V For Vendetta: The Movie

the book (am just re-reading this) has WWIII happening in about 1987, nuking of africa, nuclear winter over europe, fascists coming to power due to lack of anything else. book is set in 1997-1998. he's just sent out valentines. it is a very english book, am quite annoyed that it's been repositioned as anti-american.

(is great to see lloyd's art on buses btw)

(in an interview at the time moore said words to the effect of 'we had supposed that it would take a nuclear war to make england veer towards fascism. in the end all it took was giving people the right to buy their own council house...')

No, it doesn't. V is still morally very dubious and at times is frightening, and Evey is much more resistant to him and his ideas than she was in the book. The relationship ends up being kind of similar to that of Jack and Tyler in Fight Club, actually, and I think the film manages to maintain a similarly detached attitude to its 'hero'. Whichever review it was that said "She kisses him, therefore the film agress with him about everything" was just mindless.

am quite annoyed that it's been repositioned as anti-american.

I don't think it has. It's still very british, and politically is perhaps more believable than the original. The ruling government is explicitly shown to be a third party (not labour or tory) who gained power on a wave of post-terror fear and a swing to the right in the electorate, not the ruling power, ie yes, people did bring it on themselves. Unlike the book, this didn't require anything as drastic as a collapse-then-rebuilding of government after a nuclear war, just (what appeared to be) a large scale terrorist attack followed by the promise of protection. So the society they end up with (in the film) does feel less removed from where we are now, and that strengthens the story a lot I think. The feeling is that the people haven't had their freedoms forcibly taken away, so much as they've willingly given them up in return for their security. Which for my money means that the film is definitely anti-British rather than anti-American (Hello ID cards, etc).

Again though, this meant it felt closer to reality, and therefore, I think, better. The acceptance of dictatorship was an insidious, electorate-approved thing, not a seizing of control by an unpopular power.

everyone in the movie seemed well fed and well dressed and pretty content.

Kind of like in modern day China, perhaps? It doesn't make sense for a dictatorship to keep its subjects miserable, that just inspires revolt. Much more sensible and dangerous to keep them reasonably happy with one hand, whilst with the other hand you take away their freedoms.

The last time I looked, London seemed more like a prosperous pleasure garden

Jesus wept...

"England's not-quite 9-11 (a pretext for a crackdown on Catholics and foreigners), this thwarted conspiracy—celebrated every year as Guy Fawkes Day—has an even more hysterical significance. Had it been successful, the explosion would have vaporized half of London and thus, in its state-of-the-art carnage, offered a foretaste of Hiroshima."

i'm not an expert on explosives but: o rly?

i'm not an expert on explosives but: o rly?

Um. No. There was a show last year at a MoD range, presented by Richard Hammond, where they exactly replicated the blast (down to authentic gunpowder). It would have been a very big bang, and certainly would have as good as destroyed parliament and caused fairly significant damage for about a mile radius (through the blast wave and thrown rubble), but wouldn't have caused that sort of effect.

"It doesn't matter that they all have funny accents, this movie is CLEARLY an attack on america and the president!" etc

i hope the movie isn't demonized... because a) we all need to be reminded that our country isn't this bigbro+nazi++ totalitarian regime... and b) where our country is like this country, we need to be thinking hard about that...

i wish people would see a movie like this and not dismiss it.
m.

haha, xpost!

um, 'newsflashes and stuff about america' != CCTV

that's what I meant. is there an updated thing in the flick that takes the place of the threat/symbol of CCTV circa 1980?

yeah, there are little nods to stake out vans... and "88% of conversation indicates that people still think xyz".... and office rooms being bugged, so the good cops pull out some kind of jammer device or something... etc.
m.

yeah, maybe my opinion is awful. what do i fuckin know? it was free and i had a good time.
m.

That's what I felt it was missing - ok so maybe today's dictatorship ensures its citizens have some degree of comfort, but if there's *no* privation or repression - and I didn't get much of a sense of any from the movie - then what is the point in rebelling?

Don't answer that...

Portman Bold ... and Bald ... in 'V for Vendetta'
Thursday, March 16, 2006
By Michael Kane

Natalie Portman, why must you grow up? You were just so perfectly pixie, skating around and doing the "doo, da-doo, da-doo" from that Lou Reed tune in "Beautiful Girls," or getting teary-eyed at a funeral for a hamster in "Garden State."

Now you're playing a gangsta rapper on "Saturday Night Live" and blowing up British Parliament in "V for Vendetta."

And, Natalie, can we talk about the hair? Does a nice girl go out and get her head shaved?

Meet the radical new Natalie, 24 years old and graduated from Harvard. Out of "Star Wars." And out to change the world, one subversive psychodrama at a time...

and it goes on, etc

i have never seen her give a good performance in a movie, however.

help me out here dudes

Anyone else think the guy playing the ranting TV journalist had modelled his look and mannerisms rather closely on Christopher Hitchens?