May 17th, 2006
I first heard about this film a year and two days ago. Funnily enough I haven’t been getting any more sleep than what I did then. Last November I remember watching with anticipation the trailer on Apple’s site. So why-on-earth didn’t I get round to seeing it sooner? One of life’s mysteries.
Natalie is lacking her hair because she is filming the futuristic drama “V is for Vendetta”, and apparently the character requires a shaved head. I hope someone gets fired for that one too.
That’s what I wrote about the film a year and two days ago, albeit tongue-in-cheek; I can say that Natalie Portman’s performance as the persecuted Evey Hammond is among the strongest of all the films I have seen her in. Trumps goes to Hugo Weaving though, the man behind the mask for the entirety of the film–then again at least there was no danger of the audience seeing him typecast as Agent Smith, so it has its benefits. Considering The Wachowski Brothers co-directed the film perhaps they were glad of this too; they can’t live under their Matrix umbrella for the duration of their careers after all. He definitely didn’t sound like Agent Smith either as he delivered his sporadic Shakespearean lines, along with the achingly smooth alliteration of his V entré:
Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin…
And it goes on for at least double that, for Evey’s response to all this–well you’ll have to see the film (or just look it up). In fact the script was very good all round, lots of rhetoric and good vs. evil themes survive from the original comics, just like in Spider-Man, though even more so as V is deeply political. It is set roughly 20 years from now, where the English political scene has been plunged into chaos by a totalitarian government, who rule by fear–fear not towards them, but towards the things that the people have been indoctrinated to feel paranoid about: terrorism, virus epidemics, “social undesirables” to name a few.
One of those “undesirables” was played by Stephen Fry, I was in fits when he suggested the answer to why the way he cooked “eggs in the basket” and the Yakkety Sax scene was class, in fact he stopped the film from becoming too dire. But going back to the totalitarian government bit…
V For Vendetta is startlingly up-to-date, in fact they postponed the release date of the film after the London bombings because the subject matter of the film was deemed too sensitive–perhaps rightly so as some of the footage of tube stations in the film was just too eerily familiar. The “virus epidemics” were explicitly referred to as Avian Flu. While the comics were strongly influenced by Thatcherism, the themes have made the transition to modern day paranoia seamlessly. Not convinced? Consider compulsory identification cards and a national register a wake up call. I suppose no-one would ever think that a totalitarian government could happen to us, but look at the way we have already sacrificed an inch of our civil liberties to satisfy the desire for safety and security against the global threat of terrorism. Mixed with the current apathy-vote things are perhaps a lot more dangerous than you think.
I was going to end it there on that sinister note, but the trivia surrounding this film was too good to pass up. I remember Stephen Fry being interviewed on Parkinson regarding the spectacular scene at the end where they “blow up” Westminster:
You usually can’t get permission to get anything near any seats of government. You know the secret service don’t like it plus civil servants don’t like it, they’re working busily at night, ho ho and they don’t like film crews there.’ And I said, ‘That boy’s familiar.’ There was a boy in a dayglo coat who was one of the assistant assistant assistant runners. And I said, ‘I’m sure I’ve seen him before.’ He said, ‘Yes, that’s Ewan Blair.’ So that’s how we got permission to film. ‘Daddy, daddy can you please let them have permission to film?’
Of course, the story was probably more mundane as to how they got permission, but it’s nice trivia all the same. Something much less trivial is who the film is dedicated to: Adrian Biddle, the director of photography who died on the 7th of December last year.