“People should not be afraid of their Governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.â€
‘V for Vendetta’ is yet another comic book turned into a big-screen, big-budget spectacle. The Wachowskis (The Matrix) latest film is a very 'Orwellian' dystopia with loud anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment messages, though they only wrote the screenplay and produced the film. It was directed by James McTeigue (their assistant director from The Matrix movies.) Its release was delayed for six months because of the terrorist bombings in London, I assume because it could be construed as supporting terrorism. The writer of the original ’80 graphic novel, Moore had his name removed from the project, wary of Hollywood after the adaptation of another of his works, 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'.
I really rated this film. I must remember to stick to my own rule of not listening to film reviews. I almost didn’t go to see this because of what I heard; that it had all the bad points of the ‘Matrix trilogy’ and none of the good, and that it was slow. One reviewer said she walked out after half an hour when Natalie Portman’s English accent began to slip. I really don’t see how you can review a film if you don’t watch the whole thing.
It is set in a future "Greater" Britain which is ruled by a totalitarian regime, headed by a “Supreme Chancellor.†The population lives under curfews and in fear of the “finger men.†There is religious and homo-sexual persecution, racism and strict controls of freedom of the press. Many works of art, literature and music have been banned and destroyed. Private conversations are regularly monitored, people are under constant surveillance and their travel is restricted.
This all happened within only 20 years, beginning in 2015 with some kind of World War in which biological weapons were used. In the "former United States" the population was largely wiped out and has been in a state of civil war ever since. England instituted a ‘stronger’ government after the virus attacks of ‘St Mary’s’ school, ‘Three Waters’ and the London Underground, and would seem to have survived largely unscathed. But what did it lose to achieve that? And who was really responsible for those attacks? And does violence beget violence?
The population “sleepwalks†through the excesses of its government. A government that feeds its citizens lies and counts on the apathy of the populace to stay in power is as topical as you can get and John Hurt's chancellor, Adam Sutler, vacillates between spittle-flecked invectives and exhortations of "strength through unity and unity through faith." Any connections made between governments and world leaders past or present are strictly intentional though probably a little dodgy. I would hope that while we can still make a film like this, that future scenario is unlikely.
V (Hugo Weaving) is a mysterious, poetry-spouting rogue who wears a mask of 17th century English revolutionary Guy Fawkes and models his exploits after this rebel who nearly blew up Parliament in 1605. V plans on doing the same thing and even gives the current English regime a one-year notice, as he takes over the airwaves and seeks support from the oppressed citizenry of England, imploring them to speak out against the oppression they live under by meeting him at Parliament a year hence to witness its destruction. Having destroyed the Old Bailey the night before, the authorities take V seriously, especially after he escapes their clutches at the state-controlled television station, BTN (British Television Network.)
Caught in the middle of all this is Evey (Natalie Portman), a young television production assistant rescued by V when finger men catch her outside past curfew. It turns out that Evey has a shady past of her own, and she soon finds herself a fugitive. After aiding V in turn when he raids her workplace, she's forced to seek refuge in his Shadow Gallery, an underground cultural repository filled with media and artefacts reclaimed from the government censors.
V begins killing off a number of supposedly unrelated high ranking individuals including the television presenter Lewis Prothero (Roger Allam), whose career is built on hate and bombast, and the Bishop of England, who’s revealed to be a paedophile. As Chief Inspector Finch (Stephen Rea) digs deeper and deeper into the case and uncovers long-held secrets involving ethnic cleansing, concentration camps and the medical experimentation on humans that occurred there, and he begins to understand how deep the level of corruption is in the government and just what V’s motivation might be.
I won’t spoil the rest of the story but it is worth seeing.
