiurge avatar in Wasteland, Furiosa will wage a fierce struggle to satisfy his thirst for revenge.
Customs of historical references of Ben-Hur to piracy by making a detour through the fictions of our time as ConanMiller draws an odyssey in five chapters. The last part, entitled « The Fifth Horseman of Revelation » constitutes the junction between Furiosa and Fury Road, the key of voute where ends revenge and begins redemption. It is also a reference to the eponymous SF book by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, which told the story of a nuclear blackmail.
Singing that one finds with Dementus's poker hit that threatens to blow up the citadel if he did not get satisfaction. More « classic » in its structure that Fury Road, Furiosa scrupulously resumes the key stages of monomythe by Joseph Campbell, even more so than his predecessor who threw us – without foreplay – his deluge of action completely uncomplexed (but never deprecated).
In this black satire, Miller extends his universe of characters straight out of a storyboard of comics. He included Dementus among these warlords at the head of authoritarian proto-societies. The latter are animated by a cult of personality that tends towards the religious in the War Boys, ready to sacrifice for this Holy Father who promises them the Valhalla. In Dementus, power retention is built in negative with a caricatural and chaotic vision of anarchy. Dementus is a pathetic leader surpassed by his own demeasurement. It is the order that is lacking to his band and, conversely, it is freedom that is lacking to the troops of Immortan Joe. Dementus is here played by Chris Hemsworth, unrecognizable grimmed with a prominent nose and which fortunately makes us forget his role as Thor.
He is an ambiguous sado-maso leader, a leader who is in doubt and who bores himself in the face of barbarism as he slides one of the key sequences of the film to understand the psychology of this monster despite him. As he built himself on a trauma, he shaped Furiosa identically; He does not hesitate to tell him that this is the reason why he killed his mother in front of the girl. Furiosa will also borrow his white cape stained with red before executing it.
At the citadel, however, dedication is total. « I的m going to die historic, on the fury road » proudly claims Nux, one of the War Boys defeated by three times and having changed camp in Fury Road. It is no longer even an adverb (Historically), it is totally an epithet adjective (historical) which is mobilised here. It is the action of dying that is associated with the historicity of the gesture. These 763 soldiers are ready to give their lives in a finger-clap for their spiritual leader Immortan Joe. « I am your Redeemer » already shouted the patriarch to the crowd. In Fury RoadThe fate of his wives locked under a dome behind a safe was discovered. The most fertile were matrices to the offspring of the great leader, while the « deficiencies »understand the unfortunate who gave birth to stillborn or disabled children, were condemned to become dairy.
Capitalism is dead, living capitalism
This pyramidal structure of power recalls the conclusion of the science fiction novel Washing. After the collapse of modern society, Barjavel opted for a conclusion to reactionary relents: a patriarchal society dedicated to the repopulation of the Earth around one and the same man. In his latest act entitled The PatriarchEvery day of the week, a different woman gave her body to Francis. The leader then granted a kind of right to repopulate the Earth. « Because men are men, that is, beings with whom evil dominates good » wrote Barjavel. It is the Talion law that governs Wasteland. Miller's is a rape society where young wives have no choice but to satisfy this reproductive program where inbreeding and radioactivity fight to ensure a viable offspring. The desire no longer needs to be here. In return for the services of their uterus, these « preferred » The rest of the population is condemned to poverty and quasi-cannibalism.
At Dementus too, no gaspi; Human organic waste is recycled into boudins. A pound « Refined » reserved at the top of the basket, the lowest of the ladder feeding with what they find under the hand, like Max who beheaded a two-headed lizard in the first seconds of Fury Road. Wasteland is a crippled world governed by cripples. The codes were atomized to mutate society into a form of nihilistic dystopia. This is also what needs to be understood from the reference to « half dead » to whom nuclear war has divided life expectancy by two.
Where Fury Road showed us the lack of water and the paroxystic consecration of black gold, this second part reveals a luxenproletariat in the throes of hunger riots in Petroville. At the citadel, some even cultivate the worms born of the flesh in rot. Under the earth of the impregnable fortress of the despot, it is this infamous salor where the corpses are used to raise worms. Miller goes much further than Trocville from Mad Max 3, where pig feces were simply used to produce fuel by exploiting the labor force of slaves and other scraps of society hurled six feet underground. These are the small hands at the bottom of the ladder, « people who are nothing » that allow open-air life by putting hands in shit. Ironically, Wasteland is also the occasion of a second chance. Empress of Mad Max 3 played by Tina Turner confided that she was nothing before the great war.
In Miller's universe, the outbreak of nuclear war conceived as the Ground Zero Wasteland never extinguished capitalism. On the contrary, capitalist hydra is never completely defeated. There is no possible victory against the invisible hand, only accommodation. Since Mad Max 2Miller gives to see capitalism in its most unbridled form: libertarianism. We find this abâtardy freedom, enclosing the individual in so many deluge dress styles proper to the apocalypse, understood as the end of times and therefore the end of moral injunctions. The state is never a question in itself.
Even in the mythology of Valhalla born from the ashes of the old world, we find traces of our consumer society. On several occasions, the War Boys refer to « Agua Cola » and « McFestin's table », barely veiled combination of Coca Cola and McDonalds. This desire of another world is nothing other than the memory of capitalism before the apocalypse. That we don't misunderstand, even after Fury RoadThere is no reason to be in Wasteland. This « other place » is by nature inaccessible as is the island of Thomas Moore's book, protected by an indomitable sea and stunning mountains. In Wasteland, utopia is strictly materially and conceptually impossible. Never, since all hope is immediately subverted by the hatred and reproduction of the patterns of domination of the old world.
Carnival of the Freaks and its fetishes
In Mad MaxWe were already discovering this horde of Freaks. There's a walking circus side in Miller's movie theater, which recalls The Parade of the Monsters (1932) by Tod Browning (see issue of BLAST which was consecrated to him). Many stuntmen are also used to fairs. The saga Mad Max is always overwhelmed by margins. The ass-de-jatte and mutilated are the new standards of this post-apo world where normality is almost suspicious. Max himself warned us during the come-back of the franchise in 2015: « Who's the craziest? Me... or all the others? »
Miller operates a large gap from the myth of the wild child (pushed to the extreme in the third opus) to the figures of bad boys to the queer airs of the second opus. We naturally think of all these vagabonds, the proudly exhibited nipples, with their Iroquoise cut and the body covered in leather long before Matrix. We also remember the death to the boomerang of the Epheb and probable lover of Toadie, punished for defying the authority of Lord Hummungus and his gang of drunken marauders.
Leather and disguise are part of a punk carnival that is unique at the end of the world and widely taken over by zombie films where each despot grows its own fetish. Just think of Negan and his studded bat to convince him. Fire films Romero (1949-2017) They also apes the society of consumption and the violence of men before that of the dead-living according to a reading dear to Hobbes more than in Rousseau. We find these « still alive » And their fetishes at Max, Furiosa like Dementus.
Every film has its antagonist. In the first, it was Toe Cutter or the Surgeon, the pervert, distant cousin ofOrange Mechanical, which will end the exorbitant eyes (miller's brand), disintegrated under a semi-trailer. The actor will also take on another role, that of Immortan Joe more than 35 years later, which reinforces the idea that all these neurotic characters are in some way substitutable. It is today, on the one hand, Dementus, archetype of redbeard with changing cape and teddy bear harnessed in the back; on the other hand, Immortan and his plastic plastron coupled with his respiratory apparatus that recalls Dark Vador. One could still mention the Octoboss and its devil horns. More generally, it is the revenge of the marginals and outlaw against Max, figure of the former cop, therefore of legitimate violence.
The revolution itself is never the result of a collective initially formed, but rather of the sum of individuals with pruning trajectories and opportunistic alliances. In Fury Road as Furiosa, chase races are never just straight lines drawn in the middle of the desert; encounters, the fruit of chance; the revolution, a favorable situation born of chaos. That is to say how little the direction matters since the drivers are most often busy defending the wargate than driving the aircraft, a real armored frigate and overarmed. We don't organize the revolution. The Great Evening is a matter of chance through multiple crises that must be grasped at the right time.
The Earth, even sorry, is taken over by the warlords of Petroville, Trocville, Bulletfarm or the Citadel. A trading system focused on rudimentary trading and bartering is being established, but the concentration of power and wealth remains a challenge. It is a feudal system focused on strength and domination through the exchange of raw materials. Even men are a commodity like others. In Fury Road, the exploitation of the bodies is total: the blood of the globulars, the uterus of surrogate mothers, milk drawn from the breasts of the dairy and the life of the War Boys ready to sacrifice themselves. The reproduction itself becomes counter-nature. It is privatized for the benefit of a caste and has to turn in a single closed circuit. In Furiosa Finally, even the dead have value with the breeding of worms as mentioned above.
A congenital fable or revenge of cripples
Looking forward to expanding the universe of Wasteland, Miller's latest film tells us more about the brothers Rictus and Scrotus, two of the sons of Immortan whose name ironically refers to the scrotum and rectum, so that it is no longer known whether his sons came out of a cloac or uterus. The first is a mass of muscles inversely proportional to his intelligence. He is the youngest son of Immortan and the figure of the rapist par excellence as already shown Fury Road. In Furiosa, punctuated by many ellipses over fifteen years, it is his fetishist and paedophile side that appears when he puts his hand in the girl's hair and takes her away at night.
Scrotus, on the other hand, is a bit sharper but physically distorted by so many congenital brewings. The third, Corpus Colossus, is the eye of Immortan Joe. It is he who searches the horizon with his telescope, an object inseparable from the saga Mad Max. Although he is heavily handicapped, he is the Emperor's brain and consul. It is also called Corpus Calossum, a term that explicitly refers to the region of the human brain that links the left and right brain hemispheres. It is therefore etymologically the balance between Rictus and Scrotus.
At Miller, these characters are usually reduced to a single function or essence. These protagonists are never whole. On the contrary, they are systematically « Amputees » of something or totally affected by a tare that they seek to absorb: the idiot Rictus by his strength, Colossus by his ability to analyze, Max as a wandering soul after the savage murder of his family loosely murdered in the first part. Finally, Furiosa remained, driven by revenge following her abduction, as she chose to show Miller at the opening of her film. We're caught by the avenging look of Anya Taylor-Joy in the role of the preacher. His features evolve by overprinting digital effects on his face, from childhood to adulthood, to remind Charlize Theron... Bluffant!
Among the antagonists, this essentialist separation between strength and intelligence was already found. This is the case in Mad Max 3 with the colossus The Blaster and his master played by an actor with dwarfism. Max renounced completing this mountain of muscles when he discovered that he was disabled. Thirty years later, it is Fury Road Miller refused to give death to Corpus Calossum. Infirmity should have been killed by one of the dairy mothers at the end of the feature film. This end had even been shot with a dozen shots until Miller retracted against all expectations. He was also the last surviving member of the Joe family, Miller being one of the directors who opened the doors rather than closing them.
Furiosa, a feminist dog?
While it is not fond of contemporary bias sometimes reducing the « Strong woman equals feminism » It must be recognised that the choice of a female casting as the motor of the action of the Fury Road radically slices in a landscape essentially rigged by men in the 1970s-80s. At that time, the woman was most often a victim rescued by large oiled arms. This was the pattern agreed in most of the productions of action films up to the iconoclastic eruption of Ellen Ripley in 1979 with Alien, the eighth passenger. In the first Mad Max, the loving and devoted woman's model is put to death; In the second, one of the first women who appears on the screen is immediately naked and raped under the eye of the spectator. And we will only have to wait for the third opus, dedicated to a much younger audience with its frame between Peter Pan and The Little Prince, to see a less tragic fate given to the female gentleman.
However, once in power, women possessed by the bait of power are no more virtuous than men. Mad Max 3 It has been shown in a candid manner. And no doubt the end of Fury Road who led Furiosa to the top of the Citadel does not announce the next days that sing. Will a patriarchal society in the matriarchate, the former Pretorian who shouts in the crowd that she is Furiosa, give up the monopoly of violence exercised by those she has defeated?
monumental risk taking, Fury Road opts for a model of forced revolt against a patriarchal society at its paroxysm. Here women will save each other. When Furiosa exfiltrates the citadel with the brides of Immortan, each of them is symbolically dressed in a white sheet. There is clearly the will to detangle a largely masculine universe from the original trilogy. And it's so much better that the care given to the characters flies the expectations of the fan of the bottled saga to testosterone.
It will escape no one that the name of the character of Furiosa refers to Greek mythology and its three furies repeated in The Divine Comedy. These three sisters, daughters of the primordial divinities Ouranos (heaven) and Gaia (earth), lived in the depths of Hell. Slight (the Haine), Tisiphone (the Vengeance) and Alecto (the Implacable) permeat the character of Furiosa. Among the Greeks, they were the guardians of order and pursued without respite those who had broken the rules, whether in the world of the living or the world of the dead. Ovid called them « sisters born of the night, terrible deities and without forgiveness ». This is exactly the figure of Furiosa whose sole objective was born from the trauma of her abduction and the murder of her mother. His last words will be Furiosa's unique leitmotiv for the next fifteen years: « Take the time it takes, but promise me you'll come home. ». Furiosa will religiously preserve the seeds entrusted to her by her mother, there again open axis for the future of the saga. The adult child will follow his mother's final wishes methodically.
Note in passing that if this prequel elucidates the origins of Furiosa, there is never a question of the father, if not by his absence. It is also the meaning to give to the words of his kidnappers. One asks him who hunts them « Is your father tracking us? » as if a hunter were of the unthinkable order. In the dystic Fury Road as Furiosa which should be considered as a single work, man is originally synonymous with predation, so the first exchanges with his mentor tortured by Dementus as those with Max are always marked by conflict. In addition, contrary to Fury Road which was only a few days apart, Furiosa lasts for about 15 years. And if the night appeared symbolically only at the end of Fury Road, it eclipses the burning desert sun several times in the introduction of Furiosa. Men fear fury and all those who cross the road to Furiosa will be condemned to a certain death.
In Greek mythology, furies personify the curse and are responsible for punishing the crimes of their perpetrators. This is all the meaning to give Furiosa's ordeal to Dementus, even if Miller could have exercised less graphic restraint to represent these abuses inflicted on her torturer (and « father » Rapist?) youthful. Let us beware that the delicate issue of the exploitation visas from which his first films suffered could have played in the equation. The contours of the oppression of the young Furiosa will remain at the discretion of the more or less cruel imagination of the spectator. Miller would also have given up showing the scene where Furiosa ripped his tongue off, preferring to content himself with the words reported by The History Man : « She took away her voice ». The death of Dementus is announced almost prophetically by the same counter, while the group of the deposed king is dislocated in the desert. Another sign of the construction of a modern mythology, Dementus asks Furiosa if she will have enough to become a myth.
The Purgatory told by History Men
While the end of the world is expected by some as the occasion of a great general reset, Miller's vision is otherwise more cynical. « Misguided humanity is terrorizing itself. As the world unfolds around us. How can you deal with your cruelty? » It is in these terms that the narrator and the History Man question us in the first seconds of Furiosa. On which side would the scourge of the balance bend in case of a nuclear big bang? Would man liberated from his past lead the same mechanics of violence or would it be the occasion to sublimate him? Revelation or apotheosis ?
In Greek mythology (again and always), the apotheosis of a hero meant his admission among the gods of Olympus as was the case with Hercules. Under the Roman Empire, it will be an official deification ceremony of the Emperor before or after his death. By extension, among Catholics, the apotheosis will be synonymous with ascension and posthumous glorification of those called saints. One could multiply parallels with religion that is intimately linked to frankness. If today one tends to reduce the apocalypse to the only end of the world, it is omitting a substantial part of its etymology.
Same prefix as for apotheosis, apocalypse refers to the « Revelation of God ». There is behind this word the notion of unveiling which is paradoxically found in the catastrophe announced as in the apotheosis. At Miller's, we find all this semantic ambiguity with its broken heroes who will pass from revenge to redemption, from the errance of the fugitive to the final sacre of Fury Road. Yet hope remains a mistake like the cruelly coward Max in Furiosa in Fury Road. Madness arises from disappointment, itself born of broken dreams:
« You know, hop is a mistake. If you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- you can-- »
Comprendre le Wasteland qui inspirera toutes les œuvres postapocalyptiques après le film de 1975, c’est appréhender sa dimension spirituelle et métaphorique. C’est un désert affectif sur le modèle du Purgatoire, au sens de lieu « qui purifie ». Le désert va en partie purger Max de sa folie et pour Furiosa de sa quête de vengeance. Ils sont unis par le deuil et c’est aussi le sens à donner au projet suicidaire de Max de retourner prendre d’assaut la Citadelle : « Au moins dans cette direction, on pourra peut-être… Ensemble… tomber sur une sorte de rédemption ». En faisant le chemin inverse, c’est un retour introspectif que réalisent nos héros déchirés sur les actes qu’ils ont commis. Déjà dans Mad Max 2, le narrateur sur la fin de vie nous racontait la déchéance de Max et sa renaissance à venir :
« Dans ce tourbillon de dégénérescence, l’homme ordinaire était pulvérisé. Comme Max, Max le guerrier. Il perdit tout dans un vrombissement. Il ne fut plus que l’ombre de lui-même. Un homme aride, anéanti. Un homme hanté par les démons du passé. Un homme qui sillonnait le désert. Et c’est là, en ce lieu dévasté, qu’il redécouvrit la vérité »
One myth to another
Miller nous fascine par sa capacité prodigieuse à articuler des mythes sur près de cinquante ans comme si chacun de ses héros et antagonistes étaient des déclinaisons du Max traumatisé du premier volet. Pas seulement par ces nombreux clins d’œil (les sables mouvants, les véhicules, la lunette télescopique, les personnages menottés, le sifflet, etc..) mais parce qu’il réussit à faire se parler ces récits entre eux. Ce « Soyez témoins » qu’hurlent religieusement les War Boys n’est autre qu’une résurgence du tout premier monologue de Mad Max de 1975, lorsque l’aigle de la route, en plein delirium, s’écriait au volant de son bolide : « Do you see me, ToeCutter ? Do you see me man ? I am the Nightrider ». C’est l’illustration du besoin du sous-fifre d’être et de nous rendre témoin. Cette mécanique de témoignage des frasques d’hommes ordinaires aspirant à la postérité traverse toute la saga. On pourrait également faire référence aux corbeaux, oiseaux qui annonce la Mort et la vengeance : un détail cher à la franchise de Mad Max to Fury Road.
Cerise sur le gâteau, Miller parvient même à tisser des liens improbables avec d’autres films étrangers à l’univers de Mad Max. Le vieil homme tatoué, History Man of the Fury Road as Furiosa, est joué par George Shevtsov, qui interprétait déjà un rôle similaire de raconteur d’histoires dans le dernier film du cinéaste, 3000 ans à t’attendre. Avec le démarrage décevant de Furiosa qui a du mal à passer la cinquième au box-office, l’avenir de Mad Max est incertain. À 79 ans, le maître du Wasteland parviendra-t-il à poursuivre son œuvre ?
Narration chromatique et énergie cinétique
Fury Road and Furiosa sont deux œuvres portées par des narrations et mises en scène différentes. Moins crasseuse et plus portée sur la construction d’un mythe, Furiosa est complémentaire. Le débat qui a incendié les réseaux sociaux vis-à-vis de l’usage outrancier des CGI est un trompe-l’œil. À la direction de la photographie, il y a eu entre les deux films un passage de flambeau de John Seale to Simon Duggan. Outre les problèmes financiers d’un projet pharaonique comme Furiosa, ce changement explique en partie le côté moins « realistic » des effets et animations appliquées sur les modèles des personnages. Simon Duggan avait d’ailleurs œuvré sur le préquel de 300 ce qui se sent dans le style affiché à l’écran, comme cet effet de motion blur qui rend les mouvements si fluides. Oui, certains effets spéciaux piquent les yeux, mais rien de quoi éroder le plaisir du film qui gagnera certainement ses lettres de noblesse plus tard, comme le furent les précédents Mad Max, eux aussi boudés par le public.
If Fury Road avait une image sans doute plus « crado », on retrouve chez les deux directeurs de la photographie un amour des couleurs saturées. Le jardin d’Eden de Furiosa adopte une palette de couleurs où le vert irradie nos pupilles. Le sable du désert contraste avec le bleu du ciel qui annonce la tempête à venir avec des nuages au plus près du sol. Fury Road a sur ce point notre préférence tant les images réussissent à nous communiquer des émotions fortes tout au long du film. On pourrait carrément parler de narration chromatique avec une évolution flagrante de tons sable et orangés vers le bleu pétrole qui annonce la désillusion. La tempête invraisemblable de la moitié du film est, elle, l’évocation même de l’apocalypse et du déluge.
Autre signature de Miller depuis les premiers Mad Max : les séquences légèrement accélérées qui peuvent dérouter le jeune public aujourd’hui. Ce procédé vieux comme les Frères Lumière permet de donner une illusion de vitesse lors des courses-poursuites. Il s’agit d’un dispositif de mise en scène qui rappelle le cinéma muet. In Furiosa, Miller utilise cette technique pour représenter le temps qui passe lorsque Dementus assiste au supplice du mentor de la prétorienne, trainé à moto jusqu’au coucher du soleil. Une image mémoire chère au Far West où l’on aurait remplacé les chevaux par des cylindrées. Les mimiques de Dementus prennent alors un côté guignolesque inattendu, accentuant ses tics corporels et son agacement face à ce sinistre spectacle qui tourne en rond et finit par le rendre lasse. Dementus est comme rattrapé par sa propre cruauté. C’est littéralement le seul moment où nos héros n’avancent pas sur une trajectoire rectiligne. Ce qu’on perd en réalisme, on le gagne puissance mille en symbolique. À plusieurs reprises d’ailleurs, Miller a eu l’occasion de clamer son amour du cinéma muet :
« Je pense que tous les films devraient être muets. Toutes les informations devraient être visuelles. Le film a besoin de son, pas de parlotes. On raconte son histoire avec des images, un montage et du son. Le mot "action" ne me plaît pas, je préfère "mouvement" ou "énergie". »
Pour illustration, les scènes d’action comme celles de la prise de Bulletfarm démontrent cette maestria et combien le dytique Fury Road / Furiosa tranche avec les standards du genre. Par un habile jeu de regards croisés, la caméra fait la navette constante du prétorien Jack à son apprentie. Le découpage est ciselé et appuyé par de courts plans séquence à la caméra légèrement chancelante. On vit et ressent toute l’intensité de la fusillade sans une seule parole ni musique. C’est comme s’ils communiquaient par les silences. « On raconte son histoire avec des images » dixit Miller.
Dementus va ensuite s’imposer au cœur de ce dialogue silencieux; la caméra navigue alors d’un personnage à un autre avec pour dénominateur commun une roquette qui fuse à l’écran. Le premier projectile nous renvoie d’abord à Jack, puis le second à Furiosa. C’est la même logique à l’œuvre avec le plan du lance-flamme, « pivot » de Jack à Furiosa. Aucun temps mort ne doit peser à l’image. On retrouve l’essence d’un jeu vidéo comme GTA V où l’action basculait d’un sujet à un autre en une fraction de secondes ingame. Ou encore certaines cinématiques de Death Stranding d’Hideo Kojima, camarade affiché du réalisateur australien. L’allégorie porte les images.
C’est par ce « ping-pong » graphique que Miller réussit à tisser des liens entre ces héros plutôt que par des mots. Cette grammaire de l’image et du mouvement, on la retrouvait déjà dans Fury Road entre Charlize Theron et Tom Hardy. Ce sont les armes qui guident l’œil de la caméra. Le porte-guerre et les véhicules sont comme les personnages, blessés et systématiquement rafistolés pour garder le cap. Quoi qu’il en coûte. On retrouve cette logique de réparation évoquée plus haut pour les machines et les hommes dont le sort est lié par l’asphalte. On répare les corps et les objets en mouvement comme un navire à l’abordage dont les cales prendraient l’eau sous le feu des coups de canon.
Le cinéma de Miller est un éloge permanent du mouvement, une mise en scène qui ne laisse jamais le temps au spectateur de reprendre son souffle, sauf au dénouement de l’intrigue où les percussions se mettent en sourdine. Miller n’oublie jamais l’origine du mot cinéma qui vient du grec ancien kinēma soit le « mouvement ». Chaque détail aura son écho plus tard, comme un tableau en construction. La course-poursuite est le moteur d’une fuite en avant et d’une dé/reconstruction des personnages. Bref, on est à des années lumières du premier degré des séquences d’un Fast & Furious.
La Der des Der ?
Plus que jamais, George Miller cherche à enraciner son univers dans la genèse de l’Homme et des batailles qui traversèrent les siècles. Dans Furiosa, Miller évoque des guerres fictives comme réelles en démonstration de la finalité maléfique de l’Homme : les guerres mondiales, la guerre des sept jours, du pétrole, de l’eau, etc.. Ne jamais oublier que le premier Mad Max est sorti au cinéma en 1979, soit six ans après le choc pétrolier qui ébranla la suprématie américaine et enclencha une crise mondiale après la déclaration d’embargo de l’Organisation des pays exportateurs de pétrole (OPEP). On peut aussi faire entrer en résonnance ce dégoût de la guerre et la question du héros en réécoutant le discours burlesque de Fifi Macaffee, commandant fantasque de la brigade policière de Max dans le tout premier film : « Il paraît que les gens ne croient plus aux héros. On les emmerde. Toi et moi, on va les ressusciter les héros ! »
Torse nu, Fifi est filmé en contreplongée, un arrosoir à la main et un tissu d’avocat noué autour du cou, ce qui donne un cachet décalé à l’ensemble. Cette séquence sans doute la plus hallucinée de toute la saga est à prendre au second degré. Même Max ne croit pas à ce charabia. Nul doute que Miller brise le quatrième mur en s’adressant directement au spectateur, annonçant par la même le clou du spectacle : la folle course-poursuite finale encore sidérante aujourd’hui.
Pour comprendre cette obsession des héros déchus et de l’importance du sacrifice chez Miller, il faut peut-être resituer son premier film dans son contexte historique, soit quatre ans après la fin de la guerre du Vietnam. Ce fiasco militaire instigua le doute auprès de l’opinion publique américaine sous propagande impérialiste. Ce mythe du guerrier libérateur contre l’ennemi rouge est balayé par la débâcle américaine qui emporta près de 60 000 américains, même si le massacre des Vietnamiens avait pour sa part l’envergure d’un génocide, à l’instar de la guerre de Corée. Ho Chi Minh lui-même menaçait les américains :
« Vous pouvez tuer dix de mes hommes pour chacun des vôtres que nous tuerons. Mais même ainsi, vous perdrez et nous gagnerons. »
Ce présage se solda par 400 000 tonnes de napalm, 75 millions de litres d’agent orange, des centaines de milliers d’obus d’artillerie et l’une des guerres les plus meurtrières depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale avec plus de deux millions de civils vietnamiens qui périrent en plus des pertes militaires monstrueuses. Pour quelle mémoire collective ? Cette logique totale de chefs de guerre qui se livrent un bras de fer sans répit, on la retrouve à l’œuvre dans Furiosa et la guerre des quarante jours où les morts sont suggérés en piles de cadavres par un montage accéléré. C’est aussi le sens à donner au discours du Mange-Personne, lorsque Dementus cherche à prendre la citadelle et qu’il découvre, stupéfait, que les War Boys sont des kamikazes prêts à donner leur vie pour Immortan Joe.
Plus qu’une œuvre grand spectacle qui redéfinit la course-poursuite à chaque épisode, la saga Mad Max dénonce la folie de la guerre et la bestialité des Hommes. « Pour des raisons désormais oubliées, deux tribus se firent la guerre et provoquèrent un feu qui les engloutit » déplore l’History Man de Mad Max 2 entre deux images d’archives en noir et blanc. Si l’espoir est une erreur dans un monde gouverné par la domination et le darwinisme, la fin parfaite de Fury Road nous narrait une époque lointaine. C’est la quête éternelle de l’Homme pour se purger de ses passions morbides et devenir meilleur comme le racontait déjà le premier History Man. Le mythe de l’humanité dans toute sa splendeur et sa décadence.
« Where must we go… we who wander this Wasteland on search of our better selves ? »
Bande-annonce de Furiosa
Tests techniques de la saga à (re)lire sur MaG
Podcast « MaG Max » sur la saga
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