Windhoek - Soaring over Namibia’s Skeleton Coast in a single prop Cessna 210, just 300m from the ground, I could see the contours of hundreds of vessels that had run aground on this remote Atlantic headland, slowly corroding in the saline mist and rusting beneath the sand dunes.
The only sign of life was the hundreds of seal colonies that commandeer huge sections of this seemingly endless coastline, like infantries patrolling their territories. This is an isolated realm of raging currents and swirling winds, where thick blubber and aerodynamic plumage seem to be the desired attire.
With a population of just 2.3 million scattered over an area six times larger than England, Namibia is vast, wild and rugged. Bleak yet beautiful, stark yet stunning, it brandishes one of the world’s most photogenic and innately cinematic landscapes. Unsurprisingly, it has caught the attention of film-makers, as well as travellers.
Chosen by Australian director George Miller as the setting in which to unravel Mad Max: Fury Road, Namibia’s epic landscapes serve as the perfect location to continue the dystopian depiction of the future that he captured so vividly in the first three instalments of the action movie series. Smothered with huge, shape shifting dunes, inhospitable coastlines and rugged mountain ranges, it is a harsh and lunar landscape of staggering proportions.
Large parts of the film were shot on the outskirts of the coastal town of Swakopmund – the southern boundary of the Skeleton Coast – in a rocky and undulating area known as the “Moon Landscape” and it was here that I met the film’s Namibian production manager, Raymond Inichab, who also moonlights as a tour guide.
“Here, we have one of the oldest and emptiest deserts in the world,” he told me as I stared over the cratered, boulder-strewn scene. “The production crews that came here were stunned by what we have. I’m expecting this to be a busy time for Namibia.”
In the first three Mad Max movies, Miller indulges in prolonged, almost lascivious, shots of the Australian Outback. In Namibia, the director has found a similarly seductive backdrop that is impossible to tear your eyes away from. Producers can spend years composing their mise en scène, but in Namibia the searing sun and roaring winds have designed a set that is all but finished.
Playing out 50 years in the future, Fury Road sees Max, played by Tom Hardy, and Furiosa (Charlize Theron), attempting to traverse a desolate and inhospitable desert while trying to outrun a bloodthirsty gang. As I followed in their footsteps, it didn’t take much imagination to see why this country had appealed to Miller. The first three films saw Max either chasing, or being chased through Australia’s dusty red Outback, but flooding in New South Wales forced production to take place in Africa at the 11th hour.
The stand-in setting perfectly captures the characters’ desperation.
The Independent