Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Mad Max: Fury Road
2015 · George Miller · Mad Max: Fury Road on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch the middle of the frame during every chase. (camera)
Miller and Seale keep the subject dead center, cut after cut. Your eye never hunts sideways across the widescreen, so Sixel can cut fast without losing you.
Payoff: The clarity is a rule, not luck: you always know where everyone is at top speed. In the reading: the closed set (cadre). The frame is what the reading calls a closed set: it decides exactly what information reaches you.
Notice the camera swinging from huge desert to tight rig. (camera)
Seale alternates the vast anamorphic horizon with close shots pressed against the War Rig. The two distances trade off in time with Junkie XL's percussion.
Payoff: The film breathes in and out, which is why two hours of chase never goes numb. In the reading: respiration-space. This alternation is respiration-space: the milieu opens wide, then the action pulls tight to a single line.
Count Tom Hardy's lines in the first half hour. (performance)
Hardy's Max grunts, glances, gets thrown around. He reacts more than he speaks. Theron's Furiosa makes the decisions, and her face does most of the film's talking.
Payoff: The title character is the hinge; the woman driving the truck is the one who acts.
Look at each vehicle in Immortan Joe's pursuit fleet. (setting)
Every machine has its own silhouette and job: the music truck at the rear, the porcupine cars, the rig itself. Real vehicles, driven and wrecked for the camera.
Payoff: The convoy reads as a whole society on wheels, not a pile of obstacles.
Listen for the flame-throwing guitar inside the orchestral score. (sound)
The Doof Warrior plays on screen, bolted to a wall of speakers. His guitar bleeds into the non-diegetic music until you cannot tell which is which.
Payoff: Sound in this world is a weapon and a drug, not accompaniment.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Keep your eye on the center of the frame. Everything Miller wants you to see is already there.