V for Vendetta (and Chiwetel Ejiofor)
Mar. 18th, 2006 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaLet me start this by saying I was predisposed to like this movie because it had a trailer for Inside Man which meant I got about three and a half seconds of footage of Chiwetel Ejiofor, on whom I have developed a HUGE and largely embarassing crush.
Seriously, this crush is, like, the most teenage-girly-crush I've ever had on anyone. One day I was watching Serenity (not for the first time or anything) and "OH MY GOD CHIWETEL EJIOFOR IS THE MOST GORGEOUS MAN WHO'S EVER BEEN SEEN ON MY TELEVISION SCREEN!" just hit me upside the head.
Were I *actually* a teenage girl, and not, you know, co-habiting with my boyfriend who does *not* have a crush on Chiwetel Ejiofor (he's more of an Admiral Ackbar kinda guy), I would plaster my room with pictures of him. Still, for the three or so people who will actually read this entry, behold:
http://www.whedonsworld.com/files/pix/serenity/operative/theoperative03.jpg
I apologise, this is long, but this movie blew my mind that much.
I get the feeling that I'm going to see different things in this film that most people will. That's based on nothing but my *guess* on how the critics will perceive it; how the general public will perceive it.
What I think people are going to make of this movie is: It's a political allegory about how our times (or the eighties, when it was written) are full of controlling governments and this is bad and how we shouldn't give up our freedom of speech for safety.
This is true - it is. But that's not what makes this movie brilliant. Because I'm starting to think you can't make an allegorical film like the one I just described during times like these. You can't make an allegorical film about any polarising issue when that issue is polarising people. The people on the film's side of the issue are going to go, "Wow! That's so true to life!" (which won't change their views) and the people on the other side of the issue are going to say, "But this is an *allegory*, it's not *real*, it's an extreme view of safety before freedom, and it'll never actually *get* that far," (regardless of times that's happened in history, and again, their views will remain unchanged).
All films like this do is get both sides dug into their trenches.
There's this line, and on one side of it, you haven't proved that a political direction is "bad" and on the other side of it, you're resorting to cartoonish extremes to prove it's "bad", and can you ever walk that line?
This movie is about Evey Hammond, and, to a lesser extent, Valerie. In a way, it's also about "V", but I'll also get to how it's not about him at all.
What's genius about this film is the way it lets the totalitarian regime and the political posturing and grandstanding *be* the cartoonish, atmospheric backdrop to the film. It's two dimensional, and knows it. While it makes a point, and while it makes one I like and believe in (if you create a system where the government can screw you over, where it can choose to attack its own people with impunity, it's *dangerous* even if the current government doesn't intend to utilise that aspect of the situation) - it's too vulnerable to attack to be the point of the film. All you need to do is say, "Yeah, but do you really believe that our government would murder 80,000 citizens so John Hurt could be the Grand High Chancellor," and, you know, we're back to allegory land. Back to the trenches.
Back to how it's all about the individuals.
In a rather heavy-handed moment, V acknowledges his monstrosity, because he was created by monsters. But that's very true, and this film's ultimate strength. This film is about fear and its effects on the individual. It is about how a political system based on fear affects its citizens. The way the big picture affects the little person.
By making this about Evey Hammond, a girl trapped between a government she fears and a vigilante she fears, and her journey through this dark world of politics and propaganda and ideology, and the way those affect her, the film circumvents the problems it would have faced if it were simply trying to draw direct and generic political parallels.
It is also a fabulous look at terrorism as a vengeful response to a desperate situation, a look at assassination as a political tool, as a means for revolution. But even though the revolution is desperately needed, neither method is portrayed as heroic. V is not the hero, he is only another kind of villain. Evey, our true hero, deplores V's methods, is afraid of him and tries to thwart his murder of the bishop, before fleeing. In a political climate that loves to polarise issues, this is a nice touch - it is possible, like Evey, not to agree with either method, and to just be stuck, in the middle, afraid.
V for Vendetta, for Vengeance, for Vindictive, for Vicious, for Vigilante, his name is well-chosen. Like the character in his favourite movie, The Count of Monte Christo, he loves revenge more than the girl. He loves revenge more than his much vaunted desire for a better world. V does not really want a better world, he recognises this in his gift to Evey, the train of explosives. The decision to instigate revolution does not belong to him. It belongs to the girl who *lived* in the world and will have to continue living in it, not him - raised in shadows, belonging to the government (if anyone), not the populous. Ultimately, he can give up both the girl and the revolution, but not his vengeance on the Chancellor and Creedy. That is what he dies for to get his peace.
Unlike most movies, with Evey as our heroine and viewpoint, we are allowed to recognise the danger in this mindset, as is V himself. Unlike, say, Batman (though I love Batman) we see the dangers of a vigilante motivated by anger and pain. But we see this because of nuanced Evey. In a way, V is as two-dimensional as the political landscape.
I said that the film was not about him. I maintain that. In many ways, he is a cliche - the masked man with a tragic past - oh so much more tragic than yours, neener neener neener - who's all *stoic* and *dark* and *brooding*. We never find out, for instance, how he knows so much about the inner workings of the government, how he has so much money (8,000 of those masks sent out), how he taught himself his skills, how he got together the manpower he must have needed to clear the tracks of the underground - many things. He never ceases to be an enigma. He does not only hide behind his mask, he hides behind words and attitudes and the fact that he pretends to be an idea. He hides behind his ruined face. "I am no more the flesh beneath this mask than I am the muscles, or the bone under them." But he is all of these things, and denies them, as he denies the human parts of himself, because it's easier to be an idea. Ideas don't feel guilty and smash mirrors when they are hurting, selfishly.
So V is 2D, interesting because of what he represents, not so much as a character. This leads to one of my only gripes about the film. The *spectacular* scene where Evey realises the deception of her captivity, when they're on the roof, and V watches Evey reach the same moment he reached when he escaped the facility, burning, is slightly intrusive. It should be Evey's moment. I know the film makers wanted to say something about the connection between them. But I already got it. It's implicit. They were both lead there by Valerie's toilet paper biography. Cutting in the footage of V on fire with Evey in the rain was overkill and too much. It made me dislike V in that instant because I wasn't ready to finish being mad with him for torturing Evey. Because his overly enigmatic angst was intruding on the gorgous moment the audience was sharing with Evey. Who, I maintain, this film is all about.
After the travesty of Star Wars III, it's brilliant to see Natalie Portman getting the chance to act. I mean, really *act*. The scene where she realises what V's done is astounding. The part where she breaks down to the point where she can't breath and gets dizzy - sweet lord that was real. I've seen people reach that place, and I've been to that place; we all have. She almost took me there again. The place where no noise is coming out of your mouth, because no noise your body can make is adequate to the task of expressing your devastation.
The heartbreaking way she connects with Valerie - the way that *that* at least is real. This is the closest we will ever get to connecting with V on a human level, because this is the closest he ever got to connecting with anyone else. It's all we *need*, because that's horrific and beautiful at the same time. V is capable of inhuman things, and it is through these things that he can offer Evey his only gift - not a train of explosives, not really - but freedom from fear. The last inch of herself.
That quote kills me. "Our integrity sells for so little, but in the end, it's all we have. It is the last inch of us. And in that inch, we are free."
This is the core of the story, the *point*. It's not the Matrix-like revenge climax where V takes out Creedy. It's not even the way hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people turn up on the fifth of November to watch parliament burn. Because that story didn't really get enough development either. We see, slowly, a couple of families' and viewing groups' faith in their government falter, and from that we decide that people are willing to step up and get *shot*?! I *wish* that were true, that people believed in democracy and freedom of speech that strongly, but it would take a lot more development than that if it were the *point* of the film.
It's not.
Every single person who ordered the Guy Fawkes mask and put on the cape had a personal epiphany, a story that turned them into political creatures, into activists. Each one as important as Evey's and as Valerie's.
Because that's the real point of this film. Individual choice, individual responsibility. Because in the end it was a whole damn series of individual choices that allowed this two dimensional puppet government to rule in the first place.
It's like the reverse of what V says during his TV transmission. He says, the blame is everyone's because they stood by and did nothing. I think the point of the film is the importance of something, anything, to destroy that apathy, to push people towards their own personal epiphanies, to force them to a point where they can stand up, and be confident enough to make a decision about what to do with a train of explosives, and then live with it.
To say, "No thank you, I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds."
To say, "I love you," and mean it, to someone you've never met.
What gave V the right to push Evey to that point? Absolutely nothing and he knew it, and she did, and that's why she left, regardless of what he gave her. What gave him the right to murder those people and to push the citizens of Britain towards revolution? Nothing. He recognised a part of that at the end, when he put the responsibility onto Evey's shoulders. And maybe she had no right either. Until V came back, and died, I thought perhaps she wouldn't pull that lever. That she would stick to her belief that V was *wrong* (and he *was*) and terrorism was not an acceptable answer, and that passive protest of the millions outside would be enough. But then when he died, it seemed inevitable that the train would be his funeral pyre.
A good choice? I don't know. What's the message there? That there comes a point where you are willing to turn to violence to be heard. That this is not a pretty or even noble point, but that we all have one. How far is yours? What do you believe in? What would you die for?
At the end, Evey says that V was "all of us." No, V was an idea, a man who turned himself into an idea, and an idea cannot be human, and can afford to be absolute and unsympathetic. Evey is all of us. Every last one.
So yeah, this film makes all kinds of points about the dangers of governments, because they are dangerous, and it's too easy to give them too much power. But this film takes that as a given. It's already happened. What this film is about is personal responsibility, freedom from fear, the courage to choose, the need to share yourself with others lest you become another V.
This is a movie about the *effects* of totalitarian regime, and the *effects* of terrorism. About what it does to ordinary people regardless of who's *fault* it is that it's happened, regardless of which side is *right* or *wrong*. It's about how we're all right and we're all wrong, and it's all of our faults because we are all responsible for the world.
And yes, I'm an anarchist, thanks for asking. :)
One final question, sorta - I'm still wondering, on some level, why V tortured Evey. Was he trying to find out if she'd give away his identity? He could have simply kept her prisoner. Did he truly believe this was what she wanted? I think so. Like Valerie, he wanted to share his story with someone, but his story was experiential (is that even a word?) not linear from his childhood to now. Her torture was his toilet-paper autobiography.
Love,
Becka.
Seriously, this crush is, like, the most teenage-girly-crush I've ever had on anyone. One day I was watching Serenity (not for the first time or anything) and "OH MY GOD CHIWETEL EJIOFOR IS THE MOST GORGEOUS MAN WHO'S EVER BEEN SEEN ON MY TELEVISION SCREEN!" just hit me upside the head.
Were I *actually* a teenage girl, and not, you know, co-habiting with my boyfriend who does *not* have a crush on Chiwetel Ejiofor (he's more of an Admiral Ackbar kinda guy), I would plaster my room with pictures of him. Still, for the three or so people who will actually read this entry, behold:
http://www.whedonsworld.com/files/pix/serenity/operative/theoperative03.jpg
I apologise, this is long, but this movie blew my mind that much.
I get the feeling that I'm going to see different things in this film that most people will. That's based on nothing but my *guess* on how the critics will perceive it; how the general public will perceive it.
What I think people are going to make of this movie is: It's a political allegory about how our times (or the eighties, when it was written) are full of controlling governments and this is bad and how we shouldn't give up our freedom of speech for safety.
This is true - it is. But that's not what makes this movie brilliant. Because I'm starting to think you can't make an allegorical film like the one I just described during times like these. You can't make an allegorical film about any polarising issue when that issue is polarising people. The people on the film's side of the issue are going to go, "Wow! That's so true to life!" (which won't change their views) and the people on the other side of the issue are going to say, "But this is an *allegory*, it's not *real*, it's an extreme view of safety before freedom, and it'll never actually *get* that far," (regardless of times that's happened in history, and again, their views will remain unchanged).
All films like this do is get both sides dug into their trenches.
There's this line, and on one side of it, you haven't proved that a political direction is "bad" and on the other side of it, you're resorting to cartoonish extremes to prove it's "bad", and can you ever walk that line?
This movie is about Evey Hammond, and, to a lesser extent, Valerie. In a way, it's also about "V", but I'll also get to how it's not about him at all.
What's genius about this film is the way it lets the totalitarian regime and the political posturing and grandstanding *be* the cartoonish, atmospheric backdrop to the film. It's two dimensional, and knows it. While it makes a point, and while it makes one I like and believe in (if you create a system where the government can screw you over, where it can choose to attack its own people with impunity, it's *dangerous* even if the current government doesn't intend to utilise that aspect of the situation) - it's too vulnerable to attack to be the point of the film. All you need to do is say, "Yeah, but do you really believe that our government would murder 80,000 citizens so John Hurt could be the Grand High Chancellor," and, you know, we're back to allegory land. Back to the trenches.
Back to how it's all about the individuals.
In a rather heavy-handed moment, V acknowledges his monstrosity, because he was created by monsters. But that's very true, and this film's ultimate strength. This film is about fear and its effects on the individual. It is about how a political system based on fear affects its citizens. The way the big picture affects the little person.
By making this about Evey Hammond, a girl trapped between a government she fears and a vigilante she fears, and her journey through this dark world of politics and propaganda and ideology, and the way those affect her, the film circumvents the problems it would have faced if it were simply trying to draw direct and generic political parallels.
It is also a fabulous look at terrorism as a vengeful response to a desperate situation, a look at assassination as a political tool, as a means for revolution. But even though the revolution is desperately needed, neither method is portrayed as heroic. V is not the hero, he is only another kind of villain. Evey, our true hero, deplores V's methods, is afraid of him and tries to thwart his murder of the bishop, before fleeing. In a political climate that loves to polarise issues, this is a nice touch - it is possible, like Evey, not to agree with either method, and to just be stuck, in the middle, afraid.
V for Vendetta, for Vengeance, for Vindictive, for Vicious, for Vigilante, his name is well-chosen. Like the character in his favourite movie, The Count of Monte Christo, he loves revenge more than the girl. He loves revenge more than his much vaunted desire for a better world. V does not really want a better world, he recognises this in his gift to Evey, the train of explosives. The decision to instigate revolution does not belong to him. It belongs to the girl who *lived* in the world and will have to continue living in it, not him - raised in shadows, belonging to the government (if anyone), not the populous. Ultimately, he can give up both the girl and the revolution, but not his vengeance on the Chancellor and Creedy. That is what he dies for to get his peace.
Unlike most movies, with Evey as our heroine and viewpoint, we are allowed to recognise the danger in this mindset, as is V himself. Unlike, say, Batman (though I love Batman) we see the dangers of a vigilante motivated by anger and pain. But we see this because of nuanced Evey. In a way, V is as two-dimensional as the political landscape.
I said that the film was not about him. I maintain that. In many ways, he is a cliche - the masked man with a tragic past - oh so much more tragic than yours, neener neener neener - who's all *stoic* and *dark* and *brooding*. We never find out, for instance, how he knows so much about the inner workings of the government, how he has so much money (8,000 of those masks sent out), how he taught himself his skills, how he got together the manpower he must have needed to clear the tracks of the underground - many things. He never ceases to be an enigma. He does not only hide behind his mask, he hides behind words and attitudes and the fact that he pretends to be an idea. He hides behind his ruined face. "I am no more the flesh beneath this mask than I am the muscles, or the bone under them." But he is all of these things, and denies them, as he denies the human parts of himself, because it's easier to be an idea. Ideas don't feel guilty and smash mirrors when they are hurting, selfishly.
So V is 2D, interesting because of what he represents, not so much as a character. This leads to one of my only gripes about the film. The *spectacular* scene where Evey realises the deception of her captivity, when they're on the roof, and V watches Evey reach the same moment he reached when he escaped the facility, burning, is slightly intrusive. It should be Evey's moment. I know the film makers wanted to say something about the connection between them. But I already got it. It's implicit. They were both lead there by Valerie's toilet paper biography. Cutting in the footage of V on fire with Evey in the rain was overkill and too much. It made me dislike V in that instant because I wasn't ready to finish being mad with him for torturing Evey. Because his overly enigmatic angst was intruding on the gorgous moment the audience was sharing with Evey. Who, I maintain, this film is all about.
After the travesty of Star Wars III, it's brilliant to see Natalie Portman getting the chance to act. I mean, really *act*. The scene where she realises what V's done is astounding. The part where she breaks down to the point where she can't breath and gets dizzy - sweet lord that was real. I've seen people reach that place, and I've been to that place; we all have. She almost took me there again. The place where no noise is coming out of your mouth, because no noise your body can make is adequate to the task of expressing your devastation.
The heartbreaking way she connects with Valerie - the way that *that* at least is real. This is the closest we will ever get to connecting with V on a human level, because this is the closest he ever got to connecting with anyone else. It's all we *need*, because that's horrific and beautiful at the same time. V is capable of inhuman things, and it is through these things that he can offer Evey his only gift - not a train of explosives, not really - but freedom from fear. The last inch of herself.
That quote kills me. "Our integrity sells for so little, but in the end, it's all we have. It is the last inch of us. And in that inch, we are free."
This is the core of the story, the *point*. It's not the Matrix-like revenge climax where V takes out Creedy. It's not even the way hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people turn up on the fifth of November to watch parliament burn. Because that story didn't really get enough development either. We see, slowly, a couple of families' and viewing groups' faith in their government falter, and from that we decide that people are willing to step up and get *shot*?! I *wish* that were true, that people believed in democracy and freedom of speech that strongly, but it would take a lot more development than that if it were the *point* of the film.
It's not.
Every single person who ordered the Guy Fawkes mask and put on the cape had a personal epiphany, a story that turned them into political creatures, into activists. Each one as important as Evey's and as Valerie's.
Because that's the real point of this film. Individual choice, individual responsibility. Because in the end it was a whole damn series of individual choices that allowed this two dimensional puppet government to rule in the first place.
It's like the reverse of what V says during his TV transmission. He says, the blame is everyone's because they stood by and did nothing. I think the point of the film is the importance of something, anything, to destroy that apathy, to push people towards their own personal epiphanies, to force them to a point where they can stand up, and be confident enough to make a decision about what to do with a train of explosives, and then live with it.
To say, "No thank you, I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds."
To say, "I love you," and mean it, to someone you've never met.
What gave V the right to push Evey to that point? Absolutely nothing and he knew it, and she did, and that's why she left, regardless of what he gave her. What gave him the right to murder those people and to push the citizens of Britain towards revolution? Nothing. He recognised a part of that at the end, when he put the responsibility onto Evey's shoulders. And maybe she had no right either. Until V came back, and died, I thought perhaps she wouldn't pull that lever. That she would stick to her belief that V was *wrong* (and he *was*) and terrorism was not an acceptable answer, and that passive protest of the millions outside would be enough. But then when he died, it seemed inevitable that the train would be his funeral pyre.
A good choice? I don't know. What's the message there? That there comes a point where you are willing to turn to violence to be heard. That this is not a pretty or even noble point, but that we all have one. How far is yours? What do you believe in? What would you die for?
At the end, Evey says that V was "all of us." No, V was an idea, a man who turned himself into an idea, and an idea cannot be human, and can afford to be absolute and unsympathetic. Evey is all of us. Every last one.
So yeah, this film makes all kinds of points about the dangers of governments, because they are dangerous, and it's too easy to give them too much power. But this film takes that as a given. It's already happened. What this film is about is personal responsibility, freedom from fear, the courage to choose, the need to share yourself with others lest you become another V.
This is a movie about the *effects* of totalitarian regime, and the *effects* of terrorism. About what it does to ordinary people regardless of who's *fault* it is that it's happened, regardless of which side is *right* or *wrong*. It's about how we're all right and we're all wrong, and it's all of our faults because we are all responsible for the world.
And yes, I'm an anarchist, thanks for asking. :)
One final question, sorta - I'm still wondering, on some level, why V tortured Evey. Was he trying to find out if she'd give away his identity? He could have simply kept her prisoner. Did he truly believe this was what she wanted? I think so. Like Valerie, he wanted to share his story with someone, but his story was experiential (is that even a word?) not linear from his childhood to now. Her torture was his toilet-paper autobiography.
Love,
Becka.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 01:28 am (UTC)There's a mildly popular conspiracy theory out there that Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen. After WWI, America was rigidly isolationist; fuck the Nazis, fuck the atrocities, it's not our back yard, it's not our problem. So, the theory goes, is that Pearl Harbor could've been prevented, but allowing that one horrific act gave America the kick in the crotch to get off its ass and stop Hitler.
As a theory it's utterly implausible--but as fiction, I like it much better than the angle the V4V movie took: that the entire event was fabricated by the government. I like the idea that it wasn't just one single-party conspiracy, but was a careful playing of the field, toying with real enemies for the all-important support public awakening.
In real life, I suspect that criminal negligence is the culprit more often than anything else. No grand plans, no sharply-honed malice--just people who can't be bothered to care about things that deserve attention.
To say, "No thank you, I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds."
To say, "I love you," and mean it, to someone you've never met.
The first one is probably my favorite line in the entire piece. The second one's up in the top five, too.
I'm not an anarchist. The more I read about anarchy, the more I realize human beings couldn't live like that. The anarchy sites I've hit up like to emphasize how much they hate rules, laws, constrictions, bindings, obedience. I agree with a great deal of it. But I think the issue is not freedom vs. constraint, but interference vs. harm. People don't need the freedom to drive on sidewalks, rape and murder at will, and pee wherever they want to drop trou. On the other hand, our systems of group organization should not constrain us in any unecessary way--we should be allowed to speak and act in ways that offend people, as long as we do them no harm.
And what my vodka-and-cold-medicine-sodden mind is picking at now is the way in which we construct our social immune systems.
Government started out as mob rule, survival of the fittest, monarchies, ogliarchies, the cave-men with the biggest clubs.
And somewhere along the line, someone introduced the concept of "protect and serve"--that governments should fear their people. That people are not subordinate to government, but that social structure exists to serve the common good.
And I don't think this has been implemented AT ALL, despite all the lip-service, but I'd rather try for such a system than throw my lot in with either anarchy or fascism. =\
(Vastly simplified and all, but gotta run.)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 11:13 am (UTC)I do agree with you here. True, minutely constructed conspiracies are rare, I think, and not as powerful or tragic as the culmination of small events that ultiamtely damn us all - the culmination, quite often, of personal failures. Which is why I think this movie works better as an examination of two flawed people and their parts in the greater scheme of things, than a two dimensional portrait of a conspiracy that wouldn't exist in real life. The very fact that it wouldn't exist in real life devalues it in terms of making a real world point.
I'm not an anarchist. The more I read about anarchy, the more I realize human beings couldn't live like that.
I realise the huge irony here, given my stated political leanings, but I actually agree with you.
People couldn't live like that, not given our current social expectations. Were the world suddenly plunged into anarchy, people would *die*. Lots of people. It's not worth that, and it wouldn't work - we'd just re-arrange ourselves into a new governmental system.
I also think that anarchy can't work with the idea of property - at all - and that includes money. Get rid of ownership and money and a lot of the *reasons* people rape and steal and kill dissappear. But I digress.
The point is, anarchy is an ideal to me and informs my political opinions, but I agree that it can't currently work in any kind of large-scale way.
As aside, but possibly still interesting to you, my favourite book in the world, "The Dispossessed," by Ursula K. LeGuin deals with the realities of an anarchist society, and how it ultimately settles into communism, and how that's actually just as much "rule" as any other governmental system - even if it's the rule of the *majority*. It's very interesting.
And yeah, V for Vendetta does a good job of dealing with a social immune system that has failed, and what and when and how people need to respond to that. What it doesn't do so well is play to how it failed in the first place, and that's when it's vulnerable to being called two-dimensional and poorly drawn.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-25 11:15 am (UTC)Is that the ultimate nature of anarchy? Putting yourself before others? Or did he violate her right to freedom to *teach* her freedom? Ah, questions.
The ultimate paradox of the vigilante. Taking control without being asked by the majority. Doing what the government is doing.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-26 09:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-26 12:47 pm (UTC)Good way to put it, and glad that you enjoyed reading it. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-03-30 07:10 pm (UTC)[[Like the character in his favourite movie, The Count of Monte Christo, he loves revenge more than the girl. He loves revenge more than his much vaunted desire for a better world. V does not really want a better world, he recognises this in his gift to Evey, the train of explosives. The decision to instigate revolution does not belong to him. It belongs to the girl who *lived* in the world and will have to continue living in it, not him - raised in shadows, belonging to the government (if anyone), not the populous. Ultimately, he can give up both the girl and the revolution, but not his vengeance on the Chancellor and Creedy. That is what he dies for to get his peace.]]
To a point, I agree. However part of V's motivation for his choices (why he leaves Evey to go die in the way he had planned) is that he has nothing to offer her; given his mutilation, he can never be more than an emotional presence. He lacks eyes, genitals and a face to gaze upon. Such a relationship, while fulfilling on one level, would be also be absolute agony for him on a constant basis... and Evey wouldn't want that for him. It would destroy "them" as surely as his death did.
V also had one thing going for him that no other person truly had: no need to live through this. ("It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything." - Tyler Durden) He had nothing, so he could commit everything that he was to accomplishing this act of defiance; this sacrifice that would admittedly come second to his revenge, but why yield up either thing when you can have both? As last requests go, it's probably not too much. Factor in that if any of those people survived, they would likely be able to take over in the government and things would not change. So it dovetailed quite nicely for him.
Just an few thoughts on it.
[[One final question, sorta - I'm still wondering, on some level, why V tortured Evey. Was he trying to find out if she'd give away his identity? He could have simply kept her prisoner. Did he truly believe this was what she wanted?]]
I think he wanted to her to survive it. Or maybe he meant what he said, that she could go at any time, but as long as she was fighting that he felt compelled to continue. To stop would be to cheat her of what she could become.
In the end, the question could probably only be posed to Evey as to whether Evey-now would change what happened in order to become someone different.
Kaltros
no subject
Date: 2006-03-31 11:20 pm (UTC)V also had one thing going for him that no other person truly had: no need to live through this.
I don't disagree on any particular point. I don't really feel that we are disagreeing, although perhaps we focus on different aspects. You're right that he doesn't need to live through this - but then again, that's sort of the point I made. Yes, we can blame his torture and mutilation for the fact that he has nothing to offer after he's triggered the revolution (and we would be right), but the end result is the same. He exists solely to enact his revenge (or justice, depending on your viewpoint), and not even the girl is enough to change this.
You're also right that there is some kind of practical limitation in any relationship with Evey (although, going strictly from the film, and not having read the graphic novel yet, we aren't shown the depths of his mutilation. He is also unwilling to give Evey the *chance* to repel him - again, he clings tightly to his mask and ideals and revenge rather than risking it for the girl). Then again, while I can see the suggestion that there could have been romance between them, I see their relationship more as Romantic, with a capital R. The kiss she gives his mask is beautiful, but ultimately, not necessarily indicative that she lusts after him. I kiss my friends sometimes, too. When I viewed it, it was more her attempt to connect with him; whether it was also a symbol of romantic love between them was irrelevant in that moment. The point was she loved him as a person, and he could not reciprocate, because he no longer was a person.
Which...leads us back to the point we both agree on, and the film agrees on. He was a monster created by monsters. Unable to connect on any human level for any length of time. The culmination and fulfilment of his life was his revenge, and the explosion of parliament, not any personal redemption or "true love". Like the Count of Monte Cristo, he loves revenge more than the girl. ;)
In the end, the question could probably only be posed to Evey as to whether Evey-now would change what happened in order to become someone different.
I think Evey-now wouldn't change what happened. Evey-now is quite...zen actually. I don't think she has regrets.
I also agree that V felt she deserved the chance to arrive at her post-torture state - to learn who she really is, and to live her life without fear. It *was* a gift, but what fascinates me is that it was unasked for. What fascinates me is that even if he understood what the outcome would be, how did he justify the decision in the first place? The decision to choose what course a person's life will take? The same way he justifies his hijacking of an entire political system and country's government? No. That doesn't feel quite right. I felt he justified that in many ways through personal anger and pain; a conviction that each and every person was responsible (he says as much on VTV) and had sacrificed their right to choose the "right" course. Did he feel that way about Evey? That when she turned against him with the Bishop, she sacrficed her right to make her own choices?
But if that's true, how *fascinating*! Now it's not someone he feels nothing but vague disdain for, it's someone he, on some level, loves. Who affects him emotionally. And again, we're back to this rather disturbing and un-heroic depiction of a vigilante. One who assumes the power of choice himself, and takes it away from others as soon as they make the wrong choice. Maybe that's why he tortured her? To have her reach a point where *no one*, not even him, could make her choices for her anymore? Did he create the creature who could defeat V the monster? TOO MANY THOUGHTS!
An ironic comparison could be made between V's personal assumption of people's choices and the current accusations flying towards America (and other Western countries) about acting like unilateral world police and making others' choices for them. Considering "America's War" and "V" are supposedly in direct opposition.
Hmm...
Sorry this was so long. Thanks again for the great discussion.
Becka.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-03 12:46 pm (UTC)