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V for Vendetta: Providing food for thought

18 March 2006, 18:00 PM
LIFESTYLE
Natalie Portman facing a masked Hugo Weaving in the film
It is the year 2020. A virus runs wild in the world, most Americans are dead, and Britain is ruled by a fascist dictator who promises security but not freedom. One man stands against him, the man named V (Hugo Weaving), who moves through London like a wraith despite the desperate efforts of the police. He wears a mask showing the face of Guy Fawkes, who in 1605 tried to blow up the houses of Parliament.

On November 4, the eve of 'Guy Fawkes Day', British schoolchildren for centuries have started bonfires to burn Fawkes in effigy. On this eve in 2020, V saves a young TV reporter named Evey (Natalie Portman) from rape at the hands of the police, forces her to join him, and makes a busy night of it by blowing up the Old Bailey courtrooms.

The movie follows V's exploits for the next 12 months, until the night when he has vowed to strike a crushing blow against the dictatorship. The film shows a police state that holds citizens in an iron grip and yet is humiliated by a single man who seems impervious.

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This story was first told as a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and published in 1989. Its hero plays altogether differently now, and yet, given the nature of the regime, is he a terrorist or a freedom fighter?

V for Vendetta has been written and co-produced by the Wachowski brothers, Andy and Larry, whose Matrix movies also were about rebels holding out against a planetary system of control. This movie is more literary; less dominated by special effects, and is filled with ideas that are all the more intriguing because one cannot pin down the message. The most pointed is V's belief: "People should not be afraid of their governments.

Is this movie a parable about 2006, a cautionary tale or a pure fantasy? It can be read many ways.

Source: RogerEbert.com