V For Vendetta: Spoilers Ahead, Ye Be Warned!!!
This was a really great film. I’m not sure if it’s as “pivotal for our time” as the press junket wants it to be, but it’s damn good.
Now the original comic series was written back in 1988 by Alan Moore. I hadn’t read the series until recently because my first intro to Moore’s work was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which I was deeply unimpressed with. League was nothing more than playing around with classic character in shocking, mostly sexually violent, ways. Nothing very deep or insightful about it the series at all. V for Vendetta is another matter entirely.
The film does follow the comic book fairly closely and thank the Gods for it. I think the one thing we all have Peter Jackson to thank for is getting Hollywood to realize that the Fantasy and SciFi market is not simply about the gimmick, it’s about the incredible stories that those writer are free to create, the subject matter they are free to explore.
Moore’s Existentialist take on Freedom is a refreshing reminder of both the control and the self responsibility we give up when we give up power. Anthropologists have struggled with the question for years of exactly how egalitarian band societies with acquired merit become socially stratified chiefdoms with prescribed merit and so on to the modern state societies. By what mechanism will people give up power over their own lives? Why do they do it? The two prevailing theories are that after a society reaches a certain critical mass, if you will, an infrastructure of control is required to organize community activities such as digging irrigation ditches, or building mounds or temples or organizing raiding parties or make treaties with neighbors or whathaveyou. One person’s take on that role of community organizer and eventually as more organizers come from a certain family, that family takes on that role with their relatives in descending orders of status by how far distant they are related to the chief. The other theory is that people are fools and lazy and ambitious individuals garner power for their own ends with the same results.
Given what we see in today’s political arena I think most would favor the latter theory, but I have faith in humanity and have to believe that the reasoning of the former must have come into play at least somewhat.
I mean, as right as it is to be responsible for your own destiny, we do need someone to organize a police force, fire department, garbage pick up, public schools, power grids and so on. Western nations are simply to big and too complex to trust to even the gentle idealized anarchy of Moore & the Wachowski's Borther's V (which I think may be in part based on this work, though perhaps unconsciously). But where does the balance lie and how do prevent tyrannies from occurring? What is our responsibility in governing ourselves, not only as people, but as a nation? I think the ideal of anarchy raised by both the book and the film are naive, but these are very good questions that we need to be constantly asking ourselves, especially now.
The with any medium trying to related two hundreds or so pages of graphic novel into two hours of screen time, the Wachowski Brothers had to pick a single theme and run with it and there is plenty of action to be had in toppling a tyrannical power. Though the outright fascism of the 1988 comic book has been replaced with the more generalized anti-terrorism paranoia of today. The pivotal event sending the U.K. down this dark road in the comic being a nuclear war and a self-induced bio-weapon plague in the film. What a difference 18 years makes. The plague ties the entire Larkhill Camp background into the story much more seemlessly, though one might walk away with the sensation they just sat through Fahrenheit 9/11 again. *chuckle*
Evy’s journey is the same, and here is where the audience is left with some questions. V is obviously a madman, I don’t think anyone can argue that. But what was he trying to accomplish? To free her, as says? I have to question that. All the heroic references to Edmond Dantes aside, that was a monstrous act and shows that V as a morally ambiguous character which makes one question whether the ends do justify the means? (Indeed, Dumas' Monte Cristo himself is also morally ambiguous character that takes is lust for revenge, his vendetta, so far as to almost kill an innocent child.)
And Moore’s portrait of a power structure’s collapse with various scavengers so busy trying to gain control of the top of the pile they don’t realize the pile is collapsing underneath them, was very realistic I felt. To often story is are concerned with mainly the struggle of bringing the tyrannical power down and not what happens afterwards. Moore doesn’t tell a story of what happens afterwards, but he does acknowledge that there is a massive transition taking place between destroying and creating. Something hinted at in the movie when V gives command of the train to Evy.
But one aspect I particularly liked in the film was how they showed that V is every person. Everyone has the capability to become V if pushed to the brink. Every one has V in them.
My Dad makes eggs like that too, only he calls them “One Eyed Kellys". ;)
And Valerie’s story, and the lesson she teaches, is incredibly told in both mediums. “The very last inch…”
The acting is excellent, Natalie Portman held up her end of the story very well and Hugo Weaving does an amazing job of emoting through that mask for the entire film! (Plus I think I am falling love with his voice. Once he dropped that creepy sibilance of Agent Smith, his voice has a wonderful tonal baritone.) And if someone can get me the alliterative monologue V delivers when he first meets Evy, I would be grateful. Delivering that in and of itself must have been a feat! Stephen Fry was brilliantly cast and his short and wonderfully understated performance is one of the highlights of the film. The action is quite good. If one thinks about it, one can tell techniques from the Matrix were used, but nothing was so obvious as to prevent V for Vendetta being a complete departure from the Wachowski Brothers earlier work.
This one is a definite “must see”.
Now the original comic series was written back in 1988 by Alan Moore. I hadn’t read the series until recently because my first intro to Moore’s work was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which I was deeply unimpressed with. League was nothing more than playing around with classic character in shocking, mostly sexually violent, ways. Nothing very deep or insightful about it the series at all. V for Vendetta is another matter entirely.
The film does follow the comic book fairly closely and thank the Gods for it. I think the one thing we all have Peter Jackson to thank for is getting Hollywood to realize that the Fantasy and SciFi market is not simply about the gimmick, it’s about the incredible stories that those writer are free to create, the subject matter they are free to explore.
Moore’s Existentialist take on Freedom is a refreshing reminder of both the control and the self responsibility we give up when we give up power. Anthropologists have struggled with the question for years of exactly how egalitarian band societies with acquired merit become socially stratified chiefdoms with prescribed merit and so on to the modern state societies. By what mechanism will people give up power over their own lives? Why do they do it? The two prevailing theories are that after a society reaches a certain critical mass, if you will, an infrastructure of control is required to organize community activities such as digging irrigation ditches, or building mounds or temples or organizing raiding parties or make treaties with neighbors or whathaveyou. One person’s take on that role of community organizer and eventually as more organizers come from a certain family, that family takes on that role with their relatives in descending orders of status by how far distant they are related to the chief. The other theory is that people are fools and lazy and ambitious individuals garner power for their own ends with the same results.
Given what we see in today’s political arena I think most would favor the latter theory, but I have faith in humanity and have to believe that the reasoning of the former must have come into play at least somewhat.
I mean, as right as it is to be responsible for your own destiny, we do need someone to organize a police force, fire department, garbage pick up, public schools, power grids and so on. Western nations are simply to big and too complex to trust to even the gentle idealized anarchy of Moore & the Wachowski's Borther's V (which I think may be in part based on this work, though perhaps unconsciously). But where does the balance lie and how do prevent tyrannies from occurring? What is our responsibility in governing ourselves, not only as people, but as a nation? I think the ideal of anarchy raised by both the book and the film are naive, but these are very good questions that we need to be constantly asking ourselves, especially now.
The with any medium trying to related two hundreds or so pages of graphic novel into two hours of screen time, the Wachowski Brothers had to pick a single theme and run with it and there is plenty of action to be had in toppling a tyrannical power. Though the outright fascism of the 1988 comic book has been replaced with the more generalized anti-terrorism paranoia of today. The pivotal event sending the U.K. down this dark road in the comic being a nuclear war and a self-induced bio-weapon plague in the film. What a difference 18 years makes. The plague ties the entire Larkhill Camp background into the story much more seemlessly, though one might walk away with the sensation they just sat through Fahrenheit 9/11 again. *chuckle*
Evy’s journey is the same, and here is where the audience is left with some questions. V is obviously a madman, I don’t think anyone can argue that. But what was he trying to accomplish? To free her, as says? I have to question that. All the heroic references to Edmond Dantes aside, that was a monstrous act and shows that V as a morally ambiguous character which makes one question whether the ends do justify the means? (Indeed, Dumas' Monte Cristo himself is also morally ambiguous character that takes is lust for revenge, his vendetta, so far as to almost kill an innocent child.)
And Moore’s portrait of a power structure’s collapse with various scavengers so busy trying to gain control of the top of the pile they don’t realize the pile is collapsing underneath them, was very realistic I felt. To often story is are concerned with mainly the struggle of bringing the tyrannical power down and not what happens afterwards. Moore doesn’t tell a story of what happens afterwards, but he does acknowledge that there is a massive transition taking place between destroying and creating. Something hinted at in the movie when V gives command of the train to Evy.
But one aspect I particularly liked in the film was how they showed that V is every person. Everyone has the capability to become V if pushed to the brink. Every one has V in them.
My Dad makes eggs like that too, only he calls them “One Eyed Kellys". ;)
And Valerie’s story, and the lesson she teaches, is incredibly told in both mediums. “The very last inch…”
The acting is excellent, Natalie Portman held up her end of the story very well and Hugo Weaving does an amazing job of emoting through that mask for the entire film! (Plus I think I am falling love with his voice. Once he dropped that creepy sibilance of Agent Smith, his voice has a wonderful tonal baritone.) And if someone can get me the alliterative monologue V delivers when he first meets Evy, I would be grateful. Delivering that in and of itself must have been a feat! Stephen Fry was brilliantly cast and his short and wonderfully understated performance is one of the highlights of the film. The action is quite good. If one thinks about it, one can tell techniques from the Matrix were used, but nothing was so obvious as to prevent V for Vendetta being a complete departure from the Wachowski Brothers earlier work.
This one is a definite “must see”.
posted by KiplingKat | 1:56 AM
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