Remember, remember...
Mar. 25th, 2006 12:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
green_dreamsSo.
I saw V for Vendetta.
I was delighted.
I am rather surprised by this.
(It is not whole-hearted delight, but it is delight nonetheless.)
Thoughts, cut due to spoilers:
For dialogue, everyone who isn't V occasionally needs to put down the hammer and back away from the nail, we got the point. If V were anyone else, this would apply to him too, but he isn't, so it doesn't. He speaks as much to be listened to as to communicate, which makes sense, and while I'm suddenly wishing that they could have gotten Vincent Price instead, Weaving did a wonderful job. Tying him to Edmond Dantes fits; ideals aside, his on-screen presence evokes high romance, times gone by, larger-than-life swashbuckling style over substance. Not in a light or fluffy manner.
It seemed that there were very few characters in the movie; very little scene-setting, very little about the people. This is minimized to some degree with the groups seen watching TV, but I still got the impression the movie was about a particular group--relatively large for a movie, incredibly small for a city--and that there was really no-one in the background. Evey talks about seeing her friend in the market, Creedy talks about arrests, but you don't actually see it. The people you see on the screen do something, or have something happen to them.
(My word, you don't actually see the Chancellor in person until the end, do you? He's on broadcasts, or in historical footage, and at one point you see his hand with a glass of milk. But beyond that...)
'm neutral on Evey not attempting to be a prostitute. On the one hand, I was faintly annoyed at the sanitizing. On the other hand, I think it'd distance her from the viewers, and having a viewpoint character who doesn't agree with V helps a lot in maintaining the moral ambiguity.
Similarly, I don't mind the difference in the way the social change was instigated; again, it's sanitizing, and it does strip away some of the ambiguity. But it's a chain of events that can be slowly unfolded over the course of the movie (even if it was done a little heavily), and it ties all the elements of the movie back into itself.
Also, thought the distribution of masks was a very cinematic way to generate the anonymity that cutting the surveillance provided in the comic. More visually commanding, simpler to explain, simpler to execute.
I was ready to be angrily disappointed around the time the movie handed out Rookwood as an indentity. All was forgiven when that was cleared up.
The romance annoyed me greatly, partly because it felt so token. V caring for Evey, certainly; V as passionate, a given. I thought her epiphany, with them both falling to their knees and her in tears, was one of the best-done ones I've seen in movies, although admittedly there aren't as many as I'd like to see (I find movies are prone to cutting away as light washes over the illuminee's face or the screen is overexposed and fades to white, then jumping to a scene where they walk onscreen post-epiphany with better posture and hair). But the romance felt like something you put in because you have to have it in a movie.
Mind you, I'm rethinking that as I type, and it's annoying me less and less. Given Evey's and Valerie's similarities--the first scene at Larkhill, I thought it actually *was* Evey running the gauntlet of doctors with sores on her face--and V's devotion to Valerie, it's yet another example of characters mirroring each other.
That was probably the best thing about the movie to my mind; the way the characters reflected and echoed one another. Evey to V. Evey to Valerie. V to Gordon. Gordon to Evey's mother. And on, and on. Like the story was a mirror-play, all actions reflecting some essential truth, a chain of events that means something, where there are no coincidences. Works very well with a movie about an allegory.
So yeah. Some things I would've liked to see done differently.
But from V's first speech, I had decided I was going to buy that movie if it didn't screw up. And I don't think it did, so I will be working on getting a copy onto the shelf next to Galaxy Quest and Shakespeare in Love (yet to be obtained).
I saw V for Vendetta.
I was delighted.
I am rather surprised by this.
(It is not whole-hearted delight, but it is delight nonetheless.)
Thoughts, cut due to spoilers:
For dialogue, everyone who isn't V occasionally needs to put down the hammer and back away from the nail, we got the point. If V were anyone else, this would apply to him too, but he isn't, so it doesn't. He speaks as much to be listened to as to communicate, which makes sense, and while I'm suddenly wishing that they could have gotten Vincent Price instead, Weaving did a wonderful job. Tying him to Edmond Dantes fits; ideals aside, his on-screen presence evokes high romance, times gone by, larger-than-life swashbuckling style over substance. Not in a light or fluffy manner.
It seemed that there were very few characters in the movie; very little scene-setting, very little about the people. This is minimized to some degree with the groups seen watching TV, but I still got the impression the movie was about a particular group--relatively large for a movie, incredibly small for a city--and that there was really no-one in the background. Evey talks about seeing her friend in the market, Creedy talks about arrests, but you don't actually see it. The people you see on the screen do something, or have something happen to them.
(My word, you don't actually see the Chancellor in person until the end, do you? He's on broadcasts, or in historical footage, and at one point you see his hand with a glass of milk. But beyond that...)
'm neutral on Evey not attempting to be a prostitute. On the one hand, I was faintly annoyed at the sanitizing. On the other hand, I think it'd distance her from the viewers, and having a viewpoint character who doesn't agree with V helps a lot in maintaining the moral ambiguity.
Similarly, I don't mind the difference in the way the social change was instigated; again, it's sanitizing, and it does strip away some of the ambiguity. But it's a chain of events that can be slowly unfolded over the course of the movie (even if it was done a little heavily), and it ties all the elements of the movie back into itself.
Also, thought the distribution of masks was a very cinematic way to generate the anonymity that cutting the surveillance provided in the comic. More visually commanding, simpler to explain, simpler to execute.
I was ready to be angrily disappointed around the time the movie handed out Rookwood as an indentity. All was forgiven when that was cleared up.
The romance annoyed me greatly, partly because it felt so token. V caring for Evey, certainly; V as passionate, a given. I thought her epiphany, with them both falling to their knees and her in tears, was one of the best-done ones I've seen in movies, although admittedly there aren't as many as I'd like to see (I find movies are prone to cutting away as light washes over the illuminee's face or the screen is overexposed and fades to white, then jumping to a scene where they walk onscreen post-epiphany with better posture and hair). But the romance felt like something you put in because you have to have it in a movie.
Mind you, I'm rethinking that as I type, and it's annoying me less and less. Given Evey's and Valerie's similarities--the first scene at Larkhill, I thought it actually *was* Evey running the gauntlet of doctors with sores on her face--and V's devotion to Valerie, it's yet another example of characters mirroring each other.
That was probably the best thing about the movie to my mind; the way the characters reflected and echoed one another. Evey to V. Evey to Valerie. V to Gordon. Gordon to Evey's mother. And on, and on. Like the story was a mirror-play, all actions reflecting some essential truth, a chain of events that means something, where there are no coincidences. Works very well with a movie about an allegory.
So yeah. Some things I would've liked to see done differently.
But from V's first speech, I had decided I was going to buy that movie if it didn't screw up. And I don't think it did, so I will be working on getting a copy onto the shelf next to Galaxy Quest and Shakespeare in Love (yet to be obtained).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 06:04 am (UTC)V really was all of those people at any given time.
It was well played out, even if only for me.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 05:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 06:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 08:06 am (UTC)b) While not much of a substitute for the burlesque, Gordon's Benny Hill bit was brilliant. His character came across as a bit of an Oscar Wilde.
c) V's speech to Evey at the beginning was a brilliant way to introduce the character and says so much about him that the movie didn't have the time to simply show.
Hugo Weaving, I've found, is not particularly physically expressive. But his voice has always been extremely good, and I think he was a good choice for V.
I think I'll make a post Sunday with my own analysis after I've seen it again.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 05:54 pm (UTC)b) I was thinking that was just me because he played Oscar Wilde in Wilde and dammit Fry *does* look rather like Wilde:
Upon reflection, though, I think you're right; there's a sort of gentle dry humour in the face of things that are bad but can't possibly be that bad that strikes me as very Wildean.[1]
c) Agreed, again.
---
[1] If it isn't an adjective, it should be.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 02:09 pm (UTC)Watch for it!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 03:39 pm (UTC)so yea, i guess we'll be buying it too then. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 05:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 05:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-25 05:45 pm (UTC)Makes perfect sense to me. With her being sanitized as the viewpoint character, having her suddenly flip to willing complicity in premeditated murder would have cheapened her immeasurably.
Evey was always hesitant about committing to V's political point of view and what he was willing to do; they just had to show it in a different way. And having her cheerfully help commit murder and then have a crisis of conscience and run to Gordon (who they had to get her to, really) would...
Hrm.
Would smack of being someone who completely forgets that they have Humanity until the ST tells them they need to make a Humanity check (in gamer-speak, that is). :)