A Film Sabotaged By Itself
V for Vendetta
The New York Sun, March 16, 2006
With the dangerous and complex struggle against Islamic extremism stretching relentlessly, terrifyingly, and, seemingly, endlessly ahead, there's plenty of room for an intelligent movie that shows how fear, disaster, and fury could lead us all into totalitarian temptation. "V for Vendetta" is not that movie.
To be sure, as should be expected of a film produced by the maestros behind "The Matrix" and based on the ideas and imagery of a pioneering graphic novel, "V for Vendetta" is visually stunning. Even better, instead of some handsome, hapless Keanu stumbling and mumbling through his role, there's the rumpled, brilliant Stephen Rea as a sad-eyed cop and the soothing and sinister voice of Hugo Weaving. These two terrific performances are enough to take this movie a good way beyond comic-book flash or the empty look-at-that of the Wachowskis' CGI conjuring.What's more, after the exhaustingly talky tedium of the latter two Matrix movies, it's a relief, and something of a surprise, to discover that "V for Vendetta" (which is directed by James McTeigue, yet another "Matrix" alumnus) does what thrillers often promise, but rarely deliver: It thrills.
The problem is that this movie is meant to do more than that. It is, we are being told - drum roll, Oscar buzz, Natalie Portman buzz cut - a film with a big, important message, but that, I'm afraid, is where it fails. And it doesn't just fail. It collapses, crumbles, implodes, and melts down, its credibility thoroughly sabotaged by nitwit politics, numbskull preaching, and an understanding of history so feeble it would embarrass a high school student, so peculiar it would delight Oliver Stone.
To no small extent, these flaws flow from the beginnings of "V is for Vendetta" as an overwrought and overrated 1980s British comic strip by two men, Alan Moore and David Lloyd, who were upset, very upset, with that nasty Magaret Thatcher. Their confused, dystopian tale eventually developed into a full-fledged graphic novel, but it never outgrew the paranoia, alienation, and hysteria so often found among Britain's leftists during the long, bleak, Thatcher terror. As that savage tyranny ground to the end of its first decade, a gloomy Mr. Moore warned readers of the initial (1988) American edition of his work that the United Kingdom's "new riot police wear black visors, as do their horses ... The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against." Blimey.
Mr. Moore wrote that he was thinking of quitting his "cold" and "mean-spirited" country very soon. He "didn't like it anymore." I suppose it's meanspirited of me to mention that, nearly 20 years later, he's, well, still there.
Poor Mr. Moore may not have moved far in all that time, but his hero, the terrorist (freedom-fighter, insurgent, take your pick), V, the enigmatic and deadly prankster in a Guy Fawkes mask (we never see his face), has enjoyed something of a change in image. Played by Hugo Weaving, former elf (from "Lord of The Rings") and current Australian, with the most silkily seductive English accent since the late James Mason, V is now being touted as a libertarian of sorts, an antic and unpredictable Thomas Jefferson playfully throwing blood all over the liberty tree. That's quite some makeover, comparable, perhaps, to suggesting that the historical Guy Fawkes (in reality, a religious zealot and former Spanish mercenary) only plotted to blow up England's Parliament in the interests of liberty. But then, of course, that, absurdly, is another thing this film tries to do.
The V of Messrs. Moore and Lloyd (Mr. Moore was the writer, Mr. Lloyd the illustrator) was more malign, less marketable, and more interesting than the one-dimensional and relatively favorably drawn character shown in the film. Beneath the polished, erudite, and occasionally compassionate exterior, their V was certainly psychotic, undeniably murderous, and very possibly insane. He was also an anarchist,an obvious fanatic (even if his views were portrayed fairly sympathetically) to whom blowing up symbols of the democratic dream came naturally: Like that dream itself, they had never meant much, dictatorship or no dictatorship. Stuck within the crudely drawn and conventional liberal pieties of Mr. McTeigue's self-satisfied morality play, however,such acts of destruction make little intellectual sense. They add nothing to the debate over terrorism (and the response to terrorism) that this movie was supposedly designed to provoke, but who cares? Their real function is as gratuitous pyrotechnic spectacle, an opportunity for Western audiences to cheer on a parable of their own annihilation. If, in the wake of September 11 and so much more, I find that a little strange, I guess that's just me.
The background against which the movie's plot unfolds is just as much of a mess. Worse, by keeping the bad guys as, quite literally, comic book villains, they are left with no meaningful role to play in any discussion about the justifications for terrorist violence. The last time I checked, fighting Nazis wasn't exactly controversial. Nazis? Yup, they're back yet again. The starting point for "V for Vendetta" is the generic fascist regime (black shirts, ranting dictator, ethnic nationalism, "internment" camps, persecuted minorities, bone-headed propaganda, the usual) described in the original graphic novel. Back in the 1980s, such dark, forbidding imagery was routine grist for the anti-Thatcher mill, but even then it came across as loopy, over the top, and more than a touch retro. There was an obvious danger that by 2006, 60 years after Adolf, Benito, and the rest of the gang, it would just look absurd. Thanks to the filmmakers' insistence on pushing the story even further into the future (mainly so they could insert numerous ham-fisted references to the war on terror), it does.
It didn't have to be that way. While I hesitate to mention Orwell's bleak masterpiece in this company, his "1984" was also very much a product of its times. But when Michael Radford filmed it in, well, you can guess which year, he clearly understood that retaining the book's period flavor could actually underpin the power, and the timelessness, of Orwell's terrible warning. And he was right. Watching that movie (it's excellent, by the way, and available on DVD) will do more to make you think about the way that perpetual conflict, whether it's with militant Islam or the hordes of Eurasia, can be used to control public opinion, than anything you'll see in "V for Vendetta."
To be fair, Mr. McTeigue had much less to work with than Mr. Radford, but his screenplay (written by the Wachowskis, and denounced by the reliably ornery Mr. Moore as "rubbish") strips the original storyline of what little subtlety it once had. For that, turn to Mr. Rea's haunting portrayal of Chief Inspector Finch. Finch is a man with a sense of justice working for a regime that he knows to have none.Throughout the film, Mr. Rea dominates the screen in a way that eludes Ms. Portman, even with her shaven skull.
She's in the key role of Evey, the girl rescued by V who becomes pupil, victim, and accomplice, but her missing locks are the most dramatic aspect of a performance only marginally more persuasive than her English accent, an odd confection teetering uncertainly between Posh Spice and the queen. As an imperiled waif, Ms. Portman is believable (just look at her, the poor mite) but, as the film progresses, Evey's evolution into something more forceful simply fails to convince.
Much like this movie, in fact.