This is a powerful film. Sadly, too few people will see it. And of the ones who do, not enough of them will see the deeper message contained within it. That message manages to surface once or twice in between the glitz and the action, mostly embodied in the dialogue of the main character V. His line that “people shouldn’t fear their governments; governments should fear the people,” while paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson (“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”), is arguably the central message of the movie.
I think most people upon hearing this message would probably agree with it, as long as they don’t spend too much time thinking about it, but when they realize the full implications they would view it as being too impolite. Too revolutionary.
But as V also says, near the end of the movie, ideas are bulletproof. Our country was founded on the idea that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that the rights of the individual are supreme. That idea is certainly bulletproof. It sparked the last revolution, and it will no doubt spark the next.
I read Moore’s novel V for Vendetta years ago, and loved it! I had to dig up my copy of the novel after reading reviews of this adaptation of Alan Moore’s novel. I found the movie completely dissimilar to the novel written 25 years ago by Moore and Lloyd. This movie version should be titled “M” for More of the Same Leftist Propaganda.The take home message broadcast by this movie is less revolutionary and more bordering paranoia. Inside the lair of “V”, a mystery man who runs around in a Guy Fawkes mask, hangs a banner showing a Nazi swastika superimposed over British and American flags, along with the label, “Coalition of the Willing”. Even the emblem of the evil fascist government is a double-barred “Lorraine” cross. Hello! The message being conveyed has all the subtlety of a sledghammer, the movie is less about a future state than the present day, less about the politics of Alan Moore than of Michael Moore.A common piece of disinformation I came across repeatedly in reviews was that “V for Vendetta” was about Alan Moore’s fear of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. Moore mistakenly labels the obviously Nazi regime of Norsefire as ‘right-wingers’. As we all know, Nazis were socialists, not ‘right-wingers’. No one who makes such a claim could possibly have read the same novel. In fact, the history of Moore’s tale started with a predicted Conservative loss to the Socialist-leaning Labour party in the early 1980s. In a very telling divergence from the novel, the directors saw fit to change the government of Moore’s nightmare, a mix of 1984, North Korea, and Nazi Germany into an extremist conservative Christian government. A glaring reflection of the paranoid liberal fantasy of a conservative Christian government. Hollywood loves Che, feels Islamofascists just need to be understood, but Christians, on the other hand…Moore’s V saw fascism and anarchy as polar opposites with NO middle ground, and “V” chose anarchy in the novel. The movie version of “V” sees democracy as the natural opposite of fascism, and has our hapless “V” plot to restore democracy by overthrowing the current government. The directors deliberately re-imaged “V” as a democratic revolutionary hero who commits crimes for a noble cause, instead of an individual simply carrying out his personal vendetta. What really irks me is that this movie blatently blurs the line between freedom fighters and terrorists. In reality, terrorists are busy fighting to destroy democracy and enslave others through fear. There is no amount of Hollywood equivocation that will diminish my capacity to judge between the two.I say avoid this movie and go see Obsession: Radical Islams War with the West.Whew…*stepping off my soapbox”