Spring Break
Shocking politics redeem caustic V for Vendetta
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Nothing can be as refreshing as a good dose of political outrage now and then -- an outrage that rookie director James McTeigue's consistently enjoyable, intermittently intelligent V for Vendetta delivers with acidic gusto. Imagine, if you will, a world where the language of national security cloaks imperialist ambitions, where the state controls every media outlet and where citizens have been silently stripped of any democratic power. This is the United Kingdom, circa 2020, of McTeigue's particular dystopia, although to any politically exasperated moviegoer it reads much more like a sickening extension of contemporary turmoil. In the totalitarian Britain of the near future, not civilized opposition but revolutionary violence -- embodied in the film's titular antihero, a knife-wielding insurgent known only as V -- is the most effective weapon against government oppression.
Still, don't be fooled by the contemporary overtones. Taken from a script begun in 2001 by the Wachowski brothers, who have here spared us the kind of messianic ramblings that suffocated their Matrix trilogy, V for Vendetta was adapted from the 1989 graphic novel of the same name, penned by Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. Something of a self-styled serious artist, Moore wanted nothing to do with the film, which, considering how poorly his works have come off on the silver screen (think The League of Extraordinary Gentleman), shouldn't shock anybody. In its worst moments, McTeigue's movie has the pop-wow action scene feel of, well, a graphic novel. Weighty ideas are boiled down to slogans, character motives become leering and obvious, and London landmarks are threatened with imminent detonation. And yet, who but the most politically correct viewer could easily vilify the virtuosic viscerality of V for Vendetta?
Even with its fascist bureaucrats, with their secret police and detention centers lifted straight out of the Nazi playbook, the movie winds up striking a much lighter tone than one would expect. V himself, voiced in lilting Shakespearean tones by Hugo Weaving, is partially to blame. Concealed behind a grinning mask of Guy Fawkes, the English terrorist who conspired to blow up Parliament in 1605, McTeigue's latter-day radical spends his days lounging in a cavernous London flat furnished with piles of government-banned artwork. Occasionally, he ventures out to assassinate a politician or blow up a symbolic building.
It is on such a sojourn that V meets Evey (Natalie Portman), a young woman accosted by government agents one night after breaking curfew. After disposing of these attackers in one of the film's few true action sequences, V encounters Evey again as he attempts to blow up the TV station where she works. The victim of state-sponsored medical experiments, the masked avenger discovers in Evey, whose politically outspoken parents were abducted by the British authorities, a similarly scarred companion. And perhaps an assistant in his wider scheme of rebellion.
As the two move closer to V's final goal -- to destroy Parliament on the anniversary of Fawkes' original Gunpowder Plot -- the British government closes in on the poetry-quoting "terrorist" who threatens its operations. V for Vendetta has its own cast of resident demagogues--most of them homophobic, Muslim-fearing, Bible-beating conservative caricatures. There is England's new overlord, Chancellor Arthur Sutler (John Hurt), who looks a little like a decrepit hybrid of Saddam Hussein and Hitler, backed up by a Bill O'Reilly-style talk show tyrant (Roger Allam) and a scheming secret police chief (Tim Pigott-Smith). Such monstrosities channel the worst creations of Animal Farm, although the lesson here is more that after a certain point, all hated governments start to look alike.
By dwelling more on psychological impact and black irony than actual hard-hitting action, V for Vendetta proves more pleasing than most superhero addicts would expect. Yet moral ambiguity is soon overwhelmed by the necessity of rooting for Weaving's avenger, intellectual pretensions and all. There are a few touching, revelatory moments -- including one vignette about a lesbian actress (Natasha Wightman) who fell prey to government prejudice. Indeed, the greatest emotional potential lies with Portman, who, despite her crying, screaming, shaved head and serviceable English accent, does not give Evey's development the necessary subtlety. She remains minor note in a panorama of grand ideals and self-congratulatory cultural allusions.
"Behind this man is an idea," notes V, as his revolutionary plot barrels towards completion, "And ideas are bulletproof." Dystopian fantasies, almost as a rule, have a problem balancing individual characterization with social vision -- a feature that plagues, Orwell, Huxley and, no surprise, V for Vendetta. Yes, McTeigue often falls short of those earlier masters, but at the very least, he provides a few of those "bulletproof" ideas his protagonist cites, delineated with a furious, gleeful artfulness. After all, as V tells his protégé, "A revolution without dancing is a revolution not worth having."