Just a Feeling

I've never considered myself very good at describing movies in a way that sounds intriguing, which is quite a misfortune for someone who loves movies more than any other form of electronic entertainment. Usually I just babble out a botched up summary making the film in question sound confusing or absurd, and provide the opposite effect than I was hoping to inspire. However, I'm going to give a shot here, in the hope that, given the time to organize my thought will make it better. At least, better than the fragmented description I gave to my roommate when trying to tell her why V for Vendetta is really quite an excellent film, and why we should choose for our little movie night. Unfortunately, another friend needed her this evening, but I was set on watching it myself. And over the course of the viewing I realized that it was more than just a "good movie" that I like because of the plot or the actors. Perhaps it's a product of having just watched it after completing my reading assignment for film class, but I don't mind.

It began when I saw a particularly interesting shot of the title character V, played by Hugo Weaving (Mr. Smith, The Matrix), jumping over the slanted roof of the apartment he was about to break into, and I suddenly got the idea to take a screenshot of it, now that I had that feature on my revamped pc. I observed the still frame in a way that I had never really considered before; no doubt I had been concerned with keeping up with the story. But I find that seeing a movie, much like reading a book, again and again is always a fruitful experience because each time you allow yourself to notice more and more, because you already know so well everything on the surface. It was quite a "visually stimulating" image, and as I looked for more of them, I found them. It was somewhat surprising because I had always liked V for Vendetta but had never really considered a piece of cinematic art; more just an enjoyable blockbuster. Though one is required to sit through some scenes of mildly gruesome bloody scenes, a la Wachowski brothers, it is full of little details that really make you think about how hard they must have worked to make this a spectacular movie. It's filled with pithy axioms, some that sound as though they were designed for teenage boys to scratch into desks and write in library books like "ideas are bulletproof," but also gentler ones like "An inch, it is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having." I like this one for many reasons, one somewhat silly: as the speaker was born and raised in england, why would she be thinking in inches and not centimeters. But I digress, and also don't mean to detract from it's poignancy. I understand it as the one little part of yourself that you never give up to anyone, even in the face of death.

There are numerous instances of ideas about rebirth sprinkled throughout the movie, and is indeed what the movie itself culminates in. The main characters, Evey (Natalie Portman) and V share many parallels, particularly their "rebirth scenes." V suffered a tragic fate in a biological weapon testing facility, which he escapes from in a fire on the November 5th, the day of the Gunpowder plot. He recreates the experience, dehumanization and all, for Evey who in turn loses all of her fear and faces what she believes to be her death with inner calm. It is completed with V taking her up out of his underground lair to a high balcony and she experiences her rebirth in the rain instead of fire, with the same gestures as V. Raising her arm to storm-filled sky a lightning bolt slashes down before her, and it looks as though she has mastered not just her inner self but the outer world as well. Another beautiful image, coupled with my other favorite; a shot from her with the rain falling and making circles on the wet ground below her. There are numerous other perfectly set up shots, some that last for only an instant, like a rare and beautiful but ephemeral flower. In short, it's full of beautiful photography.

Ironically, Evey and V, what with all of their religious allusions, are rebelling against an extremist religious government, whose very slogan is "Strength through unity; unity through faith" and whose symbol is cross with two crosspieces across the main beam. It's as if the British Government under High Chancellor Sutler are placing their authority only one level below the divine, a less than subtle idea that glares at you from the insidious black and red colors of the symbol itself. Even more ironic still, is that extremist religious groups, with the belief that they are moving ever more towards the will of God, in truth are moving farther and farther away from what their holy texts say. But that is a battle I won't wage here.

Finally, at the end of the movie, V reveals he intends to blow up Parliament with vast quantities of "British Fertiliser" and other household chemicals. Though I dislike the destruction of historical monuments as a matter of principal, the idea that a corrupt government must answer for its crimes, reap what it sows, at the hands of fertiliser...that's what movies are made of.