V for Vendetta
—1. Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Natalie Portman)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads
I guess I thought V for Vendetta would strike me as more radical than it did. More anarchist, more punk rock, more controversial. I thought people would be talking about the movie afterwards, feeling some strong parallel to current political climes, perhaps even feeling some call to actual action. And while all of this was there, it just wasn’t there as strongly, as radically, as I had expected. Instead what I got was a really cool, super-literate, thoroughly enjoyable movie, but one with allegorical elements that need to be further unpacked, further connected, to really give the story the punch that it could, and should have.
As for the story, V for Vendetta follows its source material—Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s graphic novel—pretty closely, though there are some significant changes. England has fallen under the control of a fascist government: the citizens live under the oppression of wire-tapping, ever-present security cameras, a brutal police force, propagandist leaders, the Orwellian works. V, himself a victim of this government’s Naziish experimentation, dons a Guy Fawkes mask and takes it upon himself to give freedom back to the people, Robin Hood style, “by any means necessary.� En route to completing Fawkes’ goal of destroying the Parliament building, V gains a protégée in Evey, herself also a victim of the government in many ways. By the end of the film, Evey has been personally freed in mind by V’s attention to her—even falling in love with him in some sense—as most citizens of the country have been freed in mind by their identification with V’s cause, Parliament has been blown up, V has died, along with the government’s leader, and the people are left to remember the power of V’s ideology, just as Evey is left to remember the ideology, but also the actual person himself.
The story is captivating, relevant, and told with proper gravitas. However, it is the ending—where the most significant departures from the book have been taken—that changes the overall effect of the tale. In the book, V’s face is never shown because it doesn’t matter who he is. It just matters what he stands for. He stands for vendetta against oppression, for freedom via anarchy—things that require a populist mentality, but not necessarily fixation on one particular person. Accordingly, at the end of the book, when V is dead, Evey dons the mask and becomes V in his place, and even takes a protégé of her own, presumably so that she can pass the mantle to him when she is gone. This passing of the torch, importantly, implies action, just as action had already been being taken by the citizens in the book, who had already been living in V’s anarchist “Land of Do-As-You-Please�—a plot point, unfortunately, cut from the film. The Evey of the book, with V gone, will do the actual work of V, as will the one who follows her. In the movie, though, a virtual all-of-London dons Guy Fawkes masks in identification with the idea behind V, but with not enough suggestion that they will be doing anything about what he stood for. They’ve been given hope, Evey says, which is nice, but quite toothless compared to what the book suggests. And Evey, sans mask, speaks the last lines of the movie, which focus on the actual man, V, whom she loved and will remember.
First, I think this last mentioned change of the movie’s actually brings something important to light, once the allegorical elements of the story are looked at. Like the Wachowski’s Matrix films, V for Vendetta presents a strong parallel to the biblical story of the gospel: you’ve got people in slavery, you’ve got a heroic Christ-figure who dies to free them, you’ve got a resurrection of sorts, and you’ve got the passing of the torch. Neo is V is Christ. As above, what the movie does, in opposition to the book, is suggest that not just the idea of V is important—it clearly is—but that the person himself is also important. Just as V remembers Guy Fawkes, and patterns himself after the Gunpowder Plot, at least one of the characters in the film knows that it is appropriate to also remember the person behind the mask. In the same way, though it too is about big ideas, just like this movie, Christianity remembers Christ himself and not just his ideology. We remember his birth, his death, his resurrection, his teachings, his life, because they were his, and because they can’t be separated from the ideas. Of course with Christianity, it’s the identity of Christ that makes what he did and said significant, which isn’t exactly the case with V—allegories are never perfect. Nonetheless, V the person is significant because it was him who said and did what he said and did, and not someone else, and so Evey (and the film) is right to add this angle, though the semblance of a “love story� wasn’t necessary to add it.
Keeping with the allegory though, when Christ passes that torch on to his believers, he passes on a radical agenda. He passes on the command to act. He passes on the truth of the desperate situation of humankind, and the truth that his followers must spread the word and must do their part in God’s plan to save the world. Christians who, thankfully mostly in the past, have taken these truths to imply the necessity of force—the Crusaders, the Inquisitors, the kinds of religious fascists that V fought against—have of course been misguided, but they at least understood and acted on the severity of things. They didn’t sit back and let someone else do it. They weren’t pew-warming, Laodicean slackers. They didn’t just wear the mask, they did what the person behind the mask would do.
And this is where the ending of the movie, while right in recognizing the importance of V the person, is wrong in not emphasizing the call to action that the V of the book advocated. Those mask wearers at the end of the film needed to not just peaceably walk through the riot police, but to confront them. They needed to not just watch Parliament explode as one watches TV, with fireworks for added amusement, but needed to join in somehow. That’s controversy. That’s anarchy. That’s appropriate radicalism. Not hope that identifies with an idea and stops, but hope that sees the possible future and participates in its creation. That’s V for Vendetta. That’s the V that keeps on really living in more than just masks, but in the actions of his believers. And, also, that’s Christ. Not just the Christ of the WWJD bracelets or fish bumper stickers, but the radical, world-changing Christ who was put to death for who he was . . . but it was all part of his plan, see, like V’s dominoes, to create even more radical, world-changing people to be part of his revolution.
So, see this movie. Remember the idea and remember the person too: remember Guy Fawkes, remember V, remember Christ . . . but then, for your and God’s and the world’s sake, do something about it.
— Overview
—2. Cast and Crew
—3. Photo Pages
—4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—5. Posters (Natalie Portman)
—6. Production Notes (pdf)
—7. Spiritual Connections
—8. Presentation Downloads
I guess I thought V for Vendetta would strike me as more radical than it did. More anarchist, more punk rock, more controversial. I thought people would be talking about the movie afterwards, feeling some strong parallel to current political climes, perhaps even feeling some call to actual action. And while all of this was there, it just wasn’t there as strongly, as radically, as I had expected. Instead what I got was a really cool, super-literate, thoroughly enjoyable movie, but one with allegorical elements that need to be further unpacked, further connected, to really give the story the punch that it could, and should have.As for the story, V for Vendetta follows its source material—Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s graphic novel—pretty closely, though there are some significant changes. England has fallen under the control of a fascist government: the citizens live under the oppression of wire-tapping, ever-present security cameras, a brutal police force, propagandist leaders, the Orwellian works. V, himself a victim of this government’s Naziish experimentation, dons a Guy Fawkes mask and takes it upon himself to give freedom back to the people, Robin Hood style, “by any means necessary.� En route to completing Fawkes’ goal of destroying the Parliament building, V gains a protégée in Evey, herself also a victim of the government in many ways. By the end of the film, Evey has been personally freed in mind by V’s attention to her—even falling in love with him in some sense—as most citizens of the country have been freed in mind by their identification with V’s cause, Parliament has been blown up, V has died, along with the government’s leader, and the people are left to remember the power of V’s ideology, just as Evey is left to remember the ideology, but also the actual person himself.
The story is captivating, relevant, and told with proper gravitas. However, it is the ending—where the most significant departures from the book have been taken—that changes the overall effect of the tale. In the book, V’s face is never shown because it doesn’t matter who he is. It just matters what he stands for. He stands for vendetta against oppression, for freedom via anarchy—things that require a populist mentality, but not necessarily fixation on one particular person. Accordingly, at the end of the book, when V is dead, Evey dons the mask and becomes V in his place, and even takes a protégé of her own, presumably so that she can pass the mantle to him when she is gone. This passing of the torch, importantly, implies action, just as action had already been being taken by the citizens in the book, who had already been living in V’s anarchist “Land of Do-As-You-Please�—a plot point, unfortunately, cut from the film. The Evey of the book, with V gone, will do the actual work of V, as will the one who follows her. In the movie, though, a virtual all-of-London dons Guy Fawkes masks in identification with the idea behind V, but with not enough suggestion that they will be doing anything about what he stood for. They’ve been given hope, Evey says, which is nice, but quite toothless compared to what the book suggests. And Evey, sans mask, speaks the last lines of the movie, which focus on the actual man, V, whom she loved and will remember. First, I think this last mentioned change of the movie’s actually brings something important to light, once the allegorical elements of the story are looked at. Like the Wachowski’s Matrix films, V for Vendetta presents a strong parallel to the biblical story of the gospel: you’ve got people in slavery, you’ve got a heroic Christ-figure who dies to free them, you’ve got a resurrection of sorts, and you’ve got the passing of the torch. Neo is V is Christ. As above, what the movie does, in opposition to the book, is suggest that not just the idea of V is important—it clearly is—but that the person himself is also important. Just as V remembers Guy Fawkes, and patterns himself after the Gunpowder Plot, at least one of the characters in the film knows that it is appropriate to also remember the person behind the mask. In the same way, though it too is about big ideas, just like this movie, Christianity remembers Christ himself and not just his ideology. We remember his birth, his death, his resurrection, his teachings, his life, because they were his, and because they can’t be separated from the ideas. Of course with Christianity, it’s the identity of Christ that makes what he did and said significant, which isn’t exactly the case with V—allegories are never perfect. Nonetheless, V the person is significant because it was him who said and did what he said and did, and not someone else, and so Evey (and the film) is right to add this angle, though the semblance of a “love story� wasn’t necessary to add it.Keeping with the allegory though, when Christ passes that torch on to his believers, he passes on a radical agenda. He passes on the command to act. He passes on the truth of the desperate situation of humankind, and the truth that his followers must spread the word and must do their part in God’s plan to save the world. Christians who, thankfully mostly in the past, have taken these truths to imply the necessity of force—the Crusaders, the Inquisitors, the kinds of religious fascists that V fought against—have of course been misguided, but they at least understood and acted on the severity of things. They didn’t sit back and let someone else do it. They weren’t pew-warming, Laodicean slackers. They didn’t just wear the mask, they did what the person behind the mask would do.
And this is where the ending of the movie, while right in recognizing the importance of V the person, is wrong in not emphasizing the call to action that the V of the book advocated. Those mask wearers at the end of the film needed to not just peaceably walk through the riot police, but to confront them. They needed to not just watch Parliament explode as one watches TV, with fireworks for added amusement, but needed to join in somehow. That’s controversy. That’s anarchy. That’s appropriate radicalism. Not hope that identifies with an idea and stops, but hope that sees the possible future and participates in its creation. That’s V for Vendetta. That’s the V that keeps on really living in more than just masks, but in the actions of his believers. And, also, that’s Christ. Not just the Christ of the WWJD bracelets or fish bumper stickers, but the radical, world-changing Christ who was put to death for who he was . . . but it was all part of his plan, see, like V’s dominoes, to create even more radical, world-changing people to be part of his revolution. So, see this movie. Remember the idea and remember the person too: remember Guy Fawkes, remember V, remember Christ . . . but then, for your and God’s and the world’s sake, do something about it.
— Overview
