As far as comparing The Wachowski’s V For Vendetta to its source material by Alan Moore, I may be one of the only few who feels like the film is an improvement. The graphic novel is beautifully written but bleak and drab in many instances where the film adopts a rich, full bodied and ever so slightly hopeful tone in the adaptation forage. I know Moore is somewhere out there in his yurt on the plains, reading my review on a 3G tablet and cursing my name, but oh well. Fierce political commentary, blitzkrieg action picture, careful interpersonal drama and more, this has aged well (scarily well depending on the angle one views it from) and holds up gorgeously fourteen November 5ths on since its release.
Natalie Portman and Hugo Weaving make Stockholm Syndrome sexy again as Evey and V, two very different individuals whose lives have both been upended by the tyrannical, fascist British Government. He’s a vicious vigilante freedom fighter with scars on the outside and inside, she’s a wayward civilian swept up in his brutal quest to overthrow an evil dictator (John Hurt in beast mode), first as witness and later as accomplice. This involves a complex laundry list of various betrayals, sieges, escapes and terrorist acts, all brought to life in breathtaking spectacle. An underdog secret policeman (Stephen Rea, a study understated excellence) doggedly pursues them and questions his own loyalties, while the chosen date of Guy Fawkes day (hey, that’s today!) looms ever closer and with it V’s promise to blow the shit out of the parliament block.
V says it best when he growls: “People shouldn’t be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people.” There are large scale, prescient ideas at work here and despite being based on a graphic novel it feels eerily akin to our own world. V is a product of this damaged, corrupt system who has become a monster and is now ready to administer horrific dark justice on those who wronged him, working his way up an increasingly grotesque chain of despicable politicians with grim resolve. There’s a righteous fury to his quest and no other actor could have better captured the fire and brimstone behind that mask like Weaving does, he works wonders with his voice alone. There’s a lot more action than in Moore’s novel but can you really blame the Wachowskis? They are incredible at staging set pieces and the character of V suits the swooping, knife throwing, roof leaping, swash, buckle and bloody bodily harm on display here. There’s a strong undercurrent of compassion and humanity here to, as seen in my favourite sequence of the film: Portman’s Evey is locked up in a government prison and ready to wade into despair before she finds a rolled up scroll detailing the story of the cell’s former roommate and her struggles during the rise of this horrible regime. It’s in this short flashback scene alone we see all that’s worth fighting for in the microcosm of one girl’s life and feel the justification of not just V’s violent rampage but the collective uprising it stirs in the people. Great film.
-Nate Hill
Podcasting Them Softly 