His Name is Max
The scene where Max saves Furiosa (which I have yet to watch all the way through without crying. It is cinematic brilliance.) Furiosa was stabbed because she was holding onto Max and wasn’t able to both defend herself and protect him. She continued to hold him long after she was stabbed, until he was able to climb to (relative) safety. Only then- desperate and dying- did she move onto her real goal: killing Joe, ending everything.
Everyone plays a role in the finale- everyone moves to align the planets so that she, Furiosa, can succeed. Max fights Rictus; Nux takes over driving the Rig; Cheedo tricks everyone so that she can be there to pull Furiosa onto the truck. Toast keeps Joe from being able to shoot Furiosa and then CLIMBS OVER HIS CORPSE to keep driving the truck (note: I LOVE that. She may have been captured, but she was no damsel in distress. May Joe RUE the day he ever underestimated his wives.) This is everyone’s hard-earned victory.
At the beginning of the film, Max had his humanity stripped from him and was reduced, like the Wives, to an object to be physically used and discarded. He was not Max; he was only “Bloodbag.“But not Furiosa. Furiosa gave him a name (even if it was just "Fool.”) She trusted him to drive. She let him have her back. She told him her story, and he witnessed her grief. She gave him options. She listened to his advice. She took a fatal injury to protect him. She comforted him, confessed to him, trusted him to literally and metaphorically support her so that she could make that shot. She gave him his humanity back
.And so him willingly giving her the blood from his veins at the end is an enormous moment for Max- it had been stolen from him, but now it was his again, to do with what he chose. He CHOSE to give it away. He had his humanity, he had his agency, and he was, once again, a “person.” At the beginning of the movie he tells her his name doesn’t matter- after all, he was only a Bloodbag. But when he GIVES his blood he is definitively able to say, “My name is Max,” because now it DOES matter. Because of her, he has reclaimed himself. That name and that blood is once again his to give.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1Fvwog8.
Tags: yup yup yup, fury road, text post, more awesome analysis.
