Movies |
V for Vendetta
By
Published: Mar 14, 2018
Category:
Drama
1997. London. Sixteen-year-old Evey Hammond, short of cash, walks the grim back streets in search of a man who will pay her for sex. It’s her first time. She’s scared. And, worse, unlucky.
"You don’t know what you’re doing," a man says, as he grabs her and flashes his badge. "Or you wouldn’t have picked a vice detail on stakeout."
What’s her punishment? "We get to decide what happens to you….You’ll do anything we want — and then we’ll kill you."
A bit extreme, wouldn’t you say? But wait! Here comes a man in a long black cape and a big-brimmed, high-peaked black hat. He recites a passage from "Macbeth" — and calmly wastes the cops.
And then, almost as an afterthought, he blows up Parliament.
Oh….did I say Evey’s rescuer — he calls himself "V" — wears a white, full-faced, grinning mask?
“V for Vendetta” began life as a comic book — okay, a graphic novel. Those in the know will see a tip-off in the author’s credit: Alan Moore is the mad genius of the illustrated novel. David Lloyd is his equal at creating images that match the mood of Moore’s fantastic stories. This book, written from 1981 to 1988, is their masterpiece — and the inspiration for the movie by the Wachowski brothers creators of the “Matrix” trilogy.
This is the rare thriller that’s long on ideas. Consider the situation. Because England has managed to convince the United States to remove its nuclear missiles from British soil, the country has been spared the holocaust that seems to have decimated most of the world. But in the chaos that followed the war, fascists have taken over the government. An all-powerful "Leader" has the people under total surveillance. And the government propaganda machine — the "Voice of Fate" — is the only media permitted. There are no dissenters, and yet it seems that citizens are constantly being arrested for "terrorism." For all but the very privileged, England is Hell on earth.
Will V take down the government? Who, really, is V? And what destiny does V plan for Evey?
It would have been easy to invoke the dystopias of Orwell and Huxley and portray this fascist state as the logical extension of Margaret Thatcher’s government. But Moore and Lloyd are playing for higher stakes. V’s mask evokes Guy Fawkes,a conspirator in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot aimed at assassinating King James I of England. And this "fascist" England has nothing to do with the goose-stepping maniacs of the Third Reich.
Fascism is essentially a theory of government that sets order above liberty and regards politics as the agent of business. In this view of history, the irony of the Allies’ victory over Hitler and Mussolini is that, a few decades later, the winners consistently traded their freedoms for "security." By the l980s, most people in "free" countries were unfree drones, addicted to mass entertainment and quite happy to believe any lie their governments told them.
"V" is not exactly a traditional liberator. He’s an anarchist, and a very refined anarchist at that — he believes that every citizen must take responsibility for himself. And much of the novel consists of his ongoing dialogue with Evey about politics and philosophy. Heavy going? I’d say exhilarating. [To buy the DVD of the film from Amazon, click here. To buy or rent the video stream, click here.]
Is "V" a hero — or, as some are sure to say, a ‘terrorist’? Hard to say. In his way, he’s as flawed as Leader. And he designs a test for Evey that’s as cruel as any devised by Leader and his minions. Is it worth it? Well, she learns a crucial lesson about personal integrity:
Every inch of me shall perish… except one. An inch. It’s small and it’s fragile and it’s the only thing in the world that’s worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.
The remarkable (for a corporation like Warner Brothers, anyway) advertising slogan for the movie: "The people should not be afraid of their government. The government should be afraid of the people." The big takeaway of the book is more intellectual: "Ideas are bulletproof."
Who should see this film? It’s obvious: Anyone who’s interested in large ideas, dramatically expressed. Especially teenagers — if you know of a smart kid with a bad attitude and a disdain for adult authority, you will do him/her a big favor with the gift of this movie. Yeah, there’s some sex. There’s worse on TV. But I can’t think of another film that packs as many bright ideas and sharp speeches in the context of a thriller.
