V for Vendetta

Truth be told, the social commentary in V for Vendetta is vastly oversimplified. Think of it as a kind of pop revolutionism. This is perfectly reasonable considering the source material is but a mere comic book, or…eh… “graphic novel” (comic books for grownups who don’t like calling them comic books), and there’s nothing wrong with narrowing the tediously complicated reality of such ideas into retailed escapist counter-culture and masked hero iconography. This is not to say that V for Vendetta is juvenile; not at all. The sophistication lies not in the film’s social-political text, but its philosophical subtext. Though sincere, the revolution for justice, freedom and equality so passionately pursued throughout the film’s narrative is determined by deeper forces both cosmic and spiritual.

I’m amazed how fast V for Vendetta is; literally. So much happens in the first twenty minutes–from Guy Fawkes history lesson to damsel in distress rescue to TV station hijacking–virtually every pivotal character is introduced–V (Hugo Weaving), Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), Chief Inspector Finch (Stephen Rea), Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt), Gordon Dietrich (Stephen Fry), Lewis Prothero (Roger Allam) and Creepy Creedy (Tim Piggot-Smith)–it’s enough to exhaust the viewer with an onslaught of who’s who, doing what, when, where and why. Only after young Evey wakes up bewildered in V’s secret hideout, The Shadow Gallery, does the film take its first breather. Yet soon enough the plot continues relentless, never really breaking away from a rapid pace, as nearly half the story is narrated through flashbacks and montages.

This in and of itself is to be admired as a calculated approach by producers/screenwriters Larry and Andy Wachowski, who multi-thread backstories and exposition into a singular stream of consciousness (not unlike Speed Racer), pouring out of different characters as they remember the past or summarize it into a coherent cause, or predict through gut feeling the events yet to transpire. Intermittent with this are scenes of tireless investigation and quieter moments of conversation as characters express their personal beliefs. It would seem valid to think action oriented V’s world of night lurking and vigilantism, yet V for Vendetta, by and large, does not constitute an action film. Other than a handful of fight scenes, the bulk of the story hinges more on suspense, and in that regard succeeds with a pulsating momentum that tightens its grip as each of the surrounding players veers closer and closer to V’s grand execution of the totalitarian state and final, explosive coup de grâce.

By far the greatest affect of Alan Moore’s story, one easily maintained in this film adaptation, is the cognitive dissonance that arises form V’s core agenda, particularly his radical psychological deconstruction of Evey – make no mistake: she is, for all intents and purposes, brainwashed to the terrorists call, which opens up an ethical debate far too vast for my pitiful blog to encompass, let alone conclude. But the inner confliction I get when watching both Evey’s transformation through manipulation and V’s larger revolution through terror and bloodshed generates a type of wondrous elation that could almost equate the effects of taking drugs – an emotional and ideological high.

Perhaps in that sense V for Vendetta is nothing more than a cheap thrill, but it works beautifully every time. I am also convinced that V is one of the more exciting fictional characters ever committed to film. Ask yourself, how often is the protagonist and antagonist one and the same? Sutler, Creedy and their many corrupted subordinates may be responsible for the story’s dystopian circumstances, but its V’s actions that drive the story itself, creating conflicts that brings everyone, good and bad, into the fray.

He’s a kinesthetic marvel, physiologically enhanced with the speed, strength and reflexes of an Olympic athlete; adroit in all things tactical, a master of scheme, subterfuge and resource. But it’s the flamboyant style and eccentric personality that makes V such a riveting figure. He’s a Bohemian, a theater nerd, a practitioner of iambic pentameter and a junkie for Golden Aged Hollywood swashbucklers who plays make-believe with an empty suit of armor. His v-lettered introduction is spotted with a giggle of lunacy. The sight of this Fawkesian masked vigilante wearing a flowery, cottage variety apron and cheerfully cooking breakfast to ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ is so whimsically odd, so delightfully batshit, that you can’t help but love the guy despite his highly questionable deeds. What caps the scene with utter genius is that it is not merely played for visual gag; that V, still dressed like Julia Child, lingers into a serious discussion on the symbolism of terrorist acts without the slightest trace of irony.

Uber-serious Batman could never shift so nimbly between expressions without looking the fool, nor could any other comic book (anti)hero to my knowledge. V is truly unique. He is the fool proudly, the playwright, the strangest amalgamation of the Phantom of the Opera, Don Quixote and Dumas’ Edmond Dantés all at once. A bucket load of credit goes to actor Hugo Weaving for personifying the once 2-D character to live-action perfection. Not since James Earl Jones as Darth Vader has an actor voiced a masked character with such intoxicating resonance. And in Weaving’s case (despite a couple brief dialogue-free scenes by the originally casted James Purefoy) he gets to physically embody the character as well, with the elegant posturing and dashing Shakespearian gestures that can only be attributed to the classically trained.

On the flipside is Natalie Portman. Yeah, okay, so her British accent wavers a bit. Never-the-less, Portman carries upon her petite little frame the emotional lead weight of the movie as Evey’s participation soon becomes tribulation, and then a shattering of forms. It’s not easy being a film’s mule, bearing for the audience every scene of confusion and trauma. It’s a thankless performance, and yet when it the time comes for Evey’s watershed metamorphosis from helpless civilian to born-again-activist, Portman digs deep and cuts loose every tether to Evey’s former self with total conviction. Destroyed then resurrected. It is arguably the most powerful scene in the film and would certainly fail with anything less than an all-or-nothing performance. In retrospect I think we can better appreciate the raw emotional state that Portman achieves here as a precursor to her now famous Nina Sayers psychosis.

So extremely vile are John Hurt, Roger Allman, Piggot-Smith and John Standing (as a pedophile Catholic Bishop) in their respective roles that one could almost fault the film for its oversimplified, one-dimensional villainy. Except their characters, as mentioned, ultimately prove the victims to the film’s true antagonist V, thereby rendering their motivations all but moot. The actions meant to be scrutinized are those of V and, subsequently, Evey as well. So with nothing else to do, these four experienced Brits of stage and screen slither and snide and chew scenery with wicked delight. Stephen Fry is coolly nonchalant as TV show host Gordon Dietrich and actress Sinead Cusack delivers a brief but poignant performance as Dr. Delia Surridge, a once willing participant to the back-storied atrocious crimes against innocent people who seeks forgiveness upon her deathbed; a heartfelt moment between her and V.

Lastly is good ol’ Stephen Rea, whose Inspector Finch is something of an odd-man-out to the whirlwind of events, perhaps our true point of view, a good and practical guy who, like us, tries to make some practical sense as to the right and wrong of things. Rea’s working class, Irish bloke quality makes him perfect as the one person we might relate to the most. And Finch is an intriguing character in that he eventually comes to a holistically cognitive awareness that spans the entire causation from the very first ‘5th of November’ it the very last, referencing one of the film’s central themes of determinism: the idea that every proceeding event in the story is bound to-and-by its prior, and so on and so fourth; and, furthermore, perceived through faith in the divine: “God is in the rain,” sermons Evey, and her first encounter with V goes as follows…

“To whom, might I ask, am I speaking?”


“I’m Evey.”


“Evey? …E–V. Of course you are.”


“What does that mean?”


“It means that I, like God, do not play with dice and do not believe in coincidence.”

This also ties in nicely with the Shakespearian lyric ‘All the world’s a stage’ to which V is a clear advocate: “Oh, I merely played my part,” he says after rescuing Evey in the opening act. Obviously, the letter V, its twin, the 5th Roman Numeral and said numerical quantity are deeply imbedded in the story, dialogue and visual structure of the film, in ways obvious, not-so obvious and downright obscure--to such a degree that I won’t bother listing every example, suffice the challenge to watch and listen closely to the lettering of key names and their placement in the alphabet, the Latin translation of a certain Faustian phrase and at least a dozen or more visuals allusions to both the shape of the letter and all things numbering five.

Another potent and interwoven theme throughout the film is the crisscrossing of truth and lies, illusion and reality. As verbalized, the inherent faux of art is used to reveal the deeper truths of the real world. This point is exercised to the extreme on behalf of Evey’s transformation, but even trickles down to more a playful moment in the film involving Gordon Dietrich’s TV skit where an imposter Chancellor Sutler encounters the real (but fake) Chancellor Sutler, accompanied by Benny Hill shenanigans. We also see someone dressed as V sneaking about the Chancellor to the studio audience’s delight. Yet the film’s double-double trickery slyly suggest that the V we see on Gordon’s TV show is, in fact, the real V, who could have just as easily slipped into the production as when he slipped out of the state news broadcasting tower. V could be anywhere! Not only is the world his stage, it is, essentially, his superpower, where everything is a performance and nothing is what it seems. Even Gordon himself jokingly tells Evey that he is the codenamed vigilante: “Beneath this wrinkled, well-fed exterior there lies a dangerous killing machine with a fetish for Fawkesian masks. Viva La Revolución!”

And less we forget the film’s closing thought that V is not just everywhere, but everyone – a man who becomes an idea, an idea that becomes the people, the entire nation.

But my personal favorite theme in the film is the intimate juxtaposition of V and Evey as mythic, anthropologic demi-god and goddess. At the peak of Eve’s transformation, when V walks her out into the storm, both characters are stripped down to their earthly elements: she the phoenix of rain and lighting to his phoenix of fire – fire as passion, vengeance and destruction; water as the cleansing and giver of new life. At that exact moment when Eve raises her arms to the sky, V looks at her with awe and respect, connecting his rebirth with hers and realizing that before him stands a new champion potentially more powerful than himself.

 

This was James McTeigue’s first feature film, though he had already cut his teeth on a career of on 1st assistant and 2nd unit directing, including the Wachowski Brother’s Matrix trilogy and George Lucas’ Attack of the Clones, giving him previous working experience with both Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman. Thus far, MTeigue has only helmed two movies, the other being Ninja Assassin, and in both cases he bears all the traits of a director who has risen the ranks through studio filmmaking. I would compare him to the likes of Joe Johnson; neither is a visionary in his own right, yet both are technically savvy and astute storyboarders who translate genre material with considerable polish. Every scene in V for Vendetta has the look of carefully planned-out shot design, largely evoking the general graphic novel aesthetic.

Extreme close-ups and high contrast compositions between foregrounds and backgrounds (including a number of split diopters) really jazz up the still-imagery effect of comic book panels. And yet it’s disciplined and nicely countered by the more refined framing and shot-flow akin to BBC dramas. The bulk of production took place on sound stages and indoor sets at Germany’s Babelsberg Studios, a fact all the more evident in the way the actors are often theatrically poised in medium-to-master shot clarity. The brief bursts of action definitely show the Wachowski flare. In the climactic fight scene against Creedy and his armed soldiers, V twirls and strikes through the same slow-motion syrup as does Neo, but without the superhuman acrobatics of a computer world handicap. V is fast, he’s deadly, but the slow-motion in this scene is not the product of circumstance; it is a purely lyrical expression that justly dramatizes V as the victor.

The color scheme for V for Vendetta is very constricted and very controlled. Grayish tones permeate almost every setting, tinted with cold blues and murky greens. However, an off-set of warm sodium-vapor illuminates V’s underground crypt and glows even brighter (and gauzier) during the many flashbacks, particularly the autobiography of tragic Valerie Page (Natasha Wightman, who narrates but never speaks on camera). Of course, the most dominate color is the ink black which embodies V to a thematic degree; at times he is nothing but the Guy Fawkes mask–nothing but the symbol itself–hovering in the darkness. And to accentuate the connoted Orwellian nightmare and postmodern London gothic production design, the actors are constantly bathed in deep shadow cast, where no face is ever fully exposed.

Sadly, this would be cinematographer Adrian Biddle’s final contribution to the industry (he died soon after of a heart attack), but the film no-less exemplifies his ability for precision lighting amidst dreary atmospheres – a skill that can be traced all the way back to his work on Aliens. Dario Marainelli elevates the whole endeavor with a densely layered, melodramatic score that feels deeply religious, fatalistic and reminiscent of old-European romance, but also contemporary with a touch of piano solo and a very effective electric guitar riff that charges-up during Evey’s breaking point metanoia.

After the debacle that was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I certainly don’t blame Alan Moore for cutting off all ties to V for Vendetta, and all other adapted works, or for his cynicism towards Hollywood in general. I get it. Moore is a passionately opinionated man and the comics are meticulous expressions of character and themes. They’re his babies, and to see them mutated by studio execs for the filmgoing masses is no doubt an affront to the intellect of such a prickly recluse. But I personally think Joel Silver, the Wachowski Brothers and James McTeigue have altered the source material in way that is equally profound on its own, or at least equally sincere. The original conflict between Fascism and pure anarchy has been augmented to a more generic dictatorship overthrown by liberal-centric revolution, but I don’t consider the totalitarian state depicted in the film to be an allegory for Neoconservatism, as many have claimed. I simply view it as a modernized Nazi-Germany motif. Most important of all is that the character conceit of V and his moral ambiguity was, in my opinion, properly sustained in the film version and remains the central most alluring aspect of the entire story.