Film Review: V for Vendetta (2005)

At the start of the 21st century, there was a variety of opinion on Hollywood's ability to effectively transfer high-quality comic books to the big screen. There was, however, much less dispute when it came to the comic books based on the works of esteemed British author Alan Moore. To say that most adaptations of his celebrated graphic novels have been rejected by both film critics and comic book enthusiasts would be an understatement. Then, everything changed after the premiere of the 2005 film V for Vendetta, a science fiction action film which garnered much more approval and, in many cases, great enthusiasm not only among film critics, but also from social and political commentators who often regard it as not only the best adaptation of Moore's work, but also one of the most influential and iconic films of our time.

The plot of the film is set in the near future, years after the terrorist attacks using biological weapons led to all civil liberties in the United Kingdom being gradually abolished, and a new totalitarian regime under Chancellor Sutler (played by John Hurt) established. The protagonist is Evey Hammond (played by Natalie Portman), an employee of the state-run British Television Network, whose parents, left-wing dissidents, were imprisoned and executed by the regime. Evey has a personal motive to assist the mysterious masked avenger known as "V" (played by Hugo Weaving), who announces a year-long terrorist campaign aimed at overthrowing the regime with a brazen assault on the TV station. The task of finding V and Evey is entrusted to the melancholic police inspector Finch (played by Stephen Rea), who will uncover many unpleasant details about the regime he serves during the investigation.

Much of the film's success among the bien pensants came from the way the filmmakers made parallels between George W. Bush's Global War and Sutler's fascist regime so obvious. Many details in the film show a dark totalitarian world as a natural continuation of everything that began on 11th September 2001, and some plot details draw inspiration from some of the 9/11 Truther conspiracy theories.

The success of the film was also aided by the involvement of the Wachowskis – creators of The Matrix, a film that demonstrated how pseudo-intellectual snobbery can be sold to the masses in a "cool" action package. Director James McTeigue, taking their approach as inspiration, made the film palatable and visually attractive, and the set of high-quality British actors, aided by Natalie Portman who, in one of the more successful roles of her career, made decent work with a British accent. Many who watch the film would probably agree with the critics who praised this film.

But that won't happen if they happened to have read Moore's graphic novel beforehand. In that case, it becomes quite clear why Moore, like with so many previous instances, renounced the film adaptation of his work and seized every opportunity to criticise it as another exploitation of comic books by Hollywood hypocrites. Comparisons between Moore's work and the film clearly indicate that the "mature" and "uncompromising" filmmakers approached the original material in a manner identical to Sutler's censors.

Moore's graphic novel dealt mainly with the conflict between two extremes – totalitarianism, which offers people security at the expense of freedom, and anarchy, which offers freedom at the expense of security – and presented readers with a series of complex and morally ambiguous characters to draw their own conclusions. The Wachowskis and McTeigue, on the other hand, played it safe, opting for the "golden mean" not much different from the Third Way, a radically centrist option championed by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. In this film, the emergence of future totalitarianism is not interpreted as a direct consequence of the structural weaknesses of modern liberal democracy, but rather as the result of a series of unfortunate events and the work of a handful of rogue elements who can, at the end of the day, be removed from power quickly, easily, and painlessly, allowing the world to again fall in love with globalisation and unchecked US and Western hegemony.

V for Vendetta, therefore, shouldn't be interpreted as a parable about the mid-2000s or a warning of a dark future, but rather as an expression of nostalgia longing for a better past, or a vision of a world that has become difficult to imagine since George W. Bush replaced Clinton in the White House. One could say that this film was made at least a decade too late, belonging instead to the 1990s, when Hollywood and the White House played the same tune, and England – embodied in grey-haired, conservative snobs – was the perennial villain and source of all evil in the world. Such a vision was much harder to reconcile with multicultural and "politically correct" Blair's "cool Britannia", just as it was difficult to accept the similarities between the world of V for Vendetta and Orwell's dystopia from the novel and film version of 1984.

The futility of envisioning the future based on the past can also be seen in Moore's novel, which emerged in the early 1980s as an expression of frustration over Margaret Thatcher's rise to power and fear of what her right-wing regime would do to traditional British freedoms. In the end, as in many previous cases, it turned out that the real danger didn't come from where everyone expected it. What happened in the 2000s with laws attacking freedom of expression, widespread video surveillance, wars, and the manipulation of citizens' fears, hadn't been brought by the dour conservative Iron Lady, but by her smiling and "cool" Labour successor.

And the lessons haven't been learned by those who actually watched the film. Many of the young people who had enthusiastically embraced the film's alleged anti-establishment message and started wearing V's Guy Fawkes masks as symbols of protest appeared to miss or forget the film's point as adults, finding all kinds of excuses to support lockdowns, forever wars, social media censorship and everything V for Vendetta had been against.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

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