April
2006
Remember, remember…The fifth of November7
Here’s an odd bit of useless historical trivia: In the middle-ages, the English and the French were regularly at each other’s throats. One weapon used by the English with great success was the longbow, a weapon capable of launching an arrow farther and faster than anything the French had to offer. The well-trained English archers were capable of firing 12 to 15 arrows a minute and could put an arrow through a man’s helmet visor at 200 yards. Needless to say, the French hated and feared the English archers above all enemy troops and captured archers were subjected to a rather cruel and unusual punishment: The French would usually cut off the index finger and middle finger of the right hand before sending the archers back to the English army.
Archers that still had their fingers used to taunt their French opponents by giving them the now infamous English V-sign, a two-fingered salute that basically said: “Look, we’ve still got our fingers, so sod off!”. This V-sign, still in use in modern England, has become a typically English variation of flipping someone the bird. This is of course not to be confused by the V-for-Victory sign made famous by Sir Winston Churchill.
In the 80’s Great Britain was reeling under the rule of the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. Troubled and enraged by what he saw as a slide towards totalitarian rule, graphic novel author Alan Moore created “V-for-Vendetta”, a troubled future vision about a masked man and his fight against a dictatorial regime.
V, the title character, is a cypher, an enigma. We learn little of his past, or his true name. The man he once was is unimportant. He is merely an avatar, a symbol for the oppressed, the disenchanted, the malcontent. This becomes all the more apparent later in the story, when an army of masked, anonymous Vs march towards parliament.
V is the Roman numeral V, for 5. The number etched on his cell door. We do not know what crime he has comitted, what we do learn is that he is the sole survivor of cruel medical experiments. They make him stronger, faster, smarter while stripping away his sanity.
V is Vengeance. Meticulous in his planning and ruthless in his execution, he seeks revenge on his tormentors. Many of them are also pillars of the establishment he seeks to undermine and their deaths serve a purpose in his warped campaign. Yet, in a very poignant scene, he seems to be tender in his administration of death, almost compassionate.
Turn V’s symbol upside down and you get A-for-Anarchy. Like the Sex Pistols before him, V decides that what is needed most is a little Anarchy In The UK. His bombings, his assassinations, his public grand-standing on the Government-controlled broadcasting system is meant to jolt a complacent population into action.
V-for-Vendetta may have been a take on the famous WW II slogan attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, but this was really Alan Moore flashing the V-sign according to the much older English tradition. It’s his two-fingered salute to the Iron Lady and her cronies and the message was clear: People should not fear their governments. Governments should fear their people.
But as the great Bard once wrote: “The times, they are a-changin’ “. The Cold War ended, the power of the Conservatives waned and by the time the 80’s ended, V-for-Vendetta had become as dated as other bleak looks at future dystopias like George Orwell’s “1984″and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 471″.
Remember, remember… The eleventh of September.
But the times went on changing and after 9/11, they could never change back again. Here we are, almost five years since the decleration of the War on Terror and sadly, V-for-Vengeance has once again become strangely topical. Under the current Bush/Blair administrations, people have once again begun to fear that their civil rights are encroached on in the name of National Security. Once again, there is a feeling of being watched by Big Brother. Once again, it is time for someone to give the two-fingered salute to the establishment.
The time seems right for politically minded movies. Earlier we had “Good Luck, And Good Night” and “Syriana”. Now the Wachowski brothers give us V-for-Vendetta. Bringing V to the big screen was a risky endeavour. Not only is the source material more talkative than action packed, but the Wachowskis also took a great risk in making a man dubbed a Terrorist, a term more laden with meaning than Anarchist in these troubled times, the main character. The modern V may be a terrorist, but his agenda remains the same: to provide the same jolt to a complacent population. In this case, we, the audience are challenged to critisize our government. V also presents a dicey moral dilemma. Is violence an acceptable tool for precipitating change? History teaches us that it has been in the past: witness any revolution, the French, the American, the Russian, all the way to the Cuban, and there have always been people who have believed so. But history has always been written by the victors. Guy Fawkes failed to blow up Parliament and history dubbed him a traitor and a terrorist. George Washington overthrew British rule and history has dubbed him a liberator and a patriot. There’s no clear answer to the questions V-for-Vendetta asks of us.
V-for-Vendetta is not a flawless movie. Some of the dialogues are clumsy in the flesh and Natalie Portman’s accent falters in places. There’s also one glaring plothole: under a totalitarian regime, it is hard to believe they wouldn’t check what exactly goes through the mail. But all of this is forgivable because V-for-Vendetta is the type of movie that resonates and starts discussion.
When the times go a-changin’ again, hopefully, V-for-Vendetta will become as dated as its source material, but under the current political climate, it’s an important must-see movie.