(Though I've heard Bush/Blair lovers are going to hate this one, for obvious reasons; I'm sure Dan Goldwasser was putting his foot in his mouth while interviewing Dario over at SoundtrackNet ... poor guy.)

I doubt anyone that waves a flag and believes in their government will appreciate this film's politics!

As for the film, I (and everyone who thought this film was irresponsible) was just called a "fuddy-duddy" by the NPR reviwer of this film. So be it.

For the people who are seeing and liking this film, I'm glad you can get into it. I have to admit it's entertaining in a guilty pleasure sort of way. Nothing like a film with no shame whatsoever, that's willing to say religious conservatives are fascists & Nazis without a hint of apology about it.

Less easy to take is the film's cavalier attitude towards killing people. V is completely unapologetic if not proud of his body count, even if innocent bystanders are getting killed. His new gal pal, Evey, is rather offended at first, but by the film's end, I doubt she feels the same. There's a bravura sequence where a number of quick killings are played for cool and I get the impression that as long as the Right (wing) people are buying the farm, the authors are perfectly ok with all the deaths since folks "on the wrong side" deserve what's coming to them to begin with.

I'm no fan of the Right myself but I don't think we're to the point where blowing up landmarks Oklahoma City style should be cheered and encouraged (with fireworks no less), even vicariously in fantasy.

I forget the name of the film that came out a few years back where a group of people would invite conservatives they didn't like to dinner and poison them, but this is kind of like a big-budget super-hero version of the same idea.

I also had serious questions overall about how fast & loose this film plays with serious human rights abuses, making them seem trivial in the context of what is basically a masked avenger movie.

I'm sure the W Brothers thought it was hip to melange, but one really shouldn't reference Batman, Benny Hill, girl on girl action, fencing, torture, and the Holocaust all within a single film.

I didn't have much trouble with the portrayal of the religious Right as fascists. In this respect the film sticks pretty close to the source material, in which Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government was presented as fascist - and although Maggie was many things, she was hardly that. The film merely updates the source material to the Noughties and the Bush/Blair administrations, surely the closest equivalents to Thatcherism today.

Overall, the film follows the graphic novel more closely than you might expect, but when it departs from the source material, it does so spectacularly - and I'm not sure all of it works. I had problems with the ending in particular, and the Deitrich character didn't sit well with me either. I can't help feeling that a much better film could have been made.

But enough about the film. Dario Marianelli's score left me cold. All I heard was standard action-adventure music. Then again, I haven't listened to the score outside of the film yet.

Shrubber

P.S. to Lou: the film you're referring to is The Last Supper, with Cameron Diaz and Ron Perlman. Well worth checking out.

*Before you write in: Brokeback Mountain and Crash don't count as mainstream Hollywood films.

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Originally posted by rkeaveney:
I really liked Marianelli's score, but I felt the film could have benefited from cutting 20 minutes of what I thought was extraneous material.

I doubt anyone that waves a flag and believes in their government will appreciate this film's politics!

Ryan

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Originally posted by shrubber:
Before you write in: Brokeback Mountain and Crash don't count as mainstream Hollywood films.

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
I'm no fan of the Right myself but I don't think we're to the point where blowing up landmarks Oklahoma City style should be cheered and encouraged (with fireworks no less), even vicariously in fantasy.

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I don't think that was the director's or writer's point, either. The film clearly takes place later on in the 21st century, passed 2025 (or is it 2015? It's in a line of dialogue in V), and at the point Britain is at during the course of the movie, it's pretty understandable that people would go to extremes (even blowing up an empty Parliament) to rid the country of fascists in that V For Vendetta "world." Would anyone be upset if someone had blown up the Iraqi equivalent of Parliament under Saddam Hussein's rule? I don't think so. Or done so alternately to Hitler or Stalin? Again, I don't think so. The "world" in the film is so upended from our own that the direct parallels you're drawing just don't fly—it's more saying: If we keep this terrible thing going than have a look at where we might end up.

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Originally posted by sean:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=1 face=arial>quote:</font><HR size=1>Originally posted by shrubber:
[b]Before you write in: Brokeback Mountain and Crash don't count as mainstream Hollywood films.<HR size=1></BLOCKQUOTE>

And why don't they? They both boast highly acclaimed filmmakers (Ang Lee and Paul Haggis); both have very successful stars in lead roles; both have won critical praise from mainstream film critics; and both are highly over-rated films and not thought provoking at all ... what's not to make them mainstream? Plus, they were both nominated for a bunch of Oscars (Crash won too, I think).[/B]

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Crash is over rated? I dunno about that, I will agree with Brokeback being over rated though. Plus I have a MAJOR problem with Ang Lee saying he's dissapointed in the human race because his film didn't win, and I have a problem with the writer throwing a major hissy fit about it too...

As for V For Vendetta, FANTASTIC! And I completely agree with Ryan. And the score... wow... There were 2 cues that really blew me away, the first one was when she was in the rain and the second one is where the dominos fall (both of which were in the trailer). I must get this score!

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And why don't they? They both boast highly acclaimed filmmakers (Ang Lee and Paul Haggis); both have very successful stars in lead roles; both have won critical praise from mainstream film critics; and both are highly over-rated films and not thought provoking at all ... what's not to make them mainstream? Plus, they were both nominated for a bunch of Oscars (Crash won too, I think).

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He often stated that he didn't really think the story was relavent anymore.

The fact that a lot of the ideas behind V FOR VENDETTA reflect current ones - and I'm not talking about promoting acts of anarchy, but for people to truly "wake up", a theme familiar from THE MATRIX films - is what makes the film worth seeing. I just wish the ideas were packaged better.

The list of unbelievable coincidence is huge and people, even racists, don't act like that. What is the point of the film? There is racism in America? Duh!

Personally, I think the film is trying to say that everyone, rich and poor and black and white have some racism in them. That might be true, but nobody but talks the way those people did. I live in Texas and we have plenty of racism here, but even here people watch what they say. The characters are unbelievable and the coincidences necessary to the drive the plot are ludicrous. It uses a sledgehammer to make its point.

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Originally posted by rkeaveney:
Whether or not Alan Moore thinks the story is relevant is really, well, irellevant! One of the things about works of art is that they can often transcend the time that they were created -- and become even more prescient at a later date.

The fact that a lot of the ideas behind V FOR VENDETTA reflect current ones - and I'm not talking about promoting acts of anarchy, but for people to truly "wake up", a theme familiar from THE MATRIX films - is what makes the film worth seeing. I just wish the ideas were packaged better.

Ryan

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...and again I completely agree with Ryan. Well said!

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Originally posted by rkeaveney:
Whether or not Alan Moore thinks the story is relevant is really, well, irellevant! One of the things about works of art is that they can often transcend the time that they were created -- and become even more prescient at a later date.

The fact that a lot of the ideas behind V FOR VENDETTA reflect current ones - and I'm not talking about promoting acts of anarchy, but for people to truly "wake up", a theme familiar from THE MATRIX films - is what makes the film worth seeing. I just wish the ideas were packaged better.

Ryan

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I sorta of agree that Alan Moore’s opinion of his own work isn’t completely relevant. I would need to re-read the graphic novel to see how faithful an adaptation this is. I know he hates it. I was merely pointing out that it wasn’t meant to be a commentary on events taking place today.

But that’s beside the point. I was really trying to set the context for the original piece. While a conservative government is in charge of England today, it is very different from the situation that Alan Moore was writing about. In some ways it is better and worse.

In the late 70’s it looked like it might take a revolution to change things. Anarchy was a spirit that was moving through popular culture the land via a disintegration of the “Swinging London” ethos and the failed utopian promises of the love generation. It didn’t look like there was anything worth saving and the government was pretty much painting a happy face on it to preserve the image while things fell apart. Besides some great power chords, they was a good reason that “Anarchy in the UK” was such a big hit. While “God Save The Queen” has its own special charm as title (released in time for the Jubilee), the original title “No Future” was more to the punk ethos.

Scoreguy--The one cue from the whole score that I thought was ok was the prison montage. Now you're telling me it sounds like it's a crib from another score. Ugh.

Sean--The fertilizer bomb in the train is a direct reference to Oklahoma City and one can draw an analogy between an anti-government guy blowing up a Federal Building in the US and V wanting to do the same to key government buildings in London. In any case, post-OK City & 9/11, I'm still a little queasy about a film blowing up landmarks as a positive thing.

Now, it's true that this is a work of fiction set in the future and I doubt copycat crimes will come from watching it. Also, I dislike censorship, so the filmmakers can do as they please. It's also true that, in the context of the story, freedom is pretty much shot and V represents the kind of violent resistance that it would be good to have emerge at that point. And V is more the darker Zorro/Robin Hood kind of avenger than most comic book do-gooder super-heroes which makes him interesting. So I have to agree with you on all those points.

However, that said, this is still a film about universals, no matter what time it is set in and what point in our time the film is released. It posits a way of dealing with things which might be appropriate given the circumstances presented in the film, but one I have Evey-like reservations about myself.

You're probably unfamiliar with Lina Wertmuller's film Love and Anarchy, but her take is entirely different. If you follow her points in L&A, I'm sure she would rather see V abandon all this, get to a good plastic surgeon, and get together with Evey, life & romance being more important than throwing your life away on politics, even if the political situation is difficult to live under.

So let's just agree to disagree here. V is an entertaining enough movie hero but I really don't want to see him pop from the screen into real life.

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A couple more thoughts on V...

The fact that it opens in 1605 with Guy Fawkes trying to blow up Parliament and that V wears a Fawkes mask throughout returns to this idea of universals. It doesn't matter if the film is set in the future or even on another planet, it's about the same thing at any time in history, fighting totalitarianism with violent reprisals. Which I'm not against under the right circumstances. However, I don't think you have to probe too far to see that the filmmakers think we're in that situation now or that it's coming. So I'd hate to see someone watch this film and think we're living under totalitarianism in the West today and we should go plant pipe bombs somewhere thinking it's cool.

Those inside and outside the US who felt very strongly against US power destroyed buildings and killed people in a symbolic gesture to show our government that it was vulnerable and should mend its ways.

Not only did that not work, it gave the current bunch of cretins even more power to react strongly and abuse people even more: Iraq, secret torture prisons, illegal wiretaps, a growing culture of surveillance, etc.

Governments don't topple easily and the US would clamp down on all of us with martial law before it let a revolution happen in its streets. Of course, a key section of the film deals with confronting your personal fears of death so that you can be formed into a revolutionary. Once you don't care if the government imprisons or shoots you, then it can't inhibit your behavior with fear tactics and you're free to fight against it. So great, the film thinks we should all become suicide bombers.

Maybe now is the time to take things back before things get worse. And yet maybe violent action on our part would only make things worse. Even though it seems the electorate is a bunch of asleep sheep, I'm still for taking the country back through the system (if possible) rather than outside of it.

In addition to the historical reference to 1605, V is an art collector with 17th century paintings and 50s rock n roll and so it seems contradictory that he could take out historical buildings. I mean no more Big Ben, thanks V, you jerk.

When we last see the Chancellor he has a blood stain on his forehead--Mark of Cain anyone?

- Alan Moore

If nothing else, at least we're talking about what the film means.

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Originally posted by Lou Goldberg:
A couple more thoughts on V...

The fact that it opens in 1605 with Guy Fawkes trying to blow up Parliament and that V wears a Fawkes mask throughout returns to this idea of universals. It doesn't matter if the film is set in the future or even on another planet, it's about the same thing at any time in history, fighting totalitarianism with violent reprisals. Which I'm not against under the right circumstances. However, I don't think you have to probe too far to see that the filmmakers think we're in that situation now or that it's coming. So I'd hate to see someone watch this film and think we're living under totalitarianism in the West today and we should go plant pipe bombs somewhere thinking it's cool.

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Maybe you're overthinking this. Not a criticism, just a thought though, because that's certainly not the impression I got. I agree with Ryan, that it's more about saying, Wake up. Of course, it has universal themes. Most, if not all, fantasy/science fiction is laced with universals; otherwise, how would an audience find something to sink their teeth into? (TV shows and films like Star Trek or the current Battlestar Galactica would not be successful at all if their themes didn't resonate with currents events that an audience would be able hold onto—it'd be boring, non-inclusive entertainment.) But Swashbuckler is right, at least we're talking about what V For Vendetta means and such, and it obviously means different things to different people. And maybe it speaks something of the politics of a lot of the people who post here, since there's a very select few of us actually contributing to this thread, lest this turn into a Burly Brawl.

I enjoyed the film on its own terms, but I am aware of its limitations. The politics are particularly muddled, but there are moments of universal truths that do emerge.

I do have to say that one must make a distinction between the man V and his message. The film is pretty clear on the point that the man is obsessed and commits murders without guilt, but he inspires the public towards positive action. A case can be made that most of the prime movers and shakers in history have been people with serious issues, which is often what inspires them towards eventual greatness. The question then is left to the reader/viewer as to whether the ends justified the means.

The political and social situation presented in the story is one in which the extremist V is the lesser of two evils. This is not unique to this particular book and movie, but is the source of any vigilante, rogue cop or intrepid gumshoe story, many of which come out every year and nobody questions them; this film forces the viewer to confront the moral ambiguities, and as a result we have discussions like this one.

No, it's not perfect. But whether you liked the film or not, one has to admit that it doesn't allow the watcher any easy way out, instead forcing them to become somehow complicit in the actions of its anti-heroes. One can draw many parallels to Fight Club in that respect.