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Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Its also a little disgusting in a fantastical, body-horror kind of way.
He insists that killing him would turn her into him.
And then sheturns him into a tree.
We then see Dementus: old, desiccated, but still alive, as much mulch as man.
We then see a red ripe peach growing out of that tree its first fruit.
None of this comes entirely out of the blue.
Thats when she sees a small gaggle of Dementuss pirates killing and cutting up her horse.
The girl keeps that pit on her person at all times over the course of the film.
When her hair is long, she hides it in her hair.
Beyond being a source of growth and life, the pit becomes a symbol of who she is.
The Wasteland is a world in which nothing can grow.
The seed is hope.
The entire last act of the movie unfolds in unconventional fashion.
But Miller refuses to give that resolution to us.
But now, Furiosa becomes the Furiosa we know fromFury Road.
She carves off her hair into a buzz cut and fashions a mechanical prosthetic arm for herself.
Everything usable has been taken off to battle, so she gets a busted jalopy with only three wheels.
Watching her go off into the distance, the History Man declares, That is the darkest of angels.
The fifth rider of the apocalypse.
At this point, Dementus is already defeated.
His army is shattered and gone.
All thats left are a few of his closest lieutenants.
Uh, good-bye), and they all go in different directions.
We then see Dementus riding into a sandstorm, convinced that hes lost her.
And then the film fades out.
When we fade back in, Dementus is quietly waking up inside a makeshift tent post-sandstorm.
He goes to take a drink of water but sees that his water bottle has been cut and drained.
He realizes hes been found.
He steps out of the tent.
Furiosa appears behind him.
Its a scene straight out of a Sergio Leone western.
You are a freak, Dementus says, chuckling.
You couldve nicked me in the night, but you didnt.
So you must be that other thing.
Are you that thing?
He tries to run away, but she quietly follows and overtakes him.
She takes off her face covering and asks, Remember me?
(Thats the line shell later utter to Immortan Joe, before killing him, inFury Road.)
He responds, You fabulous thing.
You crawled out of a pitiless grave, deeper than hell.
Only one thing will do that for you.
Fifteen years ago, there was a woman, Furiosa now tells him.
That doesnt jog his memory.
Do I get a clue?
Was she your mother?
He starts hazarding some guesses, asking if she was a redhead and how she died.
(Did she scream?
The ones that yell the least dont stick.)
Dementus has killed lots of women, it seems, in his days on the Wasteland.
My childhood, my mother I want them back, Furiosa yells.
I want them back!
Now, Dementus finally starts to really lose his cool.
Thats how I feel!
He too has lost his family: My own magnificent beauties, taken unjustly.
I too crave revenge.
She speaks of her mother again: Despite what you did to her, she was magnificent.
He tells her that after hes gone, shell still be mourning her mommy magnificent.
Waking up, as if from a dream (orina dream), Dementus finally recognizes her.
he asks, using the nickname he gave her when she was a child.
Someone worthy of me, he now reflects quietly.
He tells her that no amount of sensation (or destruction) will ever be enough.
Miller is reminding us that these movies are about our capacity to destroy ourselves.
These are meant to be bleak, sad, tragic films.
And its quite a thing, to remind the viewer that your hero is doomed.
Everybodys lost somebody in this world.
But inFuriosa, we understand that we are not so far from the Before Days.
Dementus, however, clearly reached his terminal freak-out point long ago.
If anything, its made him more and more psychotic.
And this is when Furiosa will have to decide what to do with him.
Everything is leading up to this point: the History Mans prophecy.
She should kill Dementus.
The question is, Do you have it in you to make it epic?
Thats quite a word:epic.
This is when the film takes a step back.
We then see him tied to a tree, crucified, which is the way her mother died.
Then the History Man says he heard the truth from Furiosa herself.
At this point, we are fully in the world of myth.
So there is even a possibility that this story itself is not true.
We see a hand pick the sole red peach that has sprouted from this tree its first fruit.
We hear Furiosa saying, This is not for you or me, almost as if addressing Dementus.
No, this fruit is for others.
It will indicate that there is some hope for growth in this scorched life.
But here we have something new: a symbol of a humans ability to grow something beautiful.
The hair, the contact with living material, rejuvenates the dead branch.
All throughout the film, Furiosa has been plotting her escape.
Every time shes foiled for a different reason.
There, she returned to help Jack.
Then she and Jack attempted to escape together, only to be caught by Dementus.
It was never the right time for Furiosa to escape.
