Somethings cannot be explained in one simple blog post. So I’m doing a series of reviews of Mad Max: Fury Road. This one is about the colours used in the film.

Twenty-four hours ago I was sitting in a theater watching Mad Max: Fury Road. If I had a choice, I’d still be there, watching the film again and again and again. The Judge who made the statement about pornography being difficult to define, but you know it when you see it, also applies to art.

I can’t explain why a 1954 untitled painting which consisted of a block of blue paint and a block of yellow paint recently sold for $45 million. But clearly, to someone it was art. Films can be like that, except pornos. You kinda know what you are looking at when a porno film is on.

I’m pretty sure it’s not pornography…

Mad Max is not a porno, but it sure as hell is art. Sweet, subtle, glorious art. Color Theory considers how colour is used to convey emotion and scenes in films.  There is an excellent analysis of colour palette in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down here.

George Miller is a man who knows how to use colour in films and this is never more apparent than in Fury Road. The dusty yellow and orange of the desert is a rich and vibrant palette that avoids being washed out and monotonous. Everything is covered in dust, the world is a desert. A parched and dry, dead place. People are a key part of that colouration. They wear ragged clothes that are filthy (of course) but are also cast in earth tones and act as effective camouflage.

This contrasts with the bone white colouration of Immortan Joe’s War Boys. With scarification, white body paint and skull like eyes, they are the walking dead. They worship the machine like purity of chrome to the point where they spray silver paint into their mouths, staining their faces in moments before a kamikaze act of self-sacrifice.

While the white skinned people live above the dust and desiccation of utter poverty. In the dust the people are mutated, tumour ridden, desperate and savage. They are coloured, stained, by their environment and the harsh reality of their lives. It’s not a racial statement so much as one of cultural distance and separation.

When water comes, it is a sharp contrast to the glaring heat of the desert. The water that falls from the giving hand of Immortan Joe creates a shadow that the people clamour for. The cool darkness of shade means survival and life.

This is contrasted later when Imperator Furiosa, Max and their group pass through a swamp at night. The sky is a black-blue, the water is poisonous and glimmers like an oil spill. Only black crows fly in the night sky. The silhouettes of birds and the people, who are eerily reminiscent of the  Landstrider creatures in The Dark Crystal as they pick their way like grotesque black flamingos across the poisonous pools, add to the complete alienness of the scene.

What happened to the Landstriders really disturbed me as a kid

The colours of the landscape are the perfect backdrop to the bright colours of the explosions and fires that are so much a part of the film. Vehicles explode, flamethrowers jet orange and yellow rainbows of fire into the air. The warboys use flares to signal each other. Not flares of fire and light, but explosive paint-bombs that create flak-like puffs of colour in the desert sky. Blue and red, strong colours that call for action and add another layer to the visual experience.

The palette of fire and desert goes into a whole other place when the epic car chase goes into a catastrophic sandstorm. The explosions against the turbulent background of massive tornadoes of swirling dust. There are flashes of clear sky which just add to the contrasts. Red and orange and yellow. It’s a fruit basket of fire and writhing energy.

People are cast in their own colours, Max blends in with the landscape, faded khaki shirt, heavy black leather jacket, trousers and boots. His face is stained and earthen. Charlize Theron has said she started her filming day by rolling in the dust to get the right look. Furiosa wears black grease in a band across her forehead. That and the dull metal of her artificial arm suggests she is no longer human. A cyborg, with a mechanical arm and a brain that has moved beyond being human. Her colours are the colours of a machine.

The wives of Imortan come in a range of colours, milk white and blonde, dark skinned, red-headed, each are beautiful in their own way. They wear bridal white. Muslin wrappings that mark them as pure and innocent. Vestigal virgins who will be the mothers of the new generation of warlords.

Colour is exceptionally important in a visual medium. Like the painting that sold for millions – blue and yellow. Two colours which feature in a wide range of the palette used in Fury Road. I’m still not sure if the untitled painting is art, but the film… that I would say is worth millions.