The insane genius of MAD MAX
The insane genius of MAD MAX
Jan 26
The title Mad Max is more fitting for the 1979 Australian cult classic than you might realise. George Miller assembled a seemingly mad team of ambitious filmmakers to endure twelve weeks of production in the dusty, hot Australian outback with next-to-no budget and incredibly high expectation. Their craziness set a standard for independent filmmaking I only wish was easier to emulate today. It launched Mel Gibson. It launched George Miller. Mad Max would become a cornerstone of Australian pop culture.
I’ll state the obvious up front and get the one negative thing about Mad Max out of the way quickly: It has not aged well. But nor should it be expected to. With a budget that had the crew re-painting the same few cars over and over so it looked like they had different vehicles in different scenes, and where the lead actor is actually the only guy wearing leathers (everyone else wears vinyl), there’s bound to be some obvious aging as the years tick by. To sit back and watch Mad Max now is true and honest venture into nostalgia– yes, even if you’re seeing it for the first time. How does that work? The film is stamped with a history, it was a trend-setter. It is a benchmark. If you’re an indie filmmaker living Down Under today (raises hand…) be damned if Mad Max isn’t the purest of all Aussie-film inspiration.
George Miller took his (approximated) four-hundred-thousand dollar budget and proceeded to blind-side the Australian film industry, its critics and the movie-going public. The mix was deliberately potent and utterly exhilarating: Dusty, harsh apocalyptic Australia. Kitted-out V8′s (namely The Interceptor, Max’s Ford Falcon XB sedan, formally a real police car). Strange gang of characters. A hero’s journey with a juicy revenge. Bloody violence. Brutal deaths, and insane crashes that concluded revolutionary high-speed car chases. All that’s missing is the cutesy love interest and a saucy beach scene… oh, wait — it even has those.
Mad Max not only caught audiences by surprise with these (at the time) unique elements, but it forced a level of respect onto the team that produced the film. Especially the two main players: George Miller and Mel Gibson.
I’m told that, especially in his early stuff like the Mad Max series of films and Lethal Weapon(s), that Mel Gibson is a bit of a looker. I’ll never know, nor relate to those sentiments. However, what I do recognize when looking back on Mad Max is that Gibson’s ability as a performer was apparent from the beginning. He clearly works close with Miller and trusts him to give Max depth beyond what would eventually become the typical action star. There are some incredible moments by Gibson that make Mad Max complete. Something as simple as the perfect expression while speeding down the outback freeway plants a seed in your head about the kind of methodical character Max truly is. I’m sure this level of detail benefited both Gibson and Miller as they carried the character — already developed — into the sequels. Keeping in mind there was hardly a precedence at this stage. There was no Die Hard. No Terminator. No Rambo. For a while, Mad Max (or The Road Warrior in the States) was the main man.
Helping Mad Max being met with such awe was the fact that is was the first Australian film in history to be shot with a widescreen anamorphic lens. How fortunate that such an event should land in the hands of George Miller. He takes full advantage of the scope; whipping audiences down dusty highways at real-time ludicrous speeds, crashing them into caravans, throwing them under trucks and ripping off their hands, all within the wonderfully glorious widescreen ratio. Take note of the speeds the motorcycle reaches as it frantically glides down the center of the Victorian country roads (140km/h plus). Then consider the cameraman, and exactly how this shot was achieved without any special effects.Amongs all the high speed action, just when the film needs to cool off a little, Miller fills the frame with gorgeous Australian landscapes, beaches, desert sand hills and outback towns. He compliment them with deliberate scenes that move the plot forward nicely. In terms of cinematography, the lighting is cheap and straightforward, making it independently perfect for the kind of film Mad Max is.
Testament to how revolutionary and important Mad Max was to Australian film, it went on to earn over $100 million dollars worldwide. Quite staggering for a little outback film shot for $400,00 in 1978. It was initially banned in New Zealand and Switzerland for being too violent. For release in America, all voices were dubbed to have American accents. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that American audiences had the original Australian soundtrack made available to them on DVD (and a short theatrical re-release).
Mad Max was released onto screens before I was born. I have vague memories of seeing moments of it on my Father’s VHS copy when I was about seven or eight, later in the Eighties. When I asked him about it, his eyes sparked with vivid memory of the first time he saw Mad Max on the big screen. A lad from the country, he sneaked into a city cinema with friends and sat through the screening frozen solid in amazement. He went again days later.
I recently sat and watched Mad Max again with my Father and could not escape the warm comfort of nostalgia about the Aussie classic. While he was beaming at seeing scenes he remembered from years ago all over again on his new plasma television, I was in awe of what Miller achieved with so little. Quite clearly, Mad Max was an event back in the day– one I only wish I could have been apart of.
Thankfully, I appreciate what it achieved and can grasp what it must have felt like to see something like this for the first time– before there was anything else like it.
MAD MAX
82/100
