A movie review from Liberal Street Fighter

V for Vendetta is going to be one of those movies that that will elicit a wide range of responses, reactions that may tell you as much or more about the reviewer as about the movie itself. What I saw was a warning, a Dickensian ghost come to warn us about how this moment of history is a cusp between possible futures. That, and a homage to older stories, older movies and heroes.

Alan Moore is part of a movement of writers in modern speculative fiction, artists like Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman and the granddaddy of the bunch, Michael Moorcock, who take old pulp novels, fairy tales and Saturday serials and use them to put a post-modern spin on their fantastic stories. While there is a touch of the science-run-amok origin story to V, he makes clear during a scene with Evey in his secret lair that much of the man he is was inspired by an old movie version of the Count of Monte Cristo.

V for Vendetta is both a modern “comic book” spectacle and an old fashioned gentleman bandit movie. It’s Batman crossed with the Scarlet Pimpernel, Captain America crossed with Zorro, Daredevil crossed with Dick Turpin … but with a generous dollop of politics mixed in.

Moore, has disavowed himself from the film … from all of the projects that DC Comics makes from his works (you can read interviews with him about the subject here, here and here). However, I’ve come to view such disputes as just part of the web around making pop art. NO work is truly owned by just one person, though a creative genius like Moore can add something new, or coax out something not-yet-seen in a set of stories that go back to older themes, older conflicts … that’s what he did with his comic book retelling of a man, a mask, his blades and a huge injustice. David Lloyd, the artist who drew the original has indicated that he’s happy with the movie. How did the story hold up in this retelling by James McTeigue and the Wachowski brothers?

The movie is brilliant, but don’t go expecting lots of choreographed martial arts or caped crusaders flying through the air. There is a mystery woven in with V’s exploits, and the heart of the movie is the evolution of Evey, portrayed wonderfully by Natalie Portman. Evey, the child of “disappeared” parents who had protested England’s subjugation by fascists, goes from young gopher at the British Television Network to V’s partner in his grand plan to take England back for the people by helping the people take it back for themselves. She is his muse and reason, and very much the heart of the movie. I won’t go into more about how she changes, how she grows, because to do so would be to ruin some vital parts of the twists and turns of this well-wrought tale.

The kind of virulent conservatism that the Norsefire Party used to take over England in V’s future swept into power on a wave of fear. Fear of muslims, fear of gays, fear of biological warfare … fear of the other, the unknown, the frightening and uncontrollable. The people handed over control to politicians only-to-eager to exert it. Sound familiar?

It would be easy to find parallels to our present situation (the US in the movie is a country apparently wracked by plague and civil war, yet given that all the information in the movie is filtered by Norsefire, who knows?). Frankly, though, we aren’t quite that far gone. The Bush Administration is just a fertile pile of shit from which a government like the one in the movie might sprout. If we let it.

That is the real point of V for Vendetta … if WE … LET … IT. V seeks, with his campaign of terror/resistance/theater, to make the people take responsibility again for their country. He seeks to be a symbol of a resistance, a symbol that people can use to give themselves permission to find the resistance within themselves. He takes on the visage of Guy Fawkes to remind Englanders of the spirit of resistance.

People do that through symbols, through leaders, and sadly right now we have far too few of those who’re willing to stand up for our highest ideals. I mentioned that there were warnings of a dark future in this movie. The Party sweeps into fire after some horrific attrocities, and over the objections of people who finally take to the streets to protest. Frankly, once it gets to that point, if there isn’t a symbol to focus people’s energy, it’s too late. We are at a point in our history where we are ripe for the rise of a demagogue like Chancellor Sutler. As our institutions continue to fail us, we may, as early as the next Presidential election, face just such a man. There is an enormous amount of untapped anger and energy in the populace, energy that could be tapped by a real, charismatic populist, and such populist could appeal to people’s higher beliefs, or to their basest. This movie is a warning, one we’d do well to heed. Here’s hoping that a sizable number of the audience that spent $26 million on opening weekend saw the warning too.