V for Vendetta

Hmm, tough one.

I wanted to like it, as there is much to like.  Retention of some of the key moments, and the invention of some new ones, mean that it is an enjoyable film.  It has been altered, in some places more successfully than others, and changed, twisted, into something so that while it shares elements with the comic book, it is no longer of the comic book.  It is a strange clash between the modern world and Moore's vision of 1997, and there are times when the differences are irreconcilable.

I was watching The Culture Show the other day, Alan Moore was profiled and interviewed, and he says he doesn't mind people making films of his work, he just wishes they'd make 'better' films.  While V for Vendetta is a better film than The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, which isn't hard admittedly, I don't think it would qualify for being a 'better', more interesting, film.

First the good stuff.  The heart of the comic, V's interrogation of Evey, and the letter from Valerie, is presented in most of its shocking detail.  Natalie Portman doesn't sell the indignation/realisation for me, but that's personal taste.  The letter works as a mini film-within-a-film vignette.  It is practically word for word, and the core of the message, while diluted slightly, is not lost.

Stephen Fry is very good, and the creation of his character, Dietrich, as a counterpoint to V, works well.  The scene after his television broadcast is excellent, simply for sheer surprise factor, and really does sell the brutality of the regime and Dietrich's misunderstanding of it.  His re-appearance in the final scenes is inspired. 

The effect of television, as opposed to Radio and the Voice of Fate in the comic, is really well done.  Prothero comes across as the type of TV agitator that we see everyday on the news, hear on the radio and read in the papers.  He is Garry Bushell, Tony Parsons and Bill O'Reilly writ large and his venomous attacks are not surprising in context of the current media climate, which is very worrying indeed.

There are also little splashes of the comic littered throughout the film.  The little girl with the big glasses, the making of eggy toast, the dancing and the jukebox.  All small things, and not important, but little nods to the readers of the comic that, yes, the writers and director have actually read the comic, not just a synopsis.  The look of V, as everyone knows, is spot on.

Now for the bad.  The world is remarkably clean, modern and free from any traces of either the war that took place before the film, or the chemical attacks that are discussed throughout.  It does just look like our world, with the occasional nod to the comic, in the form of a poster with the party motto emblazoned across it.  It doesn't feel like the world of V, and while some people, especially those who haven't read the comic, might be able to dismiss it, I couldn't.  You could argue that it is part of the compromise to translate the picture to film, and to make it more relevant, but they don't try and do the same in other areas of the film.

The figure of the Party Leader, played by a frothing-at-the-mouth John Hurt, is quite frankly, laughable and bears no relation to the quiet sociopath that inhabits the comic.  Gone is Fate, and with her, the relationship that V and Sutler share.  The face of Sutler replaces the party, and in doing so the film loses some of the relevance it had worked so hard to cultivate.  In the comic, the Party is almost a silent machine, working, cruelly, behind the scenes, manipulating and coercing in equal measure.  With Sutler as some kind of Hitlerian demagogue, it simply has the jackboot.

There is a laughable sub-plot about some of the Party members organising and profiting from a chemical attack in the UK, whose only purpose, it seems, is to make Prothero, the smirking, doll collecting, ex-prison warder, and Lilliman, the paedophile priest, seem even more evil.  Thanks, I kinda got that.

There is an annoying amount of dialogue for an action film.  Or to put it another way, for the intelligent thought-provoking film this is, there's an awful lot of fighting.  The problem is that V isn't an action movie or a serious political film.  It is trying to be both and doesn't quite make the grade in either.  The first time we see V, the pace of the fight scene is broken up with Hugo Weaving prevaricating on the vagaries and vicissitudes of the modern condition.  Which would be fine, if we could hear what he was saying over the bombastic music written with the action scene in mind. 

So, it is a flawed film, but there is enough in there to really enjoy it.  The inventions of the Wachowski Brothers don't hurt the film, at least not fatally, but they hardly make it better.  Dietrich and the new media aside, I don't think there is any part of the new material that I would consider essential.  It is easy to relate to the news footage of the film, as we are seeing it every day, in one form or another, but the fascist government, ruled by a chancellor, via the military is not one that I can relate to.  It's all a bit Germany 1933 for my liking, and modern politicians are smarter than that. 

Today, they smile. 

They encourage you to take part in the game of politics, if you place your vote you've done your duty. Apathy, while not an official government position, is hardly an enemy to their cause.  The film reinforces a myth about tyrannical governments, the myth that they are all in some way obvious, that they dress up in black, shout slogans and lock up subversives.  The myth that they are in some way brought down through the death of a party or an institution.  The myth that if the people rise up and make themselves heard that there will be change. 

They are not listening.

And what started out as a film review ends as a political tract.  Sorry.