V for Vendetta

I have just finished watching this film for what must be the hundreth time, or so my family says. They are quite sick of me watching this movie, everytime I sit down to watch this, they get really upset saying, “Haven’t you watched that enough times?” Well quite obviously the answer is a resounding NO.

What really surprises me about people’s reaction to this film is that:
a) They haven’t seen it. It seems odd to me that such a great movie, with an amazing cast has been left in the proverbial dark. Honestly though, I would have expected that more people would have watched this film, given it’s contents.
b) People didn’t like it. This is really surprising to me, and although this may seem like a cliche rebuttal, what’s not to like? Sure it may make it seem that terrorism is an okay thing to do, but if you keep it in context, this was a dicatatorship, and all acts against the government could be considered terrorism. But in the end, the opressed people overthrew the government and people got back to living how they were supposed to live.
c) People who thought it was an okay movie the first time they saw it, but wouldn’t want to see it again. This is confusing to me, why wouldn’t you want to watch such a great movie again? I know I would! …And have.

So let me tell you the story of how I came to like V for Vendetta. I was flipping channels on the tv and came across TBS, where V for Vendetta was playing. Unfortunately, I had missed a good chunk of the film, and only saw the second half. I was really anxious to know what had transpired in the first half of the movie, I could barely sleep all night! Although I knew that it would played on tv again, I was unwilling to wait that long in order to find out what had ahppened. This resulted in a little trip down to the movie store where I bought the movie. I got home, and immediately got to watching. Before the day was over I had seen it at least 2 times.

The plot is interesting enough, with the government attacking its own people in order to secure power through fear, and then one man’s plans to over throw the governemnt by destroying parliament. There’s a lot of other stuff happening but it al relates to this central plotline.

The characters are very well played. V is played by Hugo Weaving, a phenomenal actor, he did a terrific job in this movie. I should note that throughout the entire film, you never see V’s face, thus you never see Weaving portray any facial expression, and all the emotion that he expresses is through his voice. Not an easy task but no match for the talents of Mr. Weaving. After all he did play Agent Smith, and Elrond in the Matrix Trilogy and Lord of the Rings Trilogy respectively. One thing in this movie that is different from all the other movies where there is a man in a mask fighting against injustice is that V is more of anti-hero. For instance he does nto hesitate to kill, his acts can be seen as terrorism and the governemnt is set on his death and/or capture. As well as the fact that you never see his face. This is interesting because in all other similar masked movies, the mask is always removed and you see the person underneath. The reason for keeping V masked is explained in the begenning of the movie, ‘We are taught not to remember the man, but the idea.’ and again near the end of the film, ‘Beneath this mask there is more than flesh, there is an idea, and ideas are bulletpoof.’ In any case the decision to not show his face was an excellent one.

Nest up is Natalie Portman, playing Evey Hammond, phenomenal performance I would say. At the begenning she was really worried about what she had done, her expressions while she was being tortured were accurate enough. Just an all around great job, I wish I could say more, but its hard to describe acting in words, without using some of those over used adjectives.

In particular, I really like Valerie’s story. It helped that it was  aturning point in the film, giving Evey the courage necessary to choose death and protect that inch.

In any case great movie. Now on to the book.

After watching V for Vendetta, I went out and bought the graphic novel. Although the incidents are different at points, and the murders that V commits are also different. The message is the same. I am not surprised then, that this great, dark, fantastic book was made into such a great movie. I respect the poetic licence that the movie producers took to change what had happened in the book; I don’t think there was a better way.

Conclusion: Watch the movie, read the book, enjoy, repeat.