Sunday, March 19, 2006

B for V for Vendetta

It took me until today to get around to seeing V for Vendetta, but now I've done it. It found it mostly pretty good, but not likely something I'll want to see again.

Hugo Weaving was wonderful, but he was at many turns just channeling Agent Smith from The Matrix in these ponderous pontifications of agonizing alliteration. In the mouth of a lesser actor, they'd be obnoxious. From him, they were entertaining in the moment, but ultimately self-indulgent of the writers.

Natalie Portman manages to convey some strong emotions in particular scenes in the movie, and gets you to feel them a bit as well. Except that at the same time, her character is almost a non-entity in terms of driving any of the action. Things happen around her more than to her. She's really no more a driving force in the story than Dr. Watson in a Sherlock Holmes tale. She's just there as the lens for us to view the real story.

The messages of the film were rather provocative at times. In principle, the film was making you identify with a terrorist and showing terrorism as a good force for change -- a notion which one would certainly think to be controversial, or stimulating fn conversation at the very least. But it often just comes off as Batman with loftier subtext. We've seen the "vigilante badass" in more movies that I can count, and despite the fact that this particular vigilante is blowing up buildings in an oh-so-topical way, it doesn't always feel that different.

Actually, I must amend -- the movie really doesn't have much in the way of subtext. They forgot the whole "sub" part of that when making this movie. The fascist politician has dubbed himself a "Chancellor" and sports a red and black symbol for his government. Everybody got that? It's just one of the run-over-by-a-semi metaphors this movie throws at you. And yet, as blunt as the message is, it's one I agree with. "Government should be afraid of its citizens, not the other way around."

The movie is gorgeous to look at throughout. Almost overly "constructed," though. We're not talking a Sin City level of slavishness to comic book appearance, but damn near it. So here the paradox is that the film looks wonderful, but while watching it, you're sometimes kicked out of the moment to say to yourself "damn, that looks incredible."

So, I guess I'm saying that everything good about the movie had some flaw undercutting it. Many of the parts were good, but the whole was less than the sum of the parts. In the end, I give the film a B. Good, but not great.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

this movie was too much for me to handle. the dialogue was overwhelming in it's abundance. in a strange twist of the space-time continuum, there was a twenty minute rant every ten minutes. too much flash-backy montage voice overs. the message of the movie was beat over my head so much that in a contradictory way to the movie's own theme, I felt oppressed by the movie itself.

the one fight scene near the end was good, and the little-girl-outfit was certainly a highlight, but I was constantly glancing at my watch and wondering how can this keep going on! in the end I felt as tortured as Portman. was it for my own good? at least I didn't have to get my head shaved!

the mole