Some preliminary thoughts on V for Vendetta

[andrewducker]

Several months ago a few lines of script from V for Vendetta were leaked on Aint-It-Cool-News.  They were _terrible_ - the kind of unreadable gibberish that left you wondering what the Wachowki's were on, and exactly how they were planning on butchering one of my favourite books.

The bad news is that they're in the final film.

The good news is that in the final film they work.

The makers of the film have done what the makers of Harry Potter didn't - they've _adapted_ the story for the film rather than just chopping bits out until its the right length.  In some ways this has made it weaker, in some ways stronger, and it's notably different.

But overall, it's still good (I'd give it a B+), with occasional flashes of an A Grade.

One of the major changes they've made is that V isn't _cold_ like he is in the book.  This makes a lot of sense to me - he loves theatre, he's a love of music and drama, he's nasty, but clearly in a Phantom of the Opera way, a thwarted thesp, taking his revenge in a style that, while not at the levels of Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood, is still further in that direction than was immediately clear on the surface of the comic.

So having Hugo Weaving play V as _camp_ suddenly brought the whole thing into focus for me.  What you very obviously have from the very beginning is someone who is _insane_ - a Count of Monte Cristo figure back for revenge, with a mind that works very well in some ways, and very badly in others.  When he goes into this V-laden bit of dialogue about 30 seconds after we meet him, and then Evey asks "Are you a crazy person?" the entire audience is sitting there with their mouths open saying "Yes, yes he is.  Good with a knife too."

There are bits that work less well - the Evey and Finch scene on the tube train is a little anti-climactic.  I could have done with a single-sentence explanation for why she lets things go ahead "The People need a Symbol." or "What we need is a new start." would have been better than the line we got (which I've already forgotten).  And her focus on her love for V feels somewhat tacked on (not as badly as in Attack of the Clones, say, but still clumsy).

But overall they've captured a lot of the feel of the book, and while the message is not the same - everything's smoothed down and simplified in the film - it's about as good as you're going to get.

8/10 (with the caveat that I'm off to see it again at some point, just to make sure)

Comments

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I -was- going to say that I loved it but the dialogue was a bit too overdone-Londoner.

Except then I flicked through the graphic novel, and it's all like that there as well.

[neriedes.livejournal.com]

would have been better than the line we got (which I've already forgotten).

I think it was something like "because this country needs hope"

V didn't come across as crazy to me.

I like your review.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

I think you've taken a good, critical look at the film. If you don't mind, I'd like to offer some comments myself.

I didn't think the film version of V was really campy as much as he was more realistic of a person than the V from the graphic novel. I saw V from the novel (and hell, many of the novel conventions) as being stereotypically comic book extreme. V was appropriately cold, appropriately harsh, and inhumanely willful. Consequently, I got the feeling that Hugo Weaving's V had real emotion, and understood what he was doing, instead of being swept up in it. But then again, I hate camp usually, and I may have a slightly distorted view of it.

If there is one thing about the film I think I didn't enjoy as much, it was how incredibly blunt it was. That said, I still can't say if that was because it was truly that obvious, or if the source material was that relevant to our modern times. Having just read the novel again, I still can't say, as even put to film, it felt like I wasn't watching the Wachowski's message, but V's.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

Also, being in the UK, did you find the concept of eggy in a basket to be insulting, annoying, or stupid? That was the only substantive complaint I could find in Alan Moore's criticism of the script, so it confused me greatly.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Why would we find it insulting, being in the UK?

I am from the south east of England. I am still not aware of all the local terms for food in the part of Scotland that I'm in.

Eggy in a basket is stated in the film to be a regional dish, as I recall.

Now, it may or may not be a genuine one, but there are other colloquialisms in the film. The only reason I suspect it isn't a real dish is due to all the rampany fanboyism following Alan Moore's proclamations about it.

When I was a teenager, I didn't believe that Americans really ate "grits". It sounds rather silly. To some Americans (ones in parts of the US where grits aren't popular), it is silly too - I know this from experience.

British films often have rather odd and sometimes fictional views of America and Americans. I would expect the same in reverse.

The original graphic novel is not necessarily as realistic in its portrayal of London life as it could be, either.

And the list of American films that make up British customs or alter them to suit their audience is a very long one, and V for Vendetta commits surprisingly few offences of this nature, compared to many.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

IIRC, Dietrich says that eggy in a basket is what his mother served to him as a child. I thought it strange that Alan Moore would pick on that, as he was ranting on a general tirade about how they tried to 'britishize' the script, and that was obviously a completely dumb example of such a thing.

I can't say I share your experience about grits. I live in the northwest, where grits aren't eaten, and yet we all know about them and know that they're just another food. Let me put it another way, I have yet to meet someone that doesn't know what grits are in at least an academic sense. Perhaps it owes to the fact that if you tell someone that they're eating polenta and not grits, they'll get mighty riled over it.

Mostly I was interested how that sounded to someone who was really british, since Alan Moore made such a big deal out of it in the script.

[andrewducker]

Nope. It's not a name I've heard before the film (and Alan Moore's ranting thereon), but as the only person who calls it that is a slightly effete, gay film-show host, it seems like a not unreasonable thing from him to call it, and it sounds like the kind of name you'd give a food usually made for kids.

[trav28.livejournal.com]

I cannot wait to see this again - and yes, they have "humanised" V to a degree but he still remains quite the cold blooded killer that he is in the book

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

I felt... terribly let down. I realised that the film was going to be different from the book but I feel that more could have been done to elicit a feeling of gloomy oppression, a more 1984 sort of feel about the society. There was a lot of wandering that felt ultimately missed the point of the book that was about highlighting the way that individual liberty had been removed and that we all have a right to liberty. There were some key quotes and situations in the book that highlight this succinctly and clearly that were totally missing from the movie.

I agree that the portrayal of V certainly made a bit more sense in the movie but, overall, the depiction of the environment wasn't 'dark' enough for me.

I felt the film ought to have pushed out the message 'watch out, because this is where we're heading' a little more strongly. For me, this movie was a 5.5/10