[REVIEW] V for Vendetta
Mar. 23rd, 2006 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldSeeing V for Vendetta tonight was an interesting experience. Alan Moore's name was removed, as we expected. I think that he was quite wrong to disavow this filmic adaptation of his graphic novel on the emancipatory joys of political terrorism. It's somewhat disconcerting to see how well the backstory managed to survive, transplanted from the Cold War environment of Thatcher's Britain to a near-future Britain that disengaged from the United States' War against Terror before it became a self-inflicted war of all against all. For an apparently post-nuclear audience the fear of bioterrorist apocalypse works nicely, while the transformation of Lewis Prothero from a radio announcer into a television shock jock is superb, never mind his war history ("Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, before and after, Sudan").
Yes, there's an ideological bias. Complaints made by some from a certain portion of the right about how the film paints an unfortunate evolution from "resistance to Islam, [. . .] enforcement of "homeland security," and [. . .] objections to homosexuality" to fascism and mass murder, as Christianity Today's film reviewer noted, are misplaced. What was item #2 in today's Christianity Today weblog? A mournful speculation about Pat Robertson, wondering how, even though that man "call[s] for the assassination of elected world leaders, support[s] and enrich[es] some of the world's worst dictators, proclaim[s] faulty theology about God's wrath, support[s] China's one-child policy, break[s] his promise on selling his race horses, and use[s] his humanitarian ministry's planes for his own personal diamond mining operation," his Christian Broadcasting Network received 21% more in viewer donations for the fiscal year ending in March 2005 than in the previous year, that figure in turn being almost twice as large as 1997's. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be able to fail a Turing test. Ah, well: At least Voltaire's wolves will feed well.
I left the theatre uncertain how I felt about the film. Yes, the modernization of the story was accomplished well. Yes, V for Vendetta retains its relevance. Yes, Hugo Weaving was superb, Natalie Portman emoted quite well despite her apparently South African accent, Stephen Fry was a delight as George, and the Wachowski Brothers shot good film apart from a cheesy slow-motion knife-throwing shot. I'd even say that the film improved on the graphic novel, both by making Evie an actor and partner of V in her own right with her own skills and her own grudges, and by showing that other people existed and cared about what was going on with their country. They even--crucially, for me--managed to do a very good job with Valerie's letter. Why am I still uncertain about the film? It's the central point of both versions of V for Vendetta, the whole thing about the emancipatory joys of political terrorism. Douglas Kern's review at Tech Central Station condemning this film as a recruiting text for fascism is an utter failure, if only because the film establishes that Britain is itself run by a rather nastily fascist government. There's still the central question of whether V for Vendetta's argument is a good one. That's a question I can't begin to tackle adequately tonight, and so, cowardly, I won't through it and the film are both worth contemplating.
Yes, there's an ideological bias. Complaints made by some from a certain portion of the right about how the film paints an unfortunate evolution from "resistance to Islam, [. . .] enforcement of "homeland security," and [. . .] objections to homosexuality" to fascism and mass murder, as Christianity Today's film reviewer noted, are misplaced. What was item #2 in today's Christianity Today weblog? A mournful speculation about Pat Robertson, wondering how, even though that man "call[s] for the assassination of elected world leaders, support[s] and enrich[es] some of the world's worst dictators, proclaim[s] faulty theology about God's wrath, support[s] China's one-child policy, break[s] his promise on selling his race horses, and use[s] his humanitarian ministry's planes for his own personal diamond mining operation," his Christian Broadcasting Network received 21% more in viewer donations for the fiscal year ending in March 2005 than in the previous year, that figure in turn being almost twice as large as 1997's. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be able to fail a Turing test. Ah, well: At least Voltaire's wolves will feed well.
I left the theatre uncertain how I felt about the film. Yes, the modernization of the story was accomplished well. Yes, V for Vendetta retains its relevance. Yes, Hugo Weaving was superb, Natalie Portman emoted quite well despite her apparently South African accent, Stephen Fry was a delight as George, and the Wachowski Brothers shot good film apart from a cheesy slow-motion knife-throwing shot. I'd even say that the film improved on the graphic novel, both by making Evie an actor and partner of V in her own right with her own skills and her own grudges, and by showing that other people existed and cared about what was going on with their country. They even--crucially, for me--managed to do a very good job with Valerie's letter. Why am I still uncertain about the film? It's the central point of both versions of V for Vendetta, the whole thing about the emancipatory joys of political terrorism. Douglas Kern's review at Tech Central Station condemning this film as a recruiting text for fascism is an utter failure, if only because the film establishes that Britain is itself run by a rather nastily fascist government. There's still the central question of whether V for Vendetta's argument is a good one. That's a question I can't begin to tackle adequately tonight, and so, cowardly, I won't through it and the film are both worth contemplating.
