Dir: James McTeigue
[img_assist|nid=900|title=Bloody revolutionaries, always thinking they know better than our benevolent totalitarian masters|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=400|height=300]
You don’t get many films these days trumpeting the joys of anarchy. Especially not multi-million dollar movies produced by the Wachowski Brothers and based on an Alan Moore graphic novel.
And there’s a reason for that. Even in this day and age where the diversity of opinion and opportunities to voice one’s worthless opinions seem countless, it’s still essentially an illusion. Every side of politics, regardless of one’s upbringing or experiences at university, preaches change, justice or better ways, but all want their version of the status quo upheld.
Because people don’t want to lose their jobs, see their interest rates go up, or their petrol prices sky rocket. They want their television shows uninterrupted by news, they want to listen to the latest hollow songs produced by pale simulacra of humans whenever the tap of the radio is turned on, they want no disruptions to their broadband access, and they want their trains to run on time.
No matter the regime, whether ‘twas the Third Reich, the junta rule of the Generals in Greece or Argentina, Stalin’s Gulag craziness, Khmer Rouge fun, Saddam’s heyday, or Nixon’s empire; there were always a large number of people saying, “Eh, it’s not so bad.” They’re not bad people per se, or particularly selfish when they draw the curtains and go back to bed after seeing their neighbours next door raided by stormtroopers, dragged out in their underwear, and driven away never to be seen again.
“It won’t happen to me,” they fervently hope, probably never having heard of Pastor Niemoller or his poem “First they came”. It speaks of government forces coming for groups of unpopular people, but not speaking out against it, not being one of them, as it proceeds through the list of different “types” taken away.
It ends with “when they came for me, there was no-one left to speak out.”
The Britain of V for Vendetta is the fruition of every authoritarian, fundamentalist, fascist wet dream. It is the wet dream of Margaret Thatcher, of St Reagan, of Stalin and every preacher that screams about how much Jesus hates fags and darkies.
It is a society where government monitoring of conversations in your own home is commonplace, roving gangs of police called Fingermen patrol the streets after curfew looking for victims to rape and butcher, and the threat of terrorism is emphasised everywhere. The country is perpetually at a Yellow threat level of readiness, in that there isn’t about to be a terrorist attack, but there could be at any moment. Alert, not alarmed.
But this isn’t the drab, Kafkaesque, totalitarian world of Orwell’s 1984. People have colour television. They still have families, go to the pub, watch government approved telly, and have countless products to buy. Unless they’re in the groups the government doesn’t approve of (gays, protesters, muslims, dark-skinned people, redheads, the Irish, people with big noses), they’ll generally be left alone.
They’re entertained by a sanctimonious blowhard (Roger Allam) who screams “England Prevails!” at the end of every television broadcast, who praises every government action and condemns anyone with the temerity to complain.
A nasty Big Brother in the form of High Chancellor Sutler (ironically played by John Hurt) glares down from a giant video screen upon his minions, booming like the Almighty of the Old Testament, imprecations of doom in every sentence.
And so appears V (Hugo Weaving), a lunatic in a Guy Fawkes mask, and the fashion stylings of the Count of Monte Cristo crossed with a ninja. He bears a profound grudge against the Powers That Be, and intends nothing less than their utter destruction.
He doesn’t want to hand out how-to-vote cards at polling booths. He doesn’t argue left / right wing politics online all day every day. He doesn’t call talkback programs and complain about the amount of immigrants not talking the English all proper-like.
It is with death at the point of a blade and with the force of high explosives that he intends to make permanent changes to society. Like his hero Guy Fawkes, who sought to blow up Parliament and ended up hung, drawn and quartered for his troubles.
To call him a terrorist is too simple, too lacking in explanation to be remotely close to it. V is a fucking insane, amoral, violent lunatic. He doesn’t intend to become the new Order. His “justice”, for he was terribly wronged, is nothing but, as the title would suggest, apocalyptic revenge. He is more monster than man, and more idea than monster. It is debatable how much humanity he has left, if any at all.
He reminds me of the concept from Japanese mythology of distressed people feeling emotions of such incredible intensity that an ikiryo is created, like a malevolent demon or ghost, which goes on to wreck vengeance upon the world.
V is such a creature. The fact that he wears a Guy Fawkes mask all the time, and a Joey Ramone wig as a costume, is to be expected in a work derived from a graphic novel. But V is certainly no super hero.
One dark and lecherous night he saves Evey (Natalie Portman) from the hands and fingers and other parts of Fingermen. Evey is just trying to get by in a fucked up world not of her making, but she has no taste for revolution. She just wants to stop being afraid all the time.
In the film’s opening minutes, after V blows up the Old Bailey to the tune of the 1812 Overture, he brings her into his world of alliteration and Shakespeare quotes. In a remarkable example of propaganda, the Government spins the building’s destruction into being a planned demolition of an unsafe structure. They don’t want to admit that their symbols of authority could be destroyed so effortlessly, for that makes them seem less than omnipotent.
And we can’t have that, in the same way that, quite often, the most macho of posturing dickheads are sometimes the most insecure, deep down inside, beneath the layers of stupidity, and the stench of semen and ham. They’re sensitive souls, too. Wiv fweelings.
V hijacks his way onto the airwaves, determined to deliver his message to the people. He knows that the awful government has them so blinded and compliant that they can barely see their shackles or care as to their weight. But he does not blame the government in the broader sense. He blames the people for letting it happen, and he swears that they will have their chance to remember, and remember well the 5th of November in a year hence.
There is plenty more to the plot, there are plenty of sly asides and contemporary references to drive home the film’s message to not be complaisant in our own demise under the government’s guise of maintaining Security and getting us to fear fear itself. There are plenty of characters as well, though only V and Evey are given enough facets to their personalities for them to matter, and they all have much to do, with plenty of dialogue and ponderous speech-making.
You might be under the misapprehension that the movie is an action flick. I would say that of its 130 minute running time, less than about 10 minutes of that is explosions or fight scenes, though they are done well. The rest is plot developments and elaboration upon themes we kinda got within the first half hour. For this reason the flick will most likely be a surprise to those still cursing the Matrix films, and a bore to those hoping for more of the same. I’m really not sure how to label it, nor do I really want to. Pigeonholes are for pigeons.
It’s too strange a celebration of anarchist thinking to be anything more than a curiousity in this day and age. Films often pay lip service to “grass roots” activism, and the little guy making a difference against unfeeling governments and greedy corporations. Rarely do they admit that the whole freaking system’s out of order and should, according to the context, be destroyed in order to save it.
Rarely are they that honest.
For all the political wranglings and pretentious dialogue, I definitely enjoyed it on an entertainment level. There is nothing cliché about the main characters at all. There’s no predictable path that they take, and Portman’s rendering of the Evey character astounded me. Her path, and what happens to her, amazed me. She uses an almost flawless British accent throughout and really worked in a believable way as the character. It was worth shaving her head for.
Hugo Weaving never shows his face, but gets to infuse the character with his theatricality through gesture and voice. It’s a hard sell. Plenty of critics have complained that it distances the audience from the character, but that’s insane, for my money. V is a fucking lunatic. Seeing his mouth moving wouldn’t have changed the fact that we’re supposed to respect V and almost see the justification of his behaviour, but we’re not supposed to empathise with him. He’s the Angel of Death, the vengeance of Nature in raw form, a force, an idea whose time has come round at last.
I loved it, but then, maybe I’m a bit crazy too. Lest anyone thinks the film advocates and justifies terrorism, well, that’s just idiotic. I think the point, more profoundly, is that it is incumbent upon all of us to stop our governments from gently wresting our rights out of our hands like an old folks home attendant stealing the rings off of a sleeping ancient person’s fingers. That when governments outlaw speaking out against the government, of course they’re going to say it’s for our own good.
But we shouldn’t be so stupid as to believe it.
8 reasons why you should remember the fifth of November out of 10
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“People should not be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.” – V for Vendetta.
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