V For Vendetta Review [2]
Posted by Dave Schilling on 03.20.2006
A more critical look at this spring's biggest film.
CAST: Natalie Portman (Evey), Hugo Weaving (V), Stephen Rea (Finch), Stephen Fry (Dietrich), John Hurt (Chancellor Sutler), Tim Pigott-Smith (Creedy), Roger Allam (Lewis Prothero), Rupert Graves (Dominic), Ben Miles (Dascomb)
SCR: Larry and Andy Wachowski
DIR: James McTeigue
STUDIO: Warner Bros.
MPAA: R for strong violence and some language
RUNNING TIME: 132 minutes
OFFICIAL SITE: http://vforvendetta.warnerbros.com/
I'm often asked by other film enthusiasts what makes a good movie. Naturally, this is a prickly question to try to answer. Just "liking" a movie is easy. You sit down in your seat and are either entertained or not. No one can question whether or not you enjoy a film. No matter how offensively empty a movie like Corky Romano is, there are people out there who just cream themselves over it. Who am I to argue with someone's personal taste?
On the other hand, we as lovers of cinema can clearly define "good" and "bad" films. So, when I answer that question, "what makes a good movie?" my response is thus: "A good movie is a movie that makes me question my personal biases or makes me see the world differently than I did before I walked into the theater." A good film is a film that is provocative, that presents a unique view of the world and dares to be different.
The person I attended the screening of V For Vendetta certainly had more than a few questions. Most notably were "How did Evey get her clothes back when she was in V's lair? Did he break into her house and bring her clothes? Oh, and [SPOILER WARNING] what makes a girl fall in love with the man that tortured her?"
Those aren't the questions I had in mind, and yet, it is indicative of what makes the newest film from the pens of the Wachowski Brothers so damn meaningless. This is a movie that gives you all the answers. No, wait. This is a movie that takes the answers and clubs you to death with them.
By now, the basic plot of V For Vendetta is common knowledge thanks to the intense media attention surrounding the film. Hell, even the ending has been spoiled for most of the world that reads the newspaper or watches the news on a regular basis. Hugo Weaving plays the masked vigilante, named only ‘V'. After saving Evey (Natalie Portman) from a rogue group of state police officers referred to as "Fingermen," ‘V' takes Evey under his wing, easing her toward a life as a freedom fighter. ‘V' fights against a monolithic, fascist British government that bears a striking resemblance to both Nazi Germany and Oceania from Orwell's 1984.
From then on, V For Vendetta traipses along its sleepy narrative until its inevitable, obvious conclusion (the one that's been in the papers since July's attacks on London's subway system). ‘V' is the saintly hero who is virtually unstoppable. Explained as some sort of genetic aberration, he is characterized by superhuman strength, agility, and the ability to gain access to just about any building he wants to. This is a man that not even Big Brother would want to meet in a dark alley, and yet he registers as barely compelling. It's easy to draw an analogy to Neo in The Matrix Reloaded. At the beginning of that film, there is nothing Neo can't do. He is playing in "God Mode," so to speak. Not until he meets up with Agent Smith does anything resembling a challenge occur for him. Even then, most of the picture is concerned with Neo looking "really kewl" and beating up bad guys with ease.
‘V' has no antagonist on his level commensurate to Agent Smith. The government of Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt) is threatening to the audience mostly because of the liberal use of the standard fascist imagery. Americans have some sort of genetic predisposition to hate anything vaguely fascist in appearance (even if they tend to swallow the rhetoric a bit easier). Yet, they pose no threat to ‘V'. He thwarts them at every turn. He exists under the radar of a society that is supposed to be under the control of a vicious police state.
‘V' is a complete force of good and we believe it, despite the throwaway lines about him believing himself to be a "monster." When an audience is forced to choose between a guy in a mask spouting Shakespeare and making eggs and a totalitarian regime that kills its own citizens on a regular basis, who do they expect us to sympathize with?
V For Vendetta presents notions of terrorism and the role of the state in such simplistic, blatant ways that you might as well turn your brain off because it is not needed to enjoy this piece of fluff. I don't disagree with any of the notions presented in this film. The world illustrated by the movie demands a figure like ‘V'. I would be there with him on the 5th of November. Governments should be afraid of the people. It's what keeps them from rendering us completely powerless in the face of their unlimited wealth and influence over the lives of regular folks. I just don't need some big budget Hollywood spectacle to reinforce things I already feel in my heart are true.
It could be said that this movie is not for me. It's preaching to the heathens who believe differently than I do. It can hardly be said to be effective in that respect either. This is a polemic, make no mistake about it. The Wachowski Brothers and director James McTeigue have made a movie that has one point to make. It is unmerciful in its depiction of the conservative movement (be it in America or in England). The ideas presented by Chancellor Sutler are clearly amplified versions of ideas espoused by real-life conservatives. These are moustache twirlers, not honest depictions of anything resembling reality.
That's not always a bad thing though. Clear lines between good and evil are a hallmark of escapist entertainment, and yet V For Vendetta aims to be so much more than that. It wants to be a towering morality play, an allegory for our times. It wants to be as tough on neo-conservatives and the religious right as 1984 was savage in its depiction of Soviet-style communism. The difference between the two works is staggering. Orwell practically invented the dystopian genre (along with Aldous Huxley and others). Both the Alan Moore comic and this film version of V For Vendetta trudge up the same material, but throw a comic book superhero into the mix and drain all of the more unique notions of control (perpetual war, the eradication of language) out of the narrative in favor of set-pieces and a ham-fisted mystery. It's as though someone took Robert DiNiro's Harry Tuttle, the little seen, one-note swashbuckling terrorist from Brazil, and made a whole movie about him.
The shame in all of this is that there is a film to be made about our modern world that would actually have something unique to say. The truly risky film would be one that has the guts to say "hey, maybe there is a threat out there. What if the government is sort of right in taking some of our rights away?" It's an unpopular notion, but can we ignore the fact that the world isn't safe for the West? In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they choose anarchy over order, as ‘V' advocates. Do any of us want to live there? Do they even want to live there?
These are not questions the film asks on its own. These are questions I devised myself. The film doesn't present that idea at all. It doesn't even broach the concept of what happens after the evil government goes away. For ‘V', all that exists for him is revolution. He is a man devoid of any ideology outside of anarchy and revenge, but he's the one we are supposed to root for. There is nothing to balance that nihilistic attitude. ‘V' acknowledges his distinct lack of any motivation other than hatred late in the film, yet the movie glosses over this potentially intriguing bit of business in order to deliver the feel-good Hollywood ending. The imagery in the final 10 minutes of the film is highly effective and even moving, but it is in service of a vapid piece of celluloid. It serves to only reinforce a concept that is painfully obvious: ‘V' was good. Big deal. I might as well be watching the end of Armageddon for all of the complexity present.
The 411: I will not go as far as to say this is an irresponsible film. I doubt anyone will go out to blow up any governmental buildings because of a movie produced by Joel Silver. It is a pedantic, pretentious bore though. It is actually possible to make a movie that aspires to be provocative and is instead completely banal. In an effort to be high-minded, V For Vendetta turns into a curdled pot of warmed-over criticisms that we’ve been hearing for years now. This film has a MESSAGE and you’d better listen to it, even if you’ve heard it all before.
