How the Wachowskis screwed up, why Alan Moore needs to shove his head right up his butt, and why V For Vendetta is brilliant

I saw V For Vendetta yesterday. Yes, it's a movie, but it's based on a comic book, so I will dissect it here! Brace yourself - I'm going to get extremely political and there will be MASSIVE SPOILERS!!!! If you haven't read the book or seen the movie and are planning to, you might want to skip this post, because I'm leaving nothing out!













Are you still here? I'm totally serious about SPOILING EVERYTHING!!!!


Okay, fine. Let's begin:
First, the right wing has been going into a bit of a lather over this movie. This review and this review give the movie a nice evisceration. And then there were the problems with production and Alan Moore, nicely summarized here. All of these links are from two posts at Avi Green's blog, which is certainly an interesting read even though he often makes me angry (politically, we're almost opposites). The right wing nuts focus on a few things in the movie and get all bent out of shape about them, and I'd like to address those items.

First, the United States. In the movie, the U.S. has collapsed into what we're supposed to believe is a decades-long civil war, prompted by Bush's War on Terror. The United Kingdom has arisen as a power because they turned to brutal fascism to control things, implying that because Americans had freedom to question the government, things fell apart. So the right wing crazies are saying that Wachowskis are anti-American because they inserted this into the movie.

And they're right.

This is a serious miscalculation by the Wachowskis. It adds, quite literally, absolutely nothing to the main story, and it's stupid and un-subtle (not much about the movie is subtle, but this is less so than the rest) and guaranteed to do one thing: make Americans angry. Americans can deal with watching a political satire about a foreign country, especially those uppity Brits. Hell, they might not even get that it's an allegory about Bush's America! By inserting the fate of the U.S. into this movie, the Wachowskis shot themselves in the foot, I think. Right-wing crazies can whine all they want about how Adam Sutler (Adam Susan in the book, played by John Hurt) is obviously George Bush. And left-wing crazies can fire back, "It's only a movie, right-wing crazies!" But by putting America into the book, the level of allegory is lowered into the realm of pedantry, and that gives the right-wing crazies a target.

Then there's the Koran. At one point, Stephen Fry (gay in the movie, but not in the book) takes Natalie Portman down into his basement, where he keeps all sorts of forbidden treasure (that's right - booty!). He is proudly displaying a Koran, and he talks about its beautiful imagery. This exchange takes about five seconds, but the right-wing crazies have latched onto it the way Brad Curran has latched onto Nextwave, and again, they have a point. If Muslims are mentioned in Moore's original (I honestly can't remember), it's only as yet another sub-section of society that is oppressed by the fascists. By singling out the Koran (why not a Catholic Bible, as the dominant Christians in England are very much C. of E.), the Wachowskis are again making pointed and dull-witted commentary about the Bush Administration. And it's not even particularly accurate - Bush may hate Muslims, of course, but I like to think of him in much more Machiavellian terms - he likes anyone that helps him accrue power to himself, and if that means holding hands with Saudi princes, go nuts! What this brief moment in the movie does is give the right-wing crazies who DO hate Islam - and there are plenty of them, and they proudly admit it - more grist for the mill. Guess what, right-wing crazies? You're right - Muslims have been responsible for many horrible crimes in history. Guess what, right-wing crazies? So have Christians. Do you really want to start a tally sheet?

Finally, there's the attack on the elementary school and the water treatment plant. This exists nowhere in the book, and it is completely unnecessary to the story. It's not difficult to believe that a country could slide into fascism, but it's a bit more difficult to believe that they would kill 100,000 of their own citizens to achieve power. Not impossible, mind you, just difficult. By using this idea, the Wachowskis again imply that the Bush Administration would do it, or perhaps has done it. Listen, left-wing crazies: Muslim terrorists killed all those people on September 11th. Yes, George Bush and his government was completely incompetent in stopping it or in finding the mastermind behind it, but he didn't do it. Stuff like this has been done before - anyone remember the Reichstag fire? - but in my opinion, Bush is far too stupid to have masterminded something like this. Actually, the right-wingers I've read defend their boy the same way. They point out that the fascists in the movie are so much more competent than Bush's cronies that the comparison is invalid. That's a good way to defend your boy - he's too stupid to be this evil. That makes me feel better.

So the Wachowskis get a bit ham-fisted at times. They cleave rather closely to the source material, which is why Alan Moore needs to stick his head right up his butt. Listen, I love Alan Moore. I think V For Vendetta is one of the best comics ever written, not only the story and the way it unfolds, but because of the structure and the innovation (no sound effects or internal narration, that sort of thing). Moore has been burned by Hollywood before, and the disinformation that the studio spread about him loving the script was crap, but if this is the script Moore read and called bullshit, then nothing will ever make him happy and he's just turned into some crazy-haired crotchety old man who paints his face blue and rambles on about the good old days - meaning, for him I suppose, the Ice Age, when man was in touch with his primal nature and sacrificed virgins to volcanoes and lived until he was 30. Thank you, but I'll pass. Moore can keep writing comics (or not, if we believe his retirement talk) until he's called back to the mothership, but like a lot of celebrities, he should just shut up. Actually, everyone needs to stop asking him questions, and then maybe he'll shut up. Guess what, Alan? From Hell was a pretty decent movie. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen sucked huge donkey dick, sure, but it's still better than Catwoman or Elektra or Batman & Robin (which is in the running for worst movie of all time) in the pantheon of comic book movies. As for V For Vendetta ... well, this is a great movie.

Yeah, I said it. A. Great. Movie. This is without a doubt the best comic-book movie I've ever seen (granted, I haven't seen Ghost World or A History Of Violence, but I have seen Unbreakable, which up until now was the best comic-book movie ever), and with time, it may become one of my Top Ten (I'd have to think about it). This is the most I've been affected and thrilled by a movie since, I think, Fight Club, which was a long time ago. V For Vendetta is often brilliant, and for most of it, it's completely gripping and enthralling.

That's not to say there aren't problems. The ones I've mentioned above, even though the anti-Americanism and the Koran make up about three minutes of the running time. The idea of the government poisoning its own people is a bit more problematic, but the point is, it's perfectly conceivable within the context of the movie, and more importantly, we can easily find examples of it throughout history. Yes, even here in the glorious United States, although the examples from other countries are probably more numerous. There are some other problems. When we first meet V, he launches into a rather silly speech laced with alliterative uses of "v"-words. It's difficult to understand and goofy, but luckily, he doesn't do it throughout the film. The ending is rather cinematic, sure, but it just doesn't fit very well. V sends Guy Fawkes masks to citizens all over London, and on the night of 5 November, they all come out to the Parliament building wearing them, in a bold show of solidarity with their new hero. I'll get back to that. Portman's British accent isn't horrible, but it's kind of all over the place. And, of course, they had to lose quite a bit from the book, some of which would have been nice to see in it. One of the things we lose that I think hurts a bit is how very pathetic the Leader (Susan or Sutler, take your pick) really is. In the book, he's supposed to be all-powerful, but we see how banal evil can be and how he has done horrible things but he still thinks it's for the good of the country. He can't even see the dissolution around him, and although it doesn't make Susan a sympathetic character, it does make him a comprehensible one. In the movie, John Hurt is seen only once not on a video screen, and he's never a fully realized character. More than one person has made the comparison between Hurt going from playing Winston Smith in 1984 to Adam Sutler in this movie, and I wonder if the filmmakers were consciously trying to draw that comparison with the overbearing and gigantic visage of Sutler dominating his underlings. Maybe, and although I understand why they cut out the parts of the book in which we learn more about Susan and his government, it makes his small arc in the movie less potent. Just a minor thing, I suppose.

Another place the Wachowskis screwed up is with the ending, as I mentioned. It's not that everyone showing up at Parliament with their Guy Fawkes masks on is particularly bad, it's just that it feels like a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" thing. V still dies at the end, which is nice, but has the populace really learned anything, or have they traded their devotion to Adam Sutler for devotion to V? I may be reading too much into it, but I wonder if the Wachowskis are subtly undermining their own message and saying that conformity will triumph over all. I hope not, but that's what it felt like to me. At one point, Stephen Rea (playing Inspector Finch) mentions that V has wrought chaos, which tracks with the book. However, the Wachowskis never allow V to explain his theory of anarchy in the movie, which is what he really wants. They imply that V wants this mass destruction, when what he really wants is people to think for themselves and live together without a government. We can argue the semantics all we want, but it's clear in the book that the chaos is just a prelude to people learning to construct new social forms in which government is unnecessary. We never learn, in the movie, what might come next.

However, I still stand by my conviction that this is a great movie. Portman is excellent, and Hugo Weaving brings V to life with astonishing clarity and vision. Even though I knew it was coming, the scenes when Portman is broken by V and reads Valerie's note are brilliant and heart-wrenching, and speak to the true message of the movie - living your life without fear, and never giving up your integrity. The action is very well done, without most of the theatrics of The Matrix, and it feels like a real time and place. It's only two hours long, but the filmmakers pack a lot into the time. The problems that the right-wing crazies have with the movie are ridiculous, because the parallels are much closer to Nazi Germany than Bush's America. Perhaps the right-wing crazies are so angry about it because they recognize far too many truths in the rise of the British fascists? The movie makes it clear that the people are complicit in their fate, and that Sutler didn't come to power in a vacuum. The populace will watch anything that is spoon-fed to them on television, and when V shows up to stir the pot, it's just another program. The parallels between Stephen Fry as Gordon and V are nicely laid out, as both have underground lairs where they store great works of art. Fry is V without the imprisonment and experimentation, and he stands up to the government in his own way, despite its futility. Right-wingers are also upset about Bishop Lilliman and his pederast ways. Yeah, because in real life priests never sexually abuse people! Maybe it's a cliché that all churchmen in movies have to be perverts, but the point is not that he's Christian, but that's he's powerful. That's the point that right-wing crazies don't want to accept about this movie - that power does corrupt, and it is necessary to take power away from those whom it does corrupt. They can easily point to someone like Bill Clinton, who was quite obviously corrupted by power, but not George Bush. Why are only conservatives immune to the lure of power? What V For Vendetta says is, quite simply, that we must find what defines us, what makes us free human beings, and never let it go. Not in the face of ruin, not in the face of torture, not in the face of death. V becomes free when the people running Larkhill take everything away from him. Evey becomes free when V takes everything away from her. Gordon becomes free when he stops hiding behind his television show and does something meaningful. Valerie becomes free when she stays in England with Ruth instead of fleeing the country. Finch becomes free when he decides that he cares more about justice than the corrupt law. It's a message that we sometimes lose sight of, and this movie helps remind us of this. You can support George Bush all you want, but you can't deny that in the past few decades we have given up more and more of our freedoms to feel safe. I'm complicit in this as much as the next guy. If you don't think we have, try getting on a plane without being searched. Why are you being searched? It's unconstitutional, after all. You're being searched because you want to feel safe. What this movie suggests is that the British people wanted to feel safe, and for the most part, they are. V is a terrorist, yes. The movie doesn't make him quite as insane as the book does, but he's still a terrorist. What we should ask ourselves is, what kind of terrorist is he? Is he a terrorist like the 9/11 terrorists, who flew planes into buildings filled with people who were just trying to live their lives? Is he a terrorist like Herschel Grynszpan, who shot a Nazi in Paris in 1938 and ignited Kristallnacht? Is he a terrorist like Samuel Adams, who published outright lies about British troop abuses in order to spur the colonists into revolution? The movie wants us to ask these kind of questions - is he a terrorist or freedom fighter? Right-wing crazies, apparently, want to tell you what he is. Another big deal made about this movie is the destruction of Parliament - it's too close a parallel to the World Trade Center. Even Roger Ebert, who liked the movie, is disturbed by it. As V points out in the movie, a building is just a symbol, and sometimes symbols need to be destroyed. This is actually a subtle shout-out to the American people (not the American government, mind you) - the British people are unconcerned with the destruction of their national symbol, because they are more concerned with making a better world, just as the American people were not crippled by the loss of two buildings, but simply got back to work making their lives better. V For Vendetta makes the point that they're only buildings - beautiful and historical buildings, to be sure, but they're not more important than the people.

Right-wing crazies will no doubt wonder why Hollywood doesn't make a movie showing a Muslim government driven to excess and totalitarianism. Why doesn't Alan Moore (or another comic book writer) write something like that? Well, Frank Miller seems well on his way to doing that, but one of the reasons why I think both Moore and the filmmakers choose to make something familiar totalitarian is because of that - the familiarity. It's easy to write a Muslim regime as becoming intransigent and oppressive - just do a documentary on Saddam's Iraq or Khomeini's Iran. What a movie like V For Vendetta does is show us that it could easily happen anywhere. Too easily, in fact. Berlin in the 1920s was a pretty Bohemian place, full of those strange queers and artsy types and probably a bunch o' Commies. I wonder if the conservative section of the blogosphere had been around back then, they would have called for someone to come in and clean up the joint! Okay, that was a cheap shot, but my point is, this rather liberal environment wasn't enough to stop the Nazis from taking over in a very short time. It COULD happen here, and it's a question of whether we will allow it or not. V For Vendetta simply posits a place where it has happened, and it shows us that it doesn't really need much to happen. That's why both the book and the movie fall slightly short - Moore points out in his late-1980s introduction that he no longer believes a nuclear war is needed to push Britain toward fascism, while the movie overdoes it with its viral threats. But that's a minor point.

Right-wing crazies are ignoring the beautiful message of the movie, personified by Evey. V is and always will be a cipher, but Portman's performance holds the movie together and shows us how we can overcome the terrors we face in life. She runs from V more than once - at the very beginning, when it's perfectly plausible, and twice more. However, when V commandeers the television station to tell the people of London what he's doing, Evey saves him from Dominic, the policeman, by macing him and getting knocked unconscious for her efforts. Her true epiphany comes later, but this small act of rebellion shows us that even an all-powerful government cannot break its people's spirit completely. Anyone who's read the book will know that Evey flees when V kills the bishop, and she seeks shelter with Gordon. This false security comes to a violent end, but it's interesting that even after Evey has begun to learn a bit about V and about what the government is doing, she still runs. She turns away because she doesn't want to confront her complicity and the crimes that the government has committed. Even with what she knows about the fate of her parents, it's safer to run and hide. When this is no longer an option, she finds Valerie's note and refuses to betray V. This frees her, and it allows her to flee from V a third time, this time to discover herself on her own. V can't do it for her, and this is why Evey's story is the heart of the movie, and why the ending is a bit of a disappointment. Everyone in London, it is implied, needs to go through a transformation like Evey's, but it seems like the filmmakers don't follow through on that. It doesn't change the fact that Evey is the pulse of the movie, and Portman's wonderful performance carries us through.

This is an excellent movie, one that does more than most movies in that it challenges us to believe in something and to think more clearly about our lives and what we are doing with them. It also shows (to bring it back to comics, since that is our mission here) the power of comic books. The most obvious comparison to the original book is Orwell's 1984, and it's interesting when you read both how much more vivid V For Vendetta is, because of its graphic nature. 1984 is a masterpiece, but it's not always clear exactly what London looks like. Comics are a wonderful medium for expressing these sorts of ideas, because we're more inclined to believe in fantastic worlds when we read comics. Therefore, a "hero" like V doesn't seem so out of place. This allows comics to challenge the status quo and ask questions that might seem ridiculous in mainstream fiction and also offer solutions that might seem forced in mainstream fiction. It will be interesting to see if people actually seek out the original graphic novel after seeing this. I doubt it, but if they do, they'll be in for a treat.

V For Vendetta certainly isn't the perfect movie. It is, however, a great movie. Not for its somewhat corny anti-Americanism or paranoia, but for its heart and its belief that people are always better than they seem to be. All they have to do is prove it.

(I stole some of these pictures from Nik, because I can. Thanks, Nik!)

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