Auspicious Adaptation

 

V for Vendetta

2005

D: James McTeigue

**********

Pros: Characters, Acting, Dialogue, Action, Music

Cons: Some tasteless political themes, Some interesting aspects from book cut out

      

     Sometimes I feel like a contrarian when it comes to movies in regard to my politics.  There are many movies that other conservatives have fawned over that I wasn’t particularly wild about (Juno,300, Dark Knight Rises, For Greater Glory, 300…), and liked others that they hated.  V for Vendetta is one of those latter movies.  I seem to interpret politics in movies and TV shows differently than my right wing brethren (I for one cannot fathom what the hell conservative pundits have against My Little Pony, for example).

     V for Vendetta takes place in Britain of the near future.  The country is run by Norsefire, a fascist dictatorship which monitors its citizens through a complex surveillance system, imposes strict curfews and seems to have successfully wiped out all minorities.  By this time, the rest of the world has plunged into anarchy, with the United States being explicitly described as a collapsed Third-World nation.

And yet Dell Computers seems alive and well.

     V (Hugo Weaving), a survivor of an inhuman experimentation in one of the death camps dons a Guy Fawkes mask, fights the regime, exacts revenge on the individuals who directly oversaw the experiment and befriends everywoman Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman). 

     While the Wachowski Brothers’ V for Vendetta is clearly a swipe at the policies of the Bush administration, it doesn’t really offend any of my own personal conservative beliefs.  It takes a position against the War on Terror (which I don’t think was a good idea), against Islamophobia (also a bad thing) and for gay rights (which I don’t oppose).  In fact, I hold the Bush Administration indirectly responsible for all the nonsense we’re going through right now.  His flawed policies helped ensure that no one would want to vote Republican no matter what Obama pulls.  It doesn’t help that one of the chief architects of the War on Terror is pretty much running around telling conservatives to not be conservatives any more just so we can win more elections.

     In fact, this is really more of a libertarian movie than a liberal one; it doesn’t take any position that’s incompatible with this ideology.  In fact, there’s a great line in the movie that heavily implies that Norsefire, like any self-respecting industrialized dictatorship, does not allow its citizens to own guns.  Sometimes it gets a little too libertarian for my tastes.  I’ve noticed some libertarians really outdoing the liberals in their anti-war rhetoric, going so far as to equate any world leader unfortunate to preside during wartime with despotism.  A small number of them even subscribe to conspiracy theories.  Likewise, this movie paints a chemical attack on Britain as an inside job which enables the police state to gain power.  Along with comparing the Bush Administration to a genocidal dictatorship, it is one of the more genuinely offensive parts of the movie.  Alan Moore had a problem with the Wachowskis adapting his comic into an American allegory.  Personally, I don’t think he had much of a right to complain about that since his own motivation for his story was driven by his own paranoia about Thatcherism, which, as it turned out, did not lead to gays’ and blacks’ being put into death camps.

     That’s not to say that V for Vendetta wasn’t a great story.  Alan Moore is a master story teller, and the original comic is an intelligent and complex mix of dystopian fiction and swashbuckling style with great artwork.  The movie takes a lot of liberties with the story, but I don’t mind.  I don’t particularly care how faithful a film adaptation is, just so long as it’s good.  In fact, I prefer that a movie make some changes in order to be artful in its own right.  V for Vendetta may have little in common with its source material, but it becomes its own good work.  I would rather see that than a slavish but lackluster film like Zack Snyder’s Watchmen.  

     The movie’s direction is excellent.  It’s unfortunate that James McTeigue’s following movies seem disappointing; Ninja Assassin was terrible and The Raven looks that way.   Still, the editing, cinematography and Dario Marianelli’s excellent score help establish a great atmosphere.   The dialogue is extremely witty and has many memorable serious and funny lines.  It’s another example I cite of how I often find the comic relief in serious movies funnier than that of comedies.  The action is brilliant.  There are three main action scenes, but the final one between V and Creedy’s goons is one of my favorites in cinema.  I love the stylized contrails coming from V’s knives, the choreography, the consistent slow motion and the scoring.  Even the blood splatter contrasts the dark lighting in a perversely beautiful way.  I’m glad they didn’t go with that cheesy racking that the Wachowskis inadvertently popularized. 

     Is it better than the comic?  Well, yes and no.  While the movie maintains a lot of its visual elements, it departs from it many ways.  Naturally, many interesting subplots are cut out, but that’s something to be expected in a film adaptation.  Movies generally don’t react well to too many subplots.  As a result, many of the villains are not as interesting as they are in the book.  The dictator of Norsefire, Adam Susan, was a far more intriguing character in the novel.  He believed himself and Fate (the computer system monitoring the country) to be the only real people in the world, resulting in this perverse attraction to the computer system, which V ends up taking advantage of.  The movie version of the character (John Hurt in an obvious homage to the film 1984) has had his name inexplicably changed to Adam Sutler, and all he does is just yell at his underlings through a television.  The inner circle of Norsefire is made up of multiple characters who constantly plot against Susan and each other while either abusing or being manipulated by their wives.  These conspiracies are simplified in the movie, and these roles are all applied to the film’s villain Peter Creedy (Tim Pigott-Smith), who was actually a relatively inconsequential character in the book.  The villains may not be quite as compelling in the movie, but they serve their purpose, and Hurt and Piggot-Smith fit the roles well.

     The movie’s anti-hero, V, is depicted as more sympathetic than he is in the book.  In the book he is mostly depicted as a dark anarchist who is a product of the environment, rather than a solution.  The movie attempts to make him out to be more heroic, although this does lead to some logical fallacies, as he still engages in terrorist activities.  Despite his status as a cultured Renaissance man, he sees no problem in blowing up historical buildings, including Big Freaking Ben.  His torture of Evey also makes less sense in this light, although they try to acknowledge this by making him feel conflicted about it.  It’s definitely a problematic part of the movie which made perfect sense in the comic, and it begs the question of whether V simply made the whole thing up with Valerie Page.  Still, on some level this interpretation succeeds.  V’s affability and humor in the movie do make the movie more entertaining to me than the book.  There’s something undeniably lovable about a protagonist who kicks fascist ass in one scene and then cooks eggs-in-a-basket in a frilly pink apron in another.  I will admit that V’s video address to Britain in the book (a metaphorical chewing out of the people for allowing Norsefire to oppress them) is better than the friendlier version in the movie.  One thing that helps V’s character is Hugo Weaving’s acting.  Although his face is never seen, he gives one of the best body language performances I’ve ever seen in a movie, if not best performances, period.  He manages to convey a myriad of emotions flawlessly even though his mask has a constant maudlin smile.  He’s lighthearted when it’s appropriate and intimidating when he has to be.  I particularly like one scene in which Evey walks in on him pretending to fight Mondego from The Count of Monte Cristo.  V’s nervous reaction when she sees him is priceless.  Natalie Portman and Stephen Rea are also very good as Evey Hammond, the heroine, and Eric Finch, a virtuous police inspector trying to hunt for V.  Both characters try to survive within the system while suppressing their own misgivings about it.  Portman does particularly well in a demanding role, acting alongside British actors without sticking out like a sore thumb. 

     Another noticeable difference is the methods by which V assassinates his victims.  In addition to fighting the regime, he also wants to personally kill three people who ran the experiments in the fictional concentration camp at Larkhill (a real life military settlement) that made him what he was.  These people are Lewis Prothero (Roger Allam), Bishop Lilliman (John Standing) and Dr. Delia Surridge (Sinead Cusack).  In the book, V uses symbolic gimmicks to kill Prothero and Lilliman, a la Dr. Phibes.  The assassination of Prothero, a propagandist who ran the camp is far more interesting in the book than it is in the movie, in which he simply stabs him offscreen in a shower.  In the book, he kidnaps him and drives him insane by burning his valuable doll collection in a simulated death camp furnace, illustrating the twisted ideology of a man who cares more about dolls than human life.  As I said before, I love Roger Allam’s acting, and seeing this scenario come to life on film would have given him more screentime in addition to being more interesting that what happened in the movie.

     Still, the loss of Prothero’s scene is more than worth it, because it wouldn’t have made much sense for V to use a symbolic death to kill him and then forego this method for Bishop Lilliman.  This character’s death is not only my least favorite scene in the book, but it’s certainly the most demonstrable and objective improvement in the movie.  In the book, V seems makes a very pretentious and highly offensive statement about religion by forcefeeding a cyanide-laced communion to Lilliman after using Evey to lure him into a pedophilic tryst.  In addition to perpetrating the pedophile priest cliché, Moore displayed an absurd lack of knowledge and research in regards to the sacrament.  Most ridiculously, V asks Lilliman if the wafer will become the Body of Christ the instant  it enters his mouth, and Lilliman confirms this in the dialogue.  Obviously, the wafer becomes the Blessed Sacrament when the priest consecrates it at the altar.  The comic also claims suggests that if this were true, Lilliman wouldn’t die of cyanide poisoning, and thus his death supposedly disproves this doctrine.  Again, not true: the physical accidents of the cyanide wafer will still remain nonetheless, and that’s even assuming that God will let a dirty pedophile truly perform the sacrament.  I also assume that Norsefire’s state religion is Anglicanism, and I’m not even sure if Anglicans even believe in transubstantiation.  The internet keeps giving me ambiguous answers, so if any Anglican wants to correct my bottomless ignorance, then that person is more than welcome to.  Instead, the movie not only just has V kill him offscreen, it adds a hilarious moment of comic relief in which Evey gets cold feet and decides to warn Lilliman that V is lying in wait, and Lilliman thinks she’s playing a sex game.  Overall, it’s a pretty damn good reason to prefer the movie. 

      Delia Surridge’s death is actually one of my favorites.  Knowing of her remorse, V shows her what passes for mercy for him: painlessly killing her with a syringe and allowing her to be forgiven by him before dying in peace.  It’s about as heartwarming as murder can get.     

       Some scenes really do embellish the story well.  One example is the story of Valerie Page (Natasha Wightman), a homosexual actress sent to the same camp as V.  It’s an effectively poignant story regardless of one’s opinion on homosexuality.  It’s relatively faithful to the book’s version, although I think the narration about her coming out to her parents is improved.  Some political statements in the movie are less well executed.  When Evey asks about his possession of an illegal Koran, Gordon Deitrich (Stephen Fry, of all people) straightfacedly utters, “Do you have to be Muslim to appreciate its beautiful writing?” Not that the book is without such dreadful corniness.  In one of its scenes, Finch visits Larkhill, drops acid and says something which I somehow doubt will be included among history’s more eloquent defenses of racial equality. 

So, yeah.  Black people are coffee.  It sounds worse to me when I consider that I can’t stand coffee unless it contains at least 40% cream.  The movie thankfully omits the part about the acid and replaces it with an excellent montage consisting of V’s falling dominoes, as well as flashbacks and current events leading up to the third act.

     I must point out that one line which sounds inspiring really doesn’t make much sense to me: “People should not be afraid of their governments.  Governments should be afraid of their people.”  Well, fear does not imply powerlessness.  A bear will tear you to pieces because it’s afraid of you.  The line should be “People should not trust their governments.  Governments should trust their people.”  The government should always trust its people with their own lives, and the people must be vigilant lest the government overstep its bounds. 

     The final scene consists of V’s bombing of Big Ben while citizens dressed up as him watch.  While the logical storyteller in me objects to the act of bombing an architectural landmark that could have had people in it, my inner poet loves this scene.  The inspirational use of the 1812 Overture gives the movie’s ending an inspiring tone, and I love the touch of having some people remove their masks revealing people who were murdered by Norsefire, whom V as a symbol represents. 

     Although many comic fans dislike this movie for the changes it made, I actually have to say that I like it more than the comic.  I admit that I did watch the movie first, and that the comic has more complexity and logical sense than the movie, but I generally just find the movie more entertaining overall.  Even though there are definite objective improvements in some areas. 

Especially this fucking scene.

   

FAVORITE QUOTES

EVEY: Who are you?

V: Who?  Who is but the form following the function of what, and what I am is a man in a mask.

EVEY: Well, I can see that.

V: Of course you can.  I’m not questioning your powers of observation.  I am merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.

EVEY: Oh.  Right.

V: But on this most auspicious of nights, permit me then, in lieu of the more commonplace sobriquet, to suggest the character of this dramatis persona….. Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. [carves a V into a Norsefire poster]  The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.  [giggles]  Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

EVEY: Are you like a crazy person?

EVEY: I don’t see any instruments.

V: Your powers of observation continue to serve you well.

SURRIDGE: You’ve come to kill me, haven’t you?

V: Yes. 

SURRIDGE: Thank God.

SURRIDGE: Are you going to kill me now?

V: I killed you 10 minutes ago. [shows her a syringe]

SURRIDGE: Is there any pain?

V: No.

SURRIDGE: Thank you.  Is it too late to apologize?

V: Never.

SURRIDGE: I’m so sorry.

V: Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone's death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.

FAKE SUTLER: Ah, warm milk, there’s nothing better.

GORDON: I understand you enjoy a glass every night, chancellor.

FAKE SUTLER: Since I was a boy. [Real Sutler is watching with a glass of milk in hand]

SUTLER: We are being buried beneath the avalanche of your inadequacies, Mr. Creedy!

EVEY: [finding out about Prothero’s death] V, yesterday I couldn’t find my ID.  You didn’t take it, did you?

V: Would you prefer a lie or the truth?

VALERIE: That year I came out to my parents.  I couldn’t have done it without Chris holding my hand.

VALERIE: Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us.

DOMINIC: What do you think will happen?

FINCH: What usually happens when people without guns stand up to people with guns.

CREEDY: Why won’t you die?

V: Beneath this mask is more than flesh.  Beneath this mask is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.

V: The only thing you and I have in common, Mr. Creedy, is that we’re both about to die.

CREEDY: How do you imagine that’s gonna happen?

V: With my hands around your neck.

CREEDY:   Whatchya gonna do, huh? We've swept this place. You've got nothing. Nothing but your bloody knives and your fancy karate gimmicks. We have guns.

V: No, what you have are bullets, and the hope that when your guns are empty, I'll no longer be standing, because if I am you'll all be dead before you've had time to reload.

        

BTN Anchor: Now this is only an initial report, but at this time it’s believed that during this heroic raid, the terrorist was shot and killed. [shows footage of hostage forcibly dressed up as V getting wounded]

V: Would you dance with me?

EVEY: Now, on the eve of your revolution?

V: A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having.

FINCH: Who was he?

EVEY: He was Edmond Dantes….and he was my father….and my mother…..my brother, my friend….and me.  He was all of us.

EVEY: Where did you get all this stuff?

V: Oh, here and there.  Mostly from the Ministry of Objectionable Materials.

EVEY: You stole them?

V: No, stealing implies ownership.  You can’t steal from the censor.  I merely reclaimed them.