The echoes of the past that we hear in the opening minutes of Furiosa, which tell us why human society is but a memory, feel unsettlingly familiar. Pandemic. Runaway climate disaster and ecocide caused by human carbon emissions. Political instability and oppression. Gas wars. Water wars. Societal collapse. The first few minutes of the movie feel more like documentary than action spectacle. Here in the real world, our planet is dying and we’re literally running out of water; it feels like we’re all waiting for the proverbial dam to break.
What a fun and exciting topic for an escapist action blockbuster, right?
Turns out, in George Miller’s capable hands, that is right.
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It all started with an innocent enough question from my wife. She had no way of knowing when she asked it that the answer would lead to the both of us falling down a rabbit hole of cinema. (She’s been with her movie-obsessed partner long enough, though, to know that’s always a possibility. She knew who she was marrying!)
The two of us are always on the lookout for new shows we think the other would enjoy and that we can watch and discuss as we work our way through it together. Last fall, she mentioned a title she had been seeing on HBO Max for a few months – soulless media conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, which now owns HBO, recently rebranded the streaming service to the obnoxiously titled Max.
“Do you know anything about this Irma Vep?”
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If there’s any doubt that fashion-designer-cum-film-director Tom Ford loves playing the role of provocateur, the opening to his new film, Nocturnal Animals, should cast it out. A series of naked, morbidly obese women, each with a single stylistic flourish like a drum majorette’s hat or a pair of boots, gyrate on screen in super slow motion.
Absolutely nothing is left to the imagination.
Opinions about the sequence range from calling it body shaming to body positive. There’s no context for what is on the screen until the sequence is over. Your relative comfort with bodies that don’t conform to the Hollywood ideal of beauty will play a role in how you react, as well as how you feel about your own body. It’s one of those cinematic moments that tells you more about yourself than the film you’re watching. Ford probably included it just to get a rise out of people. It’s intentionally confrontational in what is a particularly confrontational movie.
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