V for Vendetta Brings Down the House

V for Vendetta,a dunderheaded pop fantasia that celebrates terrorism and destruction, is perhaps the ultimate example of how a project with modest origins becomes a media monster.
- David Denby, The New Yorker

The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of tyrants and patriots alike. It is its natural manure.
-Thomas Jefferson

I WAS GOING TO write a review this morning calling V For Vendetta, the Wachowski Brothers adaptation of Alan Moore's and David Lloyd's mid 1980s comic book series, the greatest ever movie from a comic book source. But when I wrote the phrase it just rang hollow. It cheapens the achievements of the movie. The movie is a great one on its own terms and needs no reference to its source material to justify it. Like Kubrick's film The Shining, the movie is better than its source material by a long shot--thrilling where the comic was slow, visceral where the comic was preachy, focused where the comic was obtuse. In short, the comic had the typical failings of most political art, where the movie suffers from none of those.

     The original comic book read like a creepy, didactic screed, with a stagy, theatrical vibe that recalled mid 60s British TV shows like The Avengers and The Prisoner. It got over on Lloyd's design work, centered around a "V" logo a Guy Fawkes mask, and lots of inky shadows. The images from the comic book were indelible where the story was a chore.

     The Wachowski's and director James McTeigue (one of their ADs on The Matrix films), have manage to latch on to those visuals while at the same time tightening the story--unfolding it with an easy mastery of narrative structure that steadily gains momentum towards an inevitable cataclysm. If the ending seems inevitable--the razing of Parliament, hundred of thousands of Britons in the streets in cloaks and Guy Fawkes masks overthrowing their totalitarian government--the story that leads us too that point doesn't.

     Sure, there are references to other pop literature that seemed to cheapen the film for critics like Denby. The movie, even more than the comic, recalls other futuristic dystopian political potboilers like 1984 and A Clockwork Orange. It also features a morally troubled, shlubby police inspector right out of Prime Suspect, continually name checks The Count of Monte Cristo, and most of all recalls Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.  (Literary references are a signature of V's creator, Alan Moore -- who's greatest invention is a superhero team of figures out of 19th century literature and whose most infamous book is a series of erotic tales about all-grown-up lost girls Wendy Darling, Dorothy Gale, and Alice). But, unlike, say, Harry Potter or Star Wars, V for Vendetta is no pastiche. If you don't know by now the story is set in a future England in which fascist totalitarians have taken over the country, consigned homosexuality, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion among other liberties to the dustbin of history, imposed an 11 pm curfew, carried out biological attacks on their own citizens. A terrorist in a cloak and Guy Fawkes mask--a survivor of a black op government experiment in biological warfare--is carrying out a vendetta, murdering all the officials who had been involved in the experiment twenty years before. But his personal vendetta is wrapped up in a larger political struggle to overthrow the totalitarian regime by realizing Guy Fawkes 17th century dream of burning Parliament to the ground.

     The terrorist, never known by any name other than "V," despite wearing a mask than betrays no emotion, is a complex figure. He's correct that the world has gone wrong and can only be set right by cutting the cancer out. But he's in it for what seem like all the wrong reasons--personal vengeance for one. Plus, he's no hero. He's a murderer, pure, simple and unrepentant; and when he psychologically and physically tortures a young girl he's taken in, in a successful attempt to radicalize her, it has a discomfortingly sado-sexual bent (especially in the comic). V espouses no political program; he merely destroys. In truth he's an anarchist, the v-in-a-circle logo conspicuously echoing the anarchist's "A" tag that was showing up in spray paint across Europe in the days when the comic first appeared.

     Is V a good guy or a bad guy? It's never clear in the comic--even though it is always clear that the totalitarian government is bad. If the moral balance is more obvious in the movie one suspects that is only because of the zeitgeist -- in the current political climate you're either for civil liberties and the rule of law or for unchecked government power and the legislating of morality. Neocon manichianism has pushed everybody to the wall.

     It is to the credit of the film makers that they didn't simplify the moral equations of Moore's original. At one point V argues that in the proper context blowing up a building can change the world, an obvious reference not to Fawkes but to Bin Laden--a passage hardly designed to curry favor or put V on the moral high ground. Nor did the filmmakers dumb down the relationships in in the movie--resisting the typical Hollywood temptation that would have, say, turned V into Evey's long lost brother. The relationships remain random, like most adult relationships--V inspired by his experience as subject of secret military experiments, Evey inspired by her parents. In fact, the film makers did such a faithful job translating Moore's dark, complex vision into a Hollywood blockbuster it's hard to imagine any reasons other than contrarianism and ego for Moore's distancing himself from the movie (he asked to have his name removed from the credits and gave his portion of the proceeds to artist David Lloyd).

     On the main the movie has received favorable notices. When bad reviews have come they've come at the hands of neo-cons objecting to the movie's politics. David Denby's March 13 review in The New Yorker is typical. (Ever since Denby lost all his money in bad Internet investments he's become an old scold--a former liberal turned neo-con Denby is like a reformed drunk ever on the pulpit, bitching about how much fun everyone else is having.)

     In his review Denby sets up straw men that have nothing to do with V for Vendetta's currency. Denby hails Orwell as a way of belittling V, saying at least Orwell was responding to REAL totalitarianism (ie, Hitler, Stalin). Today's London, Denby writes, is a bourgeoisie playground. That dismissive argument is a classic logical fallacy. Denby might feel uncomfortable with the notion that that secret lawless prisons, open ended detention, torture, military overthrow of foreign governments, warrantless searches and seizures, and the use of churches as tools of political power are classic tools of totalitarian governments; but the truth hurts pal. More than it did in the 1980s, when it was written as a reaction to Thatcherite England, V speaks to the zeitgeist. What's going on here is the beginnings of REAL totalitarianism buddy. Denby then asks, why blow up Parliament, a classic symbol of liberal democracy, why not blow up another symbol, or invent a fictional one? Maybe, David, just maybe, the message of the film is how quickly and easily the institutions of liberal democracy can be turned into tools of totalitarianism and repression. In the language of the film, Parliament is NOT a symbol of liberal democracy. Quite the opposite. Denby's gotta work on his suspension of disbelief if he's going to continue reviewing works of fiction.

     The unfortunate truth is that Thomas Jefferson was right. Fertilizer for the tree of liberty sometimes must come from the blood of tyrants who act in the name of patriotism. The true denouement of V for Vendetta comes not with the destruction of Parliament and the "people power" bloodless march of unarmed Britons overrunning the military lines that guard the building. That's a feel good coda. The real denouement comes with the grimier scene in the London underground station in which V butchers a cadre of armed guards as well as the high chancellor and the head of state security before going down in a hail of gunfire. Sam Peckinpah would have loved it!

Comments

[scarshapedstar]

A government that engineers a terror attack on its own soil, and then sends in their own corporations to profit from cleaning up the mess... gee whiz, where'd they ever get that idea.

[The Liberal Avenger]

I can't wait to see it!

[Jones]

One helluva review, Chervoka. First time I've ever been here. I'll be back.

[Craig Shergold]

The word you're looking for is "spoiler". Please don't forget it in the future.

And, yes, I still want to see it.

[ChrisV82]

That was a pretty good article. I think you and I are mostly in agreement in our opinions of the comic and the movie, and where they both went right and wrong.

I did think the comic was more into the 1984 stuff than the movie (such as the voice of London/England/whatever), but I think the film was a pretty good adaption. It took everything it wanted from the comic, added what it needed to make itself a good film, and flowed well enough.

I said yesterday after I saw it that I'd give the comic a B (it's been a while since I read it, but that's the impression I retain) and the film a B. I might bump that up after reflecting further, and having time to digest a little more. I still feel that a totalitarian government in the Western world would be far more clever and not so overtly Nazi-ish (ditto with 1984, also); but I can get past the heavy-handedness, which could have been a lot worse.

I went in expecting it to be lame; I came out pleased. I guess it really deserves a B+/A-. Good show.

[Lev Raphael]

As an author and reviewer, Denby's review and some of the other bad ones (NYT , WaPo, Salon.com) made me know I wanted to see it for sure, whereas before I'd had my doubts. There's something about a dunderheaded review that reveals bother the reviewer's lack of insight into the book or film and points to the work's excellence.

I quite agree with this review. The film was tight, taut, coherent, compelling, exciting, and far more interesting than the original source material which is hardly the work of genius you're eharing it called (though that's probably more as a stick to ebat the movie with). I was thrilled that it was so much better than I'd been led to believe/expect by major reviewers.

As for the references to other works, what was the problem with that? When Quentin Tarantino does it, fine, but when the Wachowski Brothers do it, no go?

And as a bonus, when's the last major film you've seen that was so subversively pro-gay?

[chervokas]

Craig-

Spoiler, shmoiler.... I presume when I read or write a review of a book or movie that there will be a discussion of the plot, unless the plot is somehow irrelevent, in which case the book or movie is probably not worth reading or seeing.

Chris-

I pretty much agree with you, B+/A-...but it's like Peckinpah...it's hard to call Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garica a "great" movie because it's such a rickety, trashy, homemade contraption...but why do I just want to watch it over and over, why is Warren Oates' psychotic quest so tragic and heroic despite it's trashy surroundings? Isn't that what makes it great even though Citizen Kane it ain't? That's they way I feel about V.

Lev-

I usually appreciate the criticism of over-referential pomo art....Too often references and ironic intertextual commentary are substituted for insight and character definition in narrative art these days. It's the nature of post modernism to substitute detached, ironic, self-awareness for the old fashioned 19th search for transcendence. I'm a 19th century kind of guy. "Hast see the white whale" and all that. But I know you can make great PoMo art too (Paul's Boutique anyone?). In the case of V, I simply think that whatever references exists further instead of undermining the story's basic thrust, and, frankly, the originality of it's twists on classic themes. "Subversivly pro-gay"? I don't think so. First of all it's blatantly, fundamentally pro gay on it's face. Second of all, it's hard for me to call a glossy Hollywood blockbuster "subversive." "Forrest Gump," was more subversive, although it was subversively conservative and obnoxious and offensive. But I will say this for V...I came out of there feeling good about the idea of blowing up the White House. It's the feel good hit of the spring!

[Ripley]

I'll tell you what I think: Great review of a great film that happens to be just my kind of agit-prop. It's certainly got the insider-class squirming in their Gucci's. Bravo.

[Slappy]

I thought the movie was OK as I was watching it. A bit heavy handed and obvious but still not too bad. (As the rain falls on the girl we get a quick shot of V coming out of the burning rubble for example) Then I realized it was based on a comic as I watched the end credits. I wasn't familiar with the comic and didn't know much about the movie going in. After realizing it was based on a comic, the movie made more sense. V is a very comic bookish super hero/villian. The plot twists are very comic bookish as well. Nothing wrong with that. I love the X-Men movies myself.

However, if this movie were not based on a comic I am not sure it would stand on its own. As a movie alone and not based on a comic book adaptation I don't think the movie would hold up.

[chervokas]

Don't agree, Slappy. I think the XMen movies, and almost every comic book movie dumbs down the original material and fails to live up to the dramatic potential of its source. Except for the first Spider-man movie (and now V) there are no unqualified successes among the comic book movies I've seen.

V, by contrast to me, makes something else of the source material--the way kubrick made something else of his source material (Lolita, The Shining, 2001, etc). Obviously it's impossible for me to view the movie w/o my 20 years of prior knowledge of the source material. But my family members--ranging in age from boomer professional to Gen Y teen--hadn't read the comic but loved the movie. The movie spoke to them in a very contemporary way, both politically and visually.

I think there's an aesthetic thing happening in pop narrative right now where a group of creators who grew up on comic books are putting that aesthetic to new use across platforms. I'm thinking of Jonathan Lethem, The Wachoskis, Kevin Smith, Joss Wheedon, and to a lesser extent Michael Chabon. And there's a clash of aesthetics going on. In away I think you're either a Brokeback Mountain kind of person--favoring intimate stories of real people, or you're a V for Vendetta kind of person--seduced by myth and scale and magic.

Of course the two can crossover (all that great magical realism from Machado DeAssiss to Woody Allen's Alice, Chabon et al's script for Spidey 2--that's my favorite stuff, I'm not really a fan of pure fantasy a la Lord of the Rings); and one can be a fan of both.

But to those who cherish small, intimate realism--drama over the visual arts-- something that can be identified as "comic bookish" begins inherently a notch below. (In movies "comic bookishness" can often be seen in the kind of "heavy handed" visual metaphors and similes to which you object. Comics, after all, tell tales through iconography first, words and actions second.)

As I said in the review, V the movie is better than V the comic book, and I suspect it will hold up well to repeated viewing, and even small screen viewing where the story will be less overwhelmed by the visuals (tho' that relationship is an aspect of the original).

[ChrisV82]

I think if you could take X-Men 1's story and mash it together with X-Men 2's action and budget, you'd have a pretty good comic book adaption. X-Men 3 looks horrible.

But that's off-topic. I wanted to know how you felt about Sin City. I felt it was quite possibly the most literal adaption I've ever seen, but hearing Frank Miller's cheesy pulp dialogue on the screen was more grating than hearing it in my head. And really, both the comic and the movie were not big on story - it was definitely a visual, emotive kind of creation.

[loopster]

Not to be a killjoy, or a cliche-dropper, but sorry, the comic is better. I think it's more than fair to take Denby, et al, to task over their elitist view of the film's politics. The movie's not subtle and wasn't supposed to be; it's not a drawback. What is fair, is their critique of the movie's aesthetics, which are far less inventive and exciting than the story deserves. I hate to say it, but the film feels flat, flatter than it should feel, at any rate. Some sequences work very well, but many others don't. It simply doesn't feel alive, the way it should, and doesn't even have the stylistic razzle-dazzle that we're supposed to expect from the Brothers W.

The comic isn't perfect, but it feels more powerful, more generous, both more ambivalent and more committed than the film. I hope the film does very well. I hope that lots of people see it and talk about it. I think that it stands a chance of becoming a truly important film despite its shortcomings. I wish Alan Moore (whose work I admire tremendously) had kept his mouth shut in any case. But I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't disappointed in the execution of "V for Vendetta."

[chervokas]

Loopster, the comic's more ambivalent for sure, but like I said, it was easier to be ambivalent then.

I prefer the movie. Alan Moore, who can be a very purple prose technician and whose work can be very precious at times (both true of the original V), for once really benefitted from having someone try to turn his cerebral constructs into people in action in a sympathetic way (vs, say, the unspeakable monstrosity that was the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen flick).

For my money the comic book never felt alive--it was a bunch of cool ideas carried by some knock out visuals, I hadn't wanted to re-read it for 20 years. It seemed bone dry and disengaged, but the movie throbs. I'm going to see it again. And this time in Imax.

[Slappy]

Chervokas:

This is just a personal preference but I prefer my fiction to be fiction based and my reality based movies to be based on reality. When the two mix, it just doesn't work for me. I like the XMen movies because it took the comic book world seriously as opposed to the god-awful Batman movies. The characters are more than just superheroes with super powers. The XMen world is fantasy and that allows us to "believe" in mutants.

V is fantasy but tries to put us in a world that is real. The fantasy makes the realism less real and the reality based parts of the movie take away form the fantasy. For me, you can't have both. The comic book V character cheapens the far deeper political underlinings of the movie. And the attempt to truely make us (or me rather) feel the horror of such a society is impossible with such a comic book character running through it. Imagine Schindler magically lifting the Jews magically out of Europe using his telekintic powers. The horror of the halocaust is lost, or at least lessened. Orwell's 1984 would be cheapened if the lead character were to have psychic powers. It would not work. Brave New World is fantasy and yet still works as a piece of fiction because it follows its own rules within its own universe. V attempts to horrify us with a realistic, all to close to reality, vision of the future and yet releases a comic superhero in the middle of it, I no longer fear this vision for it is now fiction based and not an attempt at an alternate or futuristic reality.

I believe I understand your point. My tastes are just different.

[chervokas]

Chris, I'm a Frank Miller fan. But I never was a big fan of the Sin City books precisely because they felt like warmed over pulp stories---a dash of Chandler here, a little James M. Cain there, some really over the top violence, and voila!

I love those pulp novels and the film noirs, but the Sin City book never seemed like a step forward, just a chance to draw some really great pictures. Still, the dialogue in Sin City was no cornier than Fred McMurray's dialogue in Double Indemnity. (Admittedly not the greatest example of good dialogue in classic film noir)

You're right, it was a literal adaptation. And it was great to look at (especially the parts when Jessica Alba is on screen ). But I didn't think it was a great movie by any stretch of the imagination.

My wife, however, who is not a comic book reader, adored it!

Apropos V for Vendetta, the Frank Miller movie I'd like to see is Martha Washington Goes to War.

[chervokas]

"Imagine Schindler magically lifting the Jews magically out of Europe using his telekintic powers."

That could have been the plot of a Gunter Grass or Salman Rushdie novel!

[Slappy]

Overall I would say more than the movie being good it is interesting. I'm glad I saw it. It certainly wasn't a waste of my time. And interesting alone is an accomplishment.

[p kibble]

David Denby is a priss and a scold. He's turned into what his his mentor Pauline Kael once accused late-70's movie audiences (and movie critics)in "Fear of Movies": shivering little fraidy cats who start mewling loudly every time a filmmaker steps on their tails.

Unfortunately, when Denby swings into his stern Calvinist mode, he can almost always be counted on to miss the point. Thus, if there was a problem with Kill Bill I (which I enjoyed), it wasn't due to its stylized, cartoonish violence so much as to its relentless self-referential movieness, its compulsive referencing to every filmmaker or genre that Tarantino admires, which began to feel airless and oppressive after a while. (Kill Bill 2 was better--as in Jackie Brown, there were some characters who shucked off the straight jackets of pop mythology and emerged as something like recognizable human beings.)

Denby's similiarly off the mark with V for Vendetta, though for sheer obtuseness Jeff Giles' long whine in his Newsweek review is unmatched. Giles complains that the movie "contains dialogue likely to offend anyone who's not, say, a suicide bomber."

I for one don't mind being "offended" in this way. "Offensive" movies can skewer received perceptions and start people asking all sorts of uncomfortable questions (which, believe it or not, is not the same as sanctioning mass murder). Apart from entertaining, V for Vendetta is also intended to provoke and even enrage.

I'm sure Giles and Denby would prefer their movies---and their movie audiences---all be safely housebroken. But some of us don't take our social cues (or our tastes)from those tea-sipping chats on NPR, where every one is given a turn to speak his or her piece in the name of "balance." "Balance" (and, thanks to Fox, "fair")has become a code phrase for "Don't shake them up"---the dangerous plebs out there who might start asking for their heads back once they start hearing someone aking all the "wrong" questions.

Oh, and will V for Vendetta start---to use that fetish phrase- a "national conversation" about freedom, etc? God, I hope not. Actually, what I'm hoping for is a good old fashioned shouting match, full of name-calling and the standard Anglo-Saxon expletives. Having to sit through George Sephanopulis's show where George Will or Cokie Roberts will inevitably parse the Insidious Implications of V in their bland, oh-so-measured tones is more than anyone should have to bear.

[tim t.]

saw the flick on saturday - months ago my expectations were high; then i decided to lower as we got closer to release date. i was surprised by how much i liked this film and found more than a few powerful moments - and make no mistake... its set in england - but its really about the states... the crowd was quiet and serious.. and when i was going to bed last night i caught a piece on the news about how v was the #1 movie over the weekend - i gave a fist pump and said outload "yes!" considering the lack of marketing by warner bros. i was surpised to see it #1. i think there is truely a hunger out there... for what, i'm not sure yet... but maybe.. just maybe...

[Slappy]

"Actually, what I'm hoping for is a good old fashioned shouting match, full of name-calling and the standard Anglo-Saxon expletives."

Amen.

[sean]

I haven't seen the movie yet, so maybe I shouldn't be responding, but in general David Denby is the worst. Even when I agree with him (which is rare) his reviews seem shrill, narrow minded, and dull. (Greil Marcus once remarked that Denby's style was the literary equivalent of clearing ones throat.) His idea of great recent American movies: meretricious stuff like Mystic River and outright lying crap like last years Crash.

[chervokas]

Sean, I didn't see Crash. But I thought Mystic River was good.

[Wally Whateley]

An excellent review -- best and most complete one I've seen so far, and I'm in total agreement. I'm recommending the movie to everyone I can.

[daveminnj]

i'd like to see it, but i'm wondering
is it incredibly depressing?
syriana (great movie) did me in for 2 days.

[chervokas]

Depressing? Nah. I actually found it uplifting!