Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
Two films opening this weekend, which couldn't be more different in scale, but sharing two attributes: Both are meticulously directed, by confident filmmakers, and both have unexpected and fascinating climactic sequences. It seems to make sense to begin with both films at their endings.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
George Miller's latest (last?) chapter of the Mad Max chronicle doesn't merely carry the weight of all the previous episodes; it also takes on, quite purposely, the nature of the revenge melodrama itself. (Do spoilers follow? Probably, but I'll try to be oblique.) Like the first Mad Max, Furiosa is built around an atrocity that haunts its title character, a well-worn set-up that uses the desire for vengeance as its narrative engine. I say "well-worn" because of the familiarity of the structure, but let me hasten to say there's nothing tired about the first hour or so of Furiosa, which buzzes with ingenuity and Miller's distinctly Oz sense of gallows humor. (Favorite fragment of weirdie poetry: a villain contemplatively munching on "human blood sausage" in the Wasteland moonlight.)
Furiosa is not the first film to question the cost of vengeance, of course, but the film's climactic sequence is striking in its commitment to deconstructing the baser drives of the revenge story. The Wasteland has never looked bleaker than it does in the finish here, stripped of its boss vehicles and steampunk bric-a-brac and whackadoodle characters—here it's just Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) and chief nemesis Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), talking through existential truths and grinning into the void. It is the opposite of the slam-bang finale we expect—in fact, the movie doesn't quite settle on a single specific ending. Are the excerpts from Fury Road that punctuate the end credits a post-production attempt at giving the audience some of the gonzo action we expect? It feels like it.
In retrospect, the climax plays like what Clint Eastwood has done in his late-career reversals of his younger revenge sagas: It's built around the denial of expectations in favor of something deeper, and it carries resonance because of the history of its predecessors. Like Gran Torino, Furiosa seems exhausted by the demands of vengeance. Working back from that ending, Furiosa becomes more interesting than its previous two hours. As I've said, it opens with a bang (Alyla Browne plays the youthful title role for a good chunk of the picture), its early reels dominated by Hemsworth's uproarious performance. I swear his false nose is modeled to make him resemble Stewart Granger, and Hemsworth occupies the role with similarly chesty derring-do, turning Dementus into a ridiculous sadist who, in his own mind, has lofty intentions.
The film's middle section stalls just a little, despite some expectedly dandy truck-chasing mayhem (the movie's curious look, slightly juddery and non-alive, is either cheap special effects or a deliberate nod to cartoon action—I don't know which, but it works well). Taylor-Joy can glower like nobody's business, but there actually isn't a whole lot for her to play, other than leaping into the frame and striking poses. There's something about her size that is useful for Miller's revisionist take: no globe-straddling warrior like Charlize Theron, she's closer in dimension to the Feral Kid, offering heroics at the human level. Tom Burke's turn as a taciturn but sympathetic driver is similarly low-key. This underscores a theme: In a world in which most people appear to have embraced insanity, the quietly sane are able to recognize each other. (Insert your own note about the film reflecting the era of its making.)
There will be a consensus that Fury Road was a superior action picture, and I guess that's probably true, although I didn't quite adore that film the way everybody else did. There's something to be said for Furiosa's somber ending, though, and the suggestion that everything resolves itself in sand, wind, and futility.
Evil Does Not Exist
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's masterly tandem from 2021, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Drive My Car, announced to the world the depth of his directing talent. His new one appears less complete than those two movies, but that might be by design.
So, the ending. We've been following a handful of characters through a series of scenes that have, generally, to do with a rural area destined to be developed by a corporation interested in establishing a glamping site, a resort that will surely wreck the local water supply. (The movie is not as straightforward in its storytelling as this sounds, but that's the gist.) We may expect a few different outcomes for this situation.
But the final minutes of Evil Does Not Exist fulfill exactly none of those expectations. I know my own soft hopes for some of the characters (the middle of this movie suggests a kind of Local Hero scenario) came crashing down in a way that it took some time to shake off. But this isn't unusual for Hamaguchi. Even some of his short-of-feature-length films have a quality of randomness that disconcerts, and I thought the late-going road trip in Drive My Car was a puzzling distraction from an elegant trajectory.
If the ending of Evil Does Not Exist seems cruel and arbitrary, maybe it fits anyway. Meddle with nature and pay the cost, even if you are a likable character caught in the crossfire. This means the movie is a tough go, but it's impressive, and defiant in playing by its own rules. That is the disposition of the main character (Hitoshi Omika), a kind of Thoreau type whose wood-chopping is a sign of his vitality. It may be the disposition of the director, too—delivering the usual satisfactions is not Hamaguchi's way.
May 24, 2024
