In English currently we are doing close viewing for the movie Mad Mad Fury Road we had to look at a scene and then write about it. Here is my paragraphs
In the ‘redemption’ scene where Furosia talks to Max about how she knows the Green Place exists, Miller uses dialogue to effectively portray the feelings of the characters. Miller does this by Max asking Furosia “How do you know this place even exists?” in a way that makes him sound like he is not fully convinced that it even exists. It is here when Furosia tells Max that “I was born there” this confuses Max and you can tell in the way he asks “why’d you leave?” that he doesn’t understand why she would leave a place that is apparently so nice and somewhere she is desperate to go back to, to which Furiosa replies in a mournful way “I didn’t, I was taken as a child, stolen”. This interaction is used to give the audience a glimpse into Furosia’s backstory and help them understand her motives and why she wants to escape Imortan Joe’s hold. This interaction was also used to show the audience how far Furosia and Max’s relationship has come. It went from where they were constantly at war with each other to opening up and being vulnerable. The dialog in this scene works well with symbolism as when Furosia tells Max that she is looking for redemption it cuts to a low angle shot of Nux cuddling with one of the wives and looking thoughtful. Then he sees a bug crawling up her arm and he lets it crawl onto his fingers before he eats it. The clever use of this shot shows us that Nux is also looking for redemption and the bug symbolises that his world is changing from a world of machines to a world of nature but it has not changed enough for him to resist his upbringing of ‘if it is not useful it is not valued’. The line “I was taken as a child, stolen” can lead the audience to make the connection to child soldiers, child labourers and child trafficking. This is because in these situations they are taken at a young age and forced to do things against their will. Just like what happened to Furosia, she was taken against her will and then used as a wife and then when Joe found out that she was infertile, therefore no more use, he turned her into a soldier against her will.
Music can play a big part in creating the atmosphere in a scene. Miller knows this and uses the music in the ‘redemption’ scene to cleverly create an atmosphere while Max and Furosia are talking about the green place. We can see this when Max and Furosia are talking and we can hear a slow sombre violin in the background. Miller uses this to set the mood of the scene and makes the audience understand that it is a hard thing for Furosia to remember/ talk about as the wound from where she was taken away from her family still hurts even after all these years. Then when it cuts out when Furosia says she is looking for redemption it makes the word more powerful and brings attention to it. This tells the audience that redemption is very important to Furosia and she thinks that because of her background she is no longer human and needs to redeem herself. This makes the audience sympathise with Furosia and makes happy when she does get her redemption. In this scene Miller cleverly ties in the music with the lighting as inside the War Rig there is not much light but outside it is bright showing that Joe still has some hold on Furiosa and her past is holding her back but outside the word of Joe the world is her oyster and she can break free from his grasp and be redeemed. This can also be seen when she is looking out the window and there is a shadow falling across her face where the motor oil used to be when she was working for Joe showing that that is still a big part of her past and no matter how far she runs Joe will always have some sort of hold on her. The audience can use this to create similarities to their own lives as we all have things that we regret or have things that hold us back and make us feel like we need to be redeemed, it may not be as big as what happened to Furosia but we all have something and this scene can encourage the audience to work past that and find their own redemption like Furosia did.
