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d. James McTeigue; pr. Grant Hill, Joel Silver, Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski; scr. Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski; graphic novel. Alan Moore, David Lloyd; ph. Adrian Biddle; m. Dario Marianelli; ed. Martin Walsh; cast. Hugo Weaving, Natalie Portman, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, John Hurt, Tim Pigott-Smith, Rupert Graves, Roger Allam, Ben Miles, Sinead Cusack (132 mins)

In future London a vigilante (named ‘V’, played by a masked Hugo Weaving) resorts to revolutionary terrorism to exact revenge on those who disfigured him, hoping to bring the totalitarian political system to its knees.

A detective (Stephen Rea) tries to track him down and a girl (Natalie Portman) faces a personal choice as to her loyalty to the man she admires (and who saved her from rape by a fascist police force) or to the human ideals she feels he challenges: her final ability to reconcile terrorism and social liberation is the journey V for Vendetta explores, adapting the original serialized graphic novel by David Lloyd and Alan Moore (who had his name removed from the credits) to a superbly detailed post 9-11 War on Terror allegory.

Anti-Americanism and the view of Godless action inspiring judgment against Muslims and homosexual degenerates sets the tone for the fascistic view of a future England in which the religious police enforcing curfew take their power as an excuse to rape.

Patriarchal authority in the name of God is in V for Vendetta a vile, hypocritical and pernicious political monstrosity that fosters totalitarianism, the film bringing Orwellian and anti-Christian irony to a beginning which evokes that of the Tim Burton version of Batman, itself originally a DC Comics property. It is a Christian religious authority here, under the motto “strength through unity, unity through faith”, that results in fascistic oppression in the name of the twin devils of religion and nationalism that this film holds responsible for tyranny in a future Britain reacting to the American War on Terror by retreating into conservatism and the manufacture of fear.

Terrorism is a Romantic idealism in honour of Guy Fawkes Day in V for Vendetta. It is the expression of individual free will against the oppressive, Christian government in what is a radical and subversive celebration of political terrorism as social revolution – liberation even. Correspondingly, the British leader (played by John Hurt as a kind of Big Brother figure – an ironic piece of casting considering his role as Winston Smith in the British version of 1984) says that he wants the “terrorist” caught and shown the true meaning of “terror”. Hence, it is the juxtaposition between terrorism as ideological conviction and State terrorism as oppressive thought-control that underlies this film, clearly indebted to the mystique of George Orwell as much as the modern day horror of the suicide bomber and the graphic novel Vertigo comics oeuvre. Thus, the British media broadcasts mindless visions demonizing Islamic terrorists whilst they remain oblivious to the ideology of revolution from within their own nation – terrorism is not that of the mindless Jihadi menace, but the result of an ideological fervour borne of tradition – the revolutionary spirit of Guy Fawkes and the intent to bring down a government that has ended freedom in the name of fear.

What motivates the terrorist here is the obedient consent of the masses to a hierarchical political system based on censorship and surveillance, the kind of society that those who wish for stability readily compromise their liberty to achieve – exactly the kind of concessions to national security that proliferated in the wake of 9-11 in England as attention turned to the immigrant Muslim population.

Correspondingly, ideological protest against governmental oppression is branded terrorism: the demonized myth of the terrorist threat thus spreading through the official media – the British equivalent of Fox News in this film’s perceptive analogy to the War on Terror within its Orwellian comic-book origins – who are quite prepared to lie to re-assure and pacify the populace into a manageable docility they can exploit for their own ends, such ends being the continuation of power. The rationalism of terror here is intriguing: that a building is a symbol and therefore blowing it up can change the world if enough people understand the symbolism – the relevance of this to 9-11 is unmistakable, even though the film has no concern for Islamic terrorism expect as a convenient scapegoat for the political machinations of a Terrorist State.

Media collusion with a lying government and the concept of justice served by violence in the right cause give credence to the terrorist’s ideology in V for Vendetta. Yet, Portman must decide whether humanity is indeed served by justifiable violence, including assassination, and her personal moral debate is cleverly paralleled to detective Rea’s investigation of the political background that birthed the terrorist: specifically, the inhumane immigrant detention centres operated by those who had service in the Middle East – a clear allusion to British immigration policy concerning “undesirables” (also heavily informing Children of Men). Yet, when the terrorist assassinates several Party members (including a Bishop prone to the sexual molestation of young girls, as Portman finds when she tries to warn him), the person charged with extracting information from suspects is a man willing to torture, another clear alliance between the British mentality during the War on Terror (and its collusion with the Republican ethos of torture as condoned by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld) and Orwellian fiction. The notion of violence to serve political ideology is here juxtaposed between two polarities – individual and State terrorism.

V for Vendetta

an extract from Robert Cettl's book Film Talk: Quoting the Movies in the Age of DVD (on sale now in print and soon in e-book)

Comic book fantasies are incredibly popular blockbuster material for the Hollywood hit machine. One of the latest was V for Vendetta, based on the influential comic book series by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, a futuristic fantasy about an oppressive future which is under threat from a lone revolutionary / terrorist / bomber who explains his incendiary and violent tactics as follows:

“(t)he building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world.”

The cost to freedom for stability in England is monstrous as human rights have ceased to mean anything except for party members, the elite. Totalitarian terror is thus a far greater crime against humanity than individual terrorism, which is here revolutionary.

Indeed, illegal medical experimentation on detainees with biological weapons is here the epitome of State power – and England’s treatment of undesirables amounts to Mengele-like experimentation, a complete betrayal of human rights in medical ethics which England’s leader John Hurt insists be covered up, but which are revealed in disturbing flashbacks. State terror is ultimately responsible for the individual terrorist who acts to bring down said State – revolution is the inevitably product of oppression; the media demonization of ideological challenge through violent, retributive justice is labelled “terrorism” at the urging of said State, as a matter of convenience and political expediency in covering up its previous policies, which may have resulted in a loosed virus conveniently blamed on religious extremists.

Indeed, the government manufacture and sustaining of a climate of fear in order to keep its hold on power is the final tactic in the opposition against the terrorist threat – a clear allusion to the War on Terror Bush-Blair years. News media broadcasts of new terror threats contributes to the depiction of a world on the edge of chaos, the intent being to re-enforce the perception that the population needs the government and its stern security measures to ensure its safety. The allusion is clear – the War on Terror is government spin, a theme also in as unrelated a movie as Fahrenheit 9-11. Fear ensures power: manufacturing a terrorist threat by unleashing a “terror” attack against one’s own people ensures that those who prey on the fear of terrorism retain power – power based on the fear of terrorism ironically perpetuates the need for terrorism to sustain the fear keeping the government in power, such is the paradox of State Terror.

Significantly, the government so sustained in power by fear is conservative, Christian and fascistic – a clear comment on the alliance between Tony Blair and George Bush, just as flashbacks reveal that it was an out of control American war (the unnamed but clearly alluded to War on Terror) that began the manipulation of fear as the means of sustaining power.

And in the film’s final, radical suggestion, anarchy brings liberation from the enslavement and oppression that is living in State-sponsored fear. Terrorism is in V for Vendetta an idea that survives long after the terrorist is dead – in mythology and folklore wherein the terrorist is a martyr, not in the sense of the suicide bomber, but in the sense of a man who embodied an idea, of the need for the British people to rebel against the climate of fear perpetuated by a terrorist State. In contrast to all the films of terrorism post 9-11, V for Vendetta alone equates “terrorism” with humanism, making it a boldly subversive War on Terror allegory.