Nice film but needed a bit more thought

Rating: 7/10 (6 April 2006)

I had not read the comic book before seeing the film and so came to it cold and unsure what to expect. All I knew about it was a few simplistic comments I heard on the radio. Let me say at the outset that I liked this film a lot. I loved the comic book style and was so grateful that it did not descend into gimmicky special effects. But I do have a few quibbles with it.
First of all I am very tired of films set in a London of Victorian terrace houses and alleyways that really does not exist anymore. At least it was not shot in those same few streets near Borough Market, but why did we not see the ugly and uncomfortable city full of Norman Foster 50's style constructions that London has become? I think it would be more interesting to try and set a Gothic tale in the shiny modern horror that is present day docklands for example. The new fascism is, after all, one of shiny glass and concrete where it can be hard to tell the difference between apartment blocks, office blocks, shopping malls, factories and multiplex cinemas.
Next quibble is, given the references to things like "rendition", I kept wondering when there would be a reference to Operation Cyclone, the US and UK campaign to destabilize central Asia that created the Taliban and Bin Laden. There do seem to be a lot of people who think the "war on terror" is something created by Bush and Blair and it would have made the film a lot stronger if it had demonstrated that it has been a policy goal of successive governments, both conservative and labour, democrat and republican, for the last thirty odd years at least. The UK is really a single party, totalitarian state. All the political parties are adherents of 19th century liberal imperialism as still taught by the British public schools. But the single party state shown in the film, at least I assume it was a single party state as there was no mention of a parliamentary opposition, hides this massive flaw in the system. The point being that if it makes no difference who you vote for destroying the institution might be a good idea but if you had a real alternative to vote for then destroying the institution might be quite a bad idea. Not referring to the foreign policy of the US and UK over the last 30 odd years seemed a bit of a cop out. The film wanted to tell us that the news we are fed is a fiction. Should it not therefore have made an attempt to tell us the truth that the media tries to hide? I also found it hard to believe that the British army would not open fire on civilians. History suggests otherwise - Lucknow, Bloody Sunday and Iraq to name just three instances. Perhaps English civilians are in a different category to Indians, Irish and Iraquis but I doubt it and anyway this was never said.
My main problem though was that I found it very difficult to sympathize with a character whose entire family have been murdered by the state and yet still goes to work for the state's propaganda machine. When Evey is in her cell I did rather feel it served her right. OK, it's obviously true that there are a lot of people who would happily sell their grannies to advance their media careers but I don't think this was what Evey's character was supposed to be. I think she was supposed to be someone who passively accepts the status quo and is politically unaware and during the course of the tale begins to see the truth that is not so much hidden as simply ignored because so little time is left to think about such things. People in Britain now work longer than anyone else and the retirement age is set to rise and rise but only perhaps 25 years ago a 20 hour working week was thought to probably be possible. This is a way of controlling people. Keep them struggling to pay the mortgage and they won't have time to protest anything. Surely though if one's entire family has been murdered by the state one would stop and think about what was going on.
It is of course encouraging to see a film that urges people to go out on the streets and protest at what our government has become but unless you understand fully what you are protesting against it might not be that constructive. Especially if there is no suggestion of what to replace that government with. I thought using Street Fighting Man over the end credits was a nice touch and it reminded me that Kieth Richards once said, if you are going to kick the world in the teeth you might as well use both feet. This film only used one foot, albeit to good effect. So it was a great film but "If...." made the same point rather better. I still rent "If..." on DVD from time to time. I wonder whether I will ever rent "V for Vendetta". Probably.