Propaganda, not Vendetta...

Rating: 5/10 (29 May 2007)

The high rating of this movie by IMDb users clearly defines their amateurism, their weak and basic criticism, their naivety, but especially their lack of philosophical, political and cultural knowledge. Am I starting too hard? Sorry about that, but I believe truth is never pretty, so being 100% honest isn't usually much prettier. But just let me explain the link between these untutored users and the very core of V for Vendetta, wait, I'm coming to it.
I did not liked this movie, because in the contrary of most users, I didn't got caught by the easy choices behind the story and the stereotyped beliefs and behaviors of its characters. Sadly, like always, most peoples did.
Not that this is a surprise for me, but this sure is another reminder of their desperate state of mind, loose and constantly changing values, but especially their empty and so-called "hope" (yes, this is a direct insight to the ending), which is only build out of their vanity and very incapacity to admit they can't (and will never be able to) save themselves!
This also means that I'm, indeed, directly comparing them to the citizens of V for Vendetta, who got so easily caught with so little and WITHOUT QUESTIONNING THEMSELVES.
Yes, the movie has a very good design, it also has talented actors. I was especially pleased by the presence of John Hurt and Eddie Marsan. Hugo Weaving had one nasty challenge; to act without showing his face, and I believe he made it just right, the script sure helped to enhance his speech and overall voice performance, but to my opinion, most of the credit goes to him. I've never been a Portman fan, but I liked her in this role. In fact, most of the cast did a wonderful job, honestly. Sound was right, not necessarily memorable though.
But to say the least, most of my attention was kept by the story, its values and themes, its obvious influences and the will of the makers in every choices of the production. Well, and let's say that it's tough to respect them when they use so little subtlety in the translation. I have too much to say on this side, so I'll try to resume as much as possible.
Visually speaking, colors and light are an important part of the personality given to anything or anyone. In the movie, there is darkness almost all the time; it's either dark, indoor or both. Excepted when V makes something explodes, it's always outside, which gives a feeling of freedom, and, in the final scene, the explosion light up every faces of the citizens, to make us feel like they are reaching hope and freedom. Furthermore, those who studied colors, flags, or both, know that the use of either red and black, or red, black and white (especially the last one), is, unconsciously, a threatening arrangement, which usually means hate, war and/or hostility. Of course, in the movie, these colors were the official ones given to the Government, which makes it evil from the very beginning. It also is a direct insight to the Nazi colors of the WWII. But they don't stop there, they makes them corrupted Christians (the bishop who sleep with young girls), rich (at one time, we quickly see a written amount of over 20Millions pounds which seems to be an individual's bank account statement), self centered (the animator takes his shower surrounded by TVs playing his own show...), hypocrite (TV news lies, Sutler who doesn't want the detective to speak about what he read in the book), etc. The Government Symbol (a red cross with two horizontal bars to make a F for Faith) is a good summary of what the story writers wanted to demonise; Christianity. And this is where I don't fall in their trap.
If I'm telling everyone God bless this or that, of if I wear a t-shirt saying "What would Jesus do?", does it makes me Christian? If I really need to answer that, then you really disappoint me. We judge someone by his heart and by his actions, not by what he says, what he looks like, or by what someone told you about him. But most of the time, peoples don't follow this way. This is why in the story, the makers wanted the Government to be very immoral and evil, while also defining them as conservators Christians. But if you look closer, nothing of what they are doing of "evil" is Christian-related, nothing excepted for one thing; homosexuality. This never-ending subject then takes all the attention, making most peoples finally associate the whole corrupted Government thing to Christianity, and there we go. The Bush ambiguity, as I like to call it, also doesn't help to defines peoples minds on the subject, and peoples get easily caught in this "Christian = bad" thing.
And talking homosexuality, this part where Evey finds a girl's kind of biography written on toilet paper is really pathetic, to my opinion. Furthermore, it revealed an important hidden plot that made this movie less credible and hypocritical to my eyes. Especially because if his creators would have been confident enough on that subject, they would have replaced Portman's character by a man, or V by a woman, but they did not, and it speaks for itself.
Finally, if you ask me, this is a big disappointment from the Watchowski brothers, we will very quickly forget this one... I hope they'll make something more astonishing next time. Also, anyone searching a little bit will easily find two precise subjects, which really sounds like a propaganda in favor of homosexuality and against Christian-inspired governments, if not Christianity itself! Which is not subtle and kind of annoying.