V for Vainglory
S: “Violence is justified in the service of mankind.”
B: “Who said that?”
S: “Attila the hun.”
B: “You’re quoting a hun to me??”
(Woody Allen, Love & Death, 1975)
Came back from watching journalist and geekc0re pre-premiere viewing of V for Vendetta, The Watchowski (The Matrix) bros. adaptation to film of one of my all-time favourite graphic novels, V for Vendetta written by insane-genius Alan Moore, illustrated by David Lloyd.
What can I say?
It wasn’t like watching Steve Martin rape Peter Sellers.
Actually, it was pretty decent.
Obviously, as in most cases, the book is better, but I was quite surprised at just how far they went with this film.
Especially in this day and age (and yes, they are definately referring to this day and age, rather than Thatcher’s England as in the book), to see such a film come out of a large corporate studio like Warner Bros. is surprising. Very surprising. But in a good way.
I think The Watchowski’s are true to the book in spirit, if not 100% in content. I’m a firm believer that in most cases, a book which was written as a book, is fine as it is. It’s all it’s meant to be. Adaptations by virtue change the nature of the subject matter.
To this extent, I think the Watchowski’s took the right elements from the book, and made a very watchable, mind-tingling film. Something people think about after leaving the cinema, and sleep with for a night. That’s what they do. I went to sleep with The Matrix after seeing it for the first time too.
Despite the simplicity, and occasional lack of finess, th more I think of it, the message of the film is startling.
They touched on it slightly in The Matrix too; Morpheus and his accomplices are considered dangerous terrorists in the world within.
Terrorism; a legitimate tool of emancipation?
Reading Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, you get to think it is a natural tool of emancipation.
But I digress.
This sort of subversive message is something that I’m sure struck a nerve for at least some viewer’s, and if it did, than I think the Watchowski’s have done their work.
Truth is not manifest; Reality is endlessly and bewilderingly complex, not a clear-cut dichotomy.
The one thing I think they failed in, was not making enough of the secondary characters appear human enough. The book let’s us see into the very basic human motives of all the characters, even the ones we ultimately judge as ‘evil’.
Part of what makes the book so wonderful.
They missed a few points on the ending I think, though the spirit remains intact.
All in all, I think it’s a superb film. Everybody should watch it. And then go out and buy the book, and see what it’s really all about.
Tagged as anarchism, anarchy, Comics, film, Terrorism, V for Vendetta + Categorized as Art/Culture, Social Politics
You see the things is, that as we said yesturday, I think that one cannot take the philosphy out of The Matrix, the fact that they are fighting an “objective” “true” evil, human beings are slaves… batteries. in a very graphic way, immediatly makes them NOT terrorists…
In V the government and all are depicted very much like Nazis on all levels… haveing said that… was blowing up the building really still needed after the people had revolted, and the soldiers put their guns down? Maybe yes… I don’t have the answers anymore… to anything…
What I still believe… maybe innocently so, is that violence for the sake of violence… terrorism in order to put fear into others that don’t agree with you is fucking crap!
Bow… yuo write very nice!
i haven’t seen the movie yet but here is part of an interesting review by butler shaffer:
The openly anarchistic nature of this movie will produce shudders in well-conditioned statists who, in the words of F.A. Hayek, cling to their fear of trusting uncontrolled social forces. Such people will trot out historic instances in which self-proclaimed anarchists killed a few score of people, as evidence of the need for government. That states managed, in the 20th century alone, to slaughter some 200,000,000 people in wars and genocides has never provided an occasion for defenders of political systems to do a practical cost/benefit analysis of these alternative systems!
While V for Vendetta contains a great deal of violence, V reminds us, early on, of the social application of Newtons Third Law of Motion: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In a political context, it is as childish to posit the violence engaged in by one group as peacekeeping and the opposing group as terrorism, as it is to regard one side as good and the other as evil. It is the interdependent violence inherent in all political systems that is made evident in this film.
There is one poignant scene in this movie in which thousands of unarmed, peaceful individuals confront the well-armed military forces of the state. This scene, more than any other, may provide insight into how society might evolve in a world in which vertically-structured institutions are collapsing. The transformations of thinking that are arising from the study of chaos, or complexity, are producing changes in social behavior that make state systems obsolete. The predictability the statists imagine inheres in their structured apparatuses has been rendered illusory. Terry Pratchetts observation that chaos always defeats order because it is better organized, reflects a world in flux. Perhaps a film such a V for Vendetta will provide us an opportunity to begin exploring the orderly nature of anarchistic systems.
I have no doubt that this film will generate terror in the minds of those who regard the domination of others either as some inherent right or as an inevitable necessity for social order. But it is not the fear of violence that will be their principal concern. Violence will be the fear that the media will transmit to the boobeoisie to keep them huddled at the feet of their masters. The establishments fear is not that buildings will be blown up on the contrary, the destruction of the World Trade Center actually benefited the state but that men and women will begin to dismantle the structures of political authority in their thinking. To paraphrase the words of Evey, it is not buildings that people need, but hope.
(http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer132.html)
Although I can see how some people might have found the movie radical, I must say I found it way too conventional. Anarchy and resistance was suger-coated with mainstream justification. Despite the fact that Britain was a totalitarian society, under surviellance and curfews, with ‘undesireables’ kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by the regime, THAT was not what made people want to blow up parliment and rebel against their government. What justified resistance was actually the realisation that it was the British government that had been responsible for the death of civillians. Not just civillians, but specifically innocent children – just so we don’t suspect that the government may have been justified in spreading biological weapons amongst its population. So, the real story is about civil disobedience against the actions of a particularly monsterous and corrupt government. But again, the government is corrupt and monsterous not because it has denied individuals of their basic freedoms (speech, movement, life) but because it has commited an act of ‘terrorism’ against itself. So once again, mainstream values are promoted, and the film need not disturb anyones waking-sleep. The equation is simple:
Terrorism is bad. Anyone who engages in terrorism is bad. When a government aids terrorism, it is justifiable to blow things up and destroy that government.
Has anyone arrived at the same conclusion from the film as me? Yes, Afganistan and Iraq were just justified in a movie that was supposed to counter the idea that governments monopolize justice.
Oh well.