V for Vendetta
Oct. 4th, 2006 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zenithblueSo, a lot of people on my flist have brought up the film version of V For Vendetta lately (I think it's lately released to DVD), and I thought I'd take a few minutes to jot down my feelings on this movie. This is not to trash on anyone else's opinion, but to throw my own thoughts out there (it seemed inappropriate to take up someone's comments slots with all this).
Okay, there you go. Feel free to pick a fight with me. I am open to other thoughts on this.
First off, in the interests of disclosure, I should tell you I'm not a big fan of dystopias. Mostly I don't like them because the worst of them seem chock full of cheap shots. It feels sometimes like the author just sits around imagining the worst that can happen. Well, I'm a chronically depressed obsessive compulsive neurotic, so I can do that on my own, thanks much. A really good dystopia stretches towards something more complex, in my opinion. It takes a grim sociological backdrop and holds a much broader range of human behavior up against it. Good examples of this are The Handmaid's Tale, the anime series Evangelion, and the as-yet-unpublished Vicious (if you're a fan of brutally depressing philosophical fantasy keep your eyes on alecaustin). These are stories about heartbreak and love and loss and how a certain environment or world can affect those things.
This is in part why V for Vendetta is not my favorite Alan Moore book. It's one of his earlier works, and you can see where he's going with it and what he's attempting with it, but sometimes it misses the mark. It's not a bad book, and parts of it are quite brilliant. Compared to other more complex stories that he tells later in his career, though, V feels a bit like proto-Moore. A fascist conservative setting, after a brutal series of genocides? Haven't we been here before? The basic material is not that rich. But there are parts--the incredibly complex relationship between V and Evie, for example, as well as marvelous art and nuanced wordplay--that are incredible. The book becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Now for the movie. There are three major things I hated:
1. Hugo Weaving's voice is much too grandeloquent and jaunty. He pushes the characterization too far towards caricature. V is a psychopath--a mask-wearing, charming, anarchistic psychopath. He should sometimes be comical, but there's a delicate line. The introduction of the character in the movie, where he rattles off all the alliteration of V he can...it made me cringe inwardly. Over the top. He's not a harlequin. He should have been a little more nuanced than that.
2. The love affair. By far my biggest complaint. It trivializes, romaticizes, and Hollywoods up what should be a complicated, harrowing relationship. Sure, V opens her eyes. He wakes her up. But there's a cost to that, and there's a dark side to it. Would you blindly love a man who convinced you you were being tortured to rid you of fear? Maybe. But I think it'd be love tempered with exasperation, fear, impatience, and maybe even disgust. The Wachowski brothers simply cannot write good love scenes. They s-u-c-k at it. Any complexities are eradicated, and chemistry? Forget it. They don't get it. The other problem is that the love story sort of cleans him up for us. I think we should be a little horrified at V. He is a beautiful, briliant man. But he's also damaged in a very fundamental way.
3. Everything was just so...simple. After the horrible sequence where Evie is mock-tortured (or, even, tortured--a point you could argue about), I needed there to be something that made me feel it was worth it. In the book I feel it. In the movie, I just don't. I am not sure why (the household copy of the book has been loaned out, so I can't refer to it right now). It might just be that Portman was miscast, or it might be that the book gives us more room to be pissed off at V before we come around to him. But it just didn't work for me.
alecaustin). These are stories about heartbreak and love and loss and how a certain environment or world can affect those things. This is in part why V for Vendetta is not my favorite Alan Moore book. It's one of his earlier works, and you can see where he's going with it and what he's attempting with it, but sometimes it misses the mark. It's not a bad book, and parts of it are quite brilliant. Compared to other more complex stories that he tells later in his career, though, V feels a bit like proto-Moore. A fascist conservative setting, after a brutal series of genocides? Haven't we been here before? The basic material is not that rich. But there are parts--the incredibly complex relationship between V and Evie, for example, as well as marvelous art and nuanced wordplay--that are incredible. The book becomes greater than the sum of its parts.
Now for the movie. There are three major things I hated:
1. Hugo Weaving's voice is much too grandeloquent and jaunty. He pushes the characterization too far towards caricature. V is a psychopath--a mask-wearing, charming, anarchistic psychopath. He should sometimes be comical, but there's a delicate line. The introduction of the character in the movie, where he rattles off all the alliteration of V he can...it made me cringe inwardly. Over the top. He's not a harlequin. He should have been a little more nuanced than that.
2. The love affair. By far my biggest complaint. It trivializes, romaticizes, and Hollywoods up what should be a complicated, harrowing relationship. Sure, V opens her eyes. He wakes her up. But there's a cost to that, and there's a dark side to it. Would you blindly love a man who convinced you you were being tortured to rid you of fear? Maybe. But I think it'd be love tempered with exasperation, fear, impatience, and maybe even disgust. The Wachowski brothers simply cannot write good love scenes. They s-u-c-k at it. Any complexities are eradicated, and chemistry? Forget it. They don't get it. The other problem is that the love story sort of cleans him up for us. I think we should be a little horrified at V. He is a beautiful, briliant man. But he's also damaged in a very fundamental way.
3. Everything was just so...simple. After the horrible sequence where Evie is mock-tortured (or, even, tortured--a point you could argue about), I needed there to be something that made me feel it was worth it. In the book I feel it. In the movie, I just don't. I am not sure why (the household copy of the book has been loaned out, so I can't refer to it right now). It might just be that Portman was miscast, or it might be that the book gives us more room to be pissed off at V before we come around to him. But it just didn't work for me.
Okay, there you go. Feel free to pick a fight with me. I am open to other thoughts on this.
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no subject
on 2006-10-05 07:01 am (UTC)As for your first two points? The only way I could agree with you more would be if I were you. Damned well said.
no subject
on 2006-10-05 03:09 pm (UTC)It's been a few months since I saw the film, so I'm operating on memory a bit here.
no subject
on 2006-10-05 04:08 pm (UTC)Evangelion is the one and only anime I've watched in its entirety based on several friends begging me to do so. It's such an amazing piece. Re: "The End of Evangelion," do you believe the Adam & Eve hypothesis or do you think everyone returns in the end? I'm a wishy-washy proponent of the A&E scenario, but the same friends who begged me to watch it think I'm crazy for believing that.
no subject
on 2006-10-05 05:16 pm (UTC)Regardless of what happens, I'd advise them first to find a place on the beach as far away from the giant shattered horrifying Rei head as possible. That would be my first move, anyway. That thing is gonna start to smell.
no subject
on 2006-10-10 02:53 am (UTC)