V for Vendetta
I’ve recently watched the movie V for Vendetta, and liked it well enough. The fragmentally mentioned backstory to the movie is a political meltdown of the United States, which caused global instability and led to the establishment of a fascist, ultraconservative christian regime in the United Kingdom, where the movie is set. The focus of the movie lies on the mysterious person of V, who seeks to oust the regime from power and who also leads his own personal vendetta, and Evey, a young woman who gets mixed up with V’s revolution.
The good:
* The dark visuals are nicely done and fit the theme of the movie.
* The depiction of the regimes contumelious misuse of power and its elitism, its control of mass media and society at large through the use of fear and force, works well.
* Some scenes show the story of a same-sex couple as they have to live through the increasingly oppressive nature of the new regime. The sympathy the movie offers them is a rare feat for a Hollywood production.
* Generally, I also liked the fighting sequences; also the occasional, highly eloquent social and historical commentary made by V mostly resonated with me.
The bad:
* Evey’s character development remains passive, and more or less consists of Natalie Portman (the actress of Evey) looking good with long hair and looking good with short hair. V’s motivation is unfathomable, despite the background we get on his character.
* There’s a sequence which strongly reinforces the notion of pain (in this case even inflicted through torture) revealing one’s true self and strengthening one’s will. While Nietzsche would like us to believe that that which does not kill me, makes me stronger, I put more trust in experience and thoughts understood through human qualities such as intellectual curiosity, doubt, reflection, and empathy. And as the Interwebs say, that which does not kill you only fucks you up for a really long time. Take that, Ueber-mensch.
* The movie is an adaption of a comic book series of the same name, which has Anarchism as one of its main themes. In the movie, this is still apparent by V’s emblem (graphic), which features the red and black colours of anarcho-syndicalism and rotates nicely to an A (another symbol of Anarchism). Other than that, however, Anarchism as a topic is absent in the movie - which is a missed opportunity, background and story wise. Yet, neither knowing the comic book nor being an adherent of Anarchism, isn’t that important to me overall.
