V for Vendetta

Alan Moore, the eccentric genius behind the graphic novel V for Vendetta (along with illustrator David Lloyd) has had some bad experiences in Hollywood. Two of his previous works, Jack the Ripper chronicle From Hell and the literate fantasy League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, have been transferred into useless, dumbed-down turkeys gathering dust in bargain bins throughout the country. He's even been sued by screenwriter Larry Cohen, who claimed that the film League of Extraordinary Gentlemen borrowed heavily from his unproduced work and that the entire series of comic books was an elaborate smokescreen designed to hide the theft.

So it's understandable that Moore wouldn't take any interest in the film version of V for Vendetta, going so far as to demand his name be removed from the credits. Furthermore, I'd say it's pretty likely that Moore would dislike the finished product, not neccessarily because it takes liberties with his original book (no adaptation would be possible otherwise), but because it essentially steals his initial conceit to tell a completely different story.

Published in the late 80's and set in a totalitarian London of the near future, Vendetta functioned as a bitter takedown of the policies of Margaret Thatcher and the conservative English government of the time. This new film, written by the Wachowski Brothers and helmed by their Matrix assistant director James McTeigue, uses the structure, motifs and much of the dialogue of Moore and Lloyd's book but reconfigures everything to speak to contemporary America instead. It's at once strikingly similar to the novel (which I read and enjoyed immensely a few years back while working at Barnes & Noble) and also a complete and total departure. It's also one of the best and most important films of the year, a strident and unapologetic screed against the Bush Administration's media-enabled power grab and its devastating aftermath.



Though it takes place in a dystopian future, V for Vendetta doesn't make some rhetorical, slippery slope, worst-case-scenario kind of argument. The Wachowskis and McTeigue aren't so much saying "if we keep going down our present path, this might be where we end up." More like "wake up, people! This is happening right now!" There's a tremendous sense of urgency to the film (as there was in Moore's book), and it's worth noting that all of the transgressions committed by the regime at the film's center mirror the real, admitted activities of the American government. Everything from the black hooded terror suspects to the vehement distrust of Muslims to the frothing newsman who resembles Christopher Hitchens and sounds like Bill O'Reilly should feel familiar to American audiences.

The film's fantasy element serves mainly to keep things lively and entertaining, and to attract teenagers and dimwitted adults who wouldn't normally pay $10 to see a film that includes sociopolitical commentary. But make no mistake - this is a polemic, more angry and radical than anything Michael Moore has done to date.

The man in the Guy Fawkes mask known only as "V" (Hugo Weaving, giving a wonderful performance without ever showing his face) opens the film by saving intern Evey (Natalie Portman) from sleazy, violent cops. He then moves right into blowing up London's Old Bailey. "Violence can be a tool for good," V explains, and he really means it. In the cause of bringing down the invasive, power-mad and corrupt government of Chancellor Adam Setler (John Hurt) via mass revolution, V will be called on to kill several people eand blow up yet another beloved London landmark.

But what makes the film surprising, and what gives its attacks on structural systems of control real bite, isn't the lionization of a violent anarchist. It's the repeated and obvious parallels to American life, attitudes and policy in the year 2006, the frequently ingenius way in which the Wachowskis and McTeigue have managed to make a 16 year old book relevant to this moment in time. It can't have been an easy feat, despite the novel's pointedness, depth and broad historical perspective, yet it feels effortless.

The insights made aren't exactly groundbreaking. Violent tragedies are seized upon (or created) by leaders to create excuses for wars of conquest or domination. Repetition and media saturation can allow falsehoods to take root in the public consciousness. The threat of torture or imprisonment without trial are useful not for interrogation but intimidation of the populace at large. Authoritarian governments rely on exclusionary or eliminiationist rhetoric to unite the masses against common foes and distract from more pressing issues of the day. Anyone who has been paying attention to the news lo these past few years will find little that's brand new and surprising.

But seeing everything put together within the confines of an entertaining fictional story, having the whole case laid out before your eyes in the course of 2 fast-moving hours, makes it clear and identifiable in a way that years of reading Media Matters and listening to Democracy Now never could. Watching V for Vendetta was a simultaneously exhiliarating and disheartening experience - exciting to see filmmakers getting so much right, really taking an audience on a whirlwind tour of the shadowy truth behind CNN's version of reality, and yet depressing to see just how bad things have become in only a few short years.

Taken on purely the level of cinema, I must say that the film is clearly the work of a first-timer. The opening few minutes unfold awkwardly, as do some sequences during the occasionally-slack midsection. You sense that McTeigue can't quite figure out how to initially get the audience involved in this story, mainly because of V's generally inscrutible nature. He's the kind of hero that must be warmed up to slowly, with his oversized mask frozen in an eternal, creepy smile, his deformed hands covered over with tight black gloves and his penchant for alliterative, allusion-heavy monologues. Once the story gets going (and in particular, once Stephen Rea is introduced as Police Inspector Finch), the film finds its footing.

Budget constraints likewise appear to have been a factor. The action scenes, mainly involving V disarming cops (known as fingermen) with knives, look pretty good, but they are brief and infrequent. Likewise, there isn't really much to the film's concept of Future London. A few back alley sets, a boardroom that's nothing more than a long table and a massive monitor featuring a perma-close up on John Hurt's face and V's book-lined apartment are the locations for about 90% of the movie. For a movie with this many ideas on this kind of scale, things feel a touch claustrophobic.

Audiences hoping for Matrix-style spectacle must have been disappointed. This is not a film about knives whooshing through the air or huge CG-laden set pieces. V for Vendetta ignores Michae Bay-isms to focus on some highly unpleasant truths about the direction we're headed as a country. When it's not implying that the American government may have been behind the 9/11 attacks or suggesting that blowing up a building can serve a positive, rational purpose, the film eventually settles on a making a direct, straightforward argument:

When a government ceases to truly represent its people, when it turns on the masses as a way of sustaining itself, it's the duty of individual citizens to reclaim their country from their own leadership. In the movie's world, there's a born leader with 20 years to plot out a course of action and sweet martial arts skills. Reality hasn't provided the American people with this kind of head start, but a really strong, well-made and intelligent film on the subject will have to do for now.