V for Vendetta

London, a little into the future: a man with a mellifluous accent and huge vocabulary (Hugo Wearing) dresses as Guy Fawkes, calling himself V – the Roman numeral for 5 – the date in November of Fawkes’s 17th C attempt on blowing up English parliament. V three times provides his own autumnal firework display alongside the destruction of oppressive institutions. The first is how he got his name: his cell, Room V, was how he was referred to, as an interesting case in the government medical experiments camp, which caused him to forget his real identity, which is never revealed to us. We don’t know which of the Nazi-like categories caused this man to be a the ‘detention’ centre on Salisbury Plain, and we never see him without or before his mask.

It is revealed that V was allowed privileges including a gardening patch and the resources to grow roses – a strain who name starts with V: banned floristry which later becomes a trademark. He also receives chemicals for his botany which he mixes a bombs and destroys Larkhall camp, freeing himself emotionally and physically. The results of the experiment and the fire both disfigure him and gives him supernatural powers.

The totalitarian government V wishes to destroy comes about through a charismatic leader, High Chancellor Sulter (John Hurt) who overtook both Queen and Prime Minster. Sulter bans roses, being out after curfew, and a host of national treasures, some of which V stores in his underground cavern home. Key to this despot’s power is the viral epidemic. Officially, it was biological warfare introduced by foreign terrorists, but we learn though the chief police inspectors investigating V’s past that it was deliberately given to three key places (a school, public water and London’s Tube) – which Sulter miraculously founds a cure for. The public considered him a saviour and his friends got rich from their shares in the pharmaceutical company who made the antidote.

The film begins on another Guy Fawkes eve, when V rescues Evey (Natalie Portman) and then blows up the Old Bailey high court as a symbol of the injustice of the country. He pirates the city’s TV system and tells London that he will blow up their parliament next year for the same reason, and asks the citizens to join him.

Evey saves V in return, and the two become implicated and intertwined, Evey tries to escape from V’s assassinations of those connected with Larkhall – predictable perverted Bishops. After Evey’s fellow subversive at her work (Stephen Fry) is also killed, Evey is kidnapped and interrogated, promised release if she reveals V’s whereabouts. She refuses, strengthened against the daily duckings and head shaving by finding the looroll memoirs of a former lesbian cellmate. As a particular victim group of the government, this former actress tells of her coming out, first love and how her happiness led her to this place of horror. Evey is deeply moved for this women she never meets, and through her writing is able to calmly face the threatened execution of her tormentor. Because Evey is fearless, she is freed – to discover that V is behind the charade to make her become fearless: an epiphany paralleling V’s experience from that same cell years before. He received the looroll as it was passed to her – through a chink in the adjoining cell. Evey leaves V, who has now fallen very much with this young woman.

On November 4th the next year, Evey returns to V, who offers her his home and the final decision on whether the firework laden underground train blows up the national monument above it. after a final scuffle with his enemies, which includes the deaths of the dictators, V dies. Evey sends off the train with V in it, covered in his roses.

Trafalgar Square is filled with citizens in Guy Fawkes masks who witness the 900 year intuition’s destruction. They take off their masks – some of the crowd are those killed by the dictators.

COMMENT

I want to rename this film ‘NoVember’, Guy Fawkes famous date being encoded in the title. It invites a reappraisal of Britain’s Bonfire Night: what if we subverted it and celebrated not a traitor’s failed attempt, but his courage in preparing to overthrow a corrupt government?

It’s akin to the more recent Batman films in its palette and in its action, threat and violence. V is not unlike Batman – a vigilante fighting a large corrupt city, with all the moral themes that involves. Here, the love interest is a news reader – a related job to Rachel in Batman’s assistant to the District Attorney. Both men wear dark unnerving suits which are deliberately symbolic, but V never takes his off to have an alter ego’s life; and nor does he work with the police. It’s not the criminals of his city which concern V – it is those who run it.

The power of this film cannot be underrated. It made me want to give standing ovation, but that it is not to say that I endorse the entire film. The revenge drive and self destruction of V is saddening, allowing a romance with Evey to slip by. I was also disturbed that what I consider the world’s finest building is destroyed. I wanted to write speech for V to give from the top of Parliament, where the fireworks go off but the explosives do not. Considering that the oppressive powers were all dead, there was no need to destroy the building, which does not stand for that particular government, but part of it dates to the 11th century: thus it stands for a thousand years of Bristish government and history. The destruction seems high handed as much as it is dramatic; and there was nothing in the film to suggest that anarchy and another despot would not ensue.

I note how online forums discussed this very English centred film in terms of American politics. I wondered how much of this story translates to other countries without the knowledge of the Guy Fawkes celebration and buildings such as the old Bailey. But I was also proud to see London as the setting rather than a form of New York, for a change.

There’s much more that could be said on this subject, particularly comparing Batman and on the themes of vengeance and shaping our own negative destinies. I shall be working on these in due course, so please do check back for further articles.