Anarchism, Hollywood-Style

By Anthony Kaufman, AlterNet. Posted March 17, 2006.

If Andy and Larry Wachowski's "The Matrix" trilogy turned millions of Americans on to cyberpunk culture and postmodern theory, then "V for Vendetta," the brothers' latest project (which opens today), might just do the same for out-and-out revolution.

Conceived by the Wachowskis and directed by their longtime assistant director James McTeigue, "Vendetta" is a pop-culture attack on the current administration's multiple injustices -- a big-budget call to rebellion from deep inside the belly of conglomerate Time Warner. Warner Bros.' film unit already got flack from conservatives for releasing "Syriana," "Good Night and Good Luck" and Palestinian suicide-bomber portrait "Paradise Now," but just you wait: "V for Vendetta" is a pro-revolutionary action-adventure romp that makes those films look like "Little House on the Prairie."

In perhaps the most glaring and controversial example of Hollywood's refusal to toe the Bush party line, "Vendetta's" hero is a terrorist -- a violent rebel on a mission to destroy his corrupt government in a blaze of explosives. Is this irresponsible? Does it glamorize terrorism? Perhaps. But for many progressives, whose anti-war protests have fallen on deaf ears and whose activism has been squashed by the powers-that-be, "V for Vendetta" should feel almost cathartic.

Set in the year 2020, "V for Vendetta" takes place in a fascistic London, some time after "America's war grew worse and worse," as one character narrates, "when unfamiliar words like 'collateral' and 'rendition' became frightening." The government is a cross between a full-blown totalitarian state and the current administration's scare tactics: with constant surveillance, a citywide "yellow-coded curfew" that instills paranoia and restricts nighttime movement, and a menacing band of secret police called "Fingermen" who patrol the streets and harass the citizens.

When we first meet Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman), she's about to pay the price for violating the city curfew when a mysterious masked stranger saves her from the authorities with an array of flying swords. Evey's savior is V, an erudite, Shakespeare-quoting burn victim who has literally adopted both the mask and the mission of long-ago subversive Guy Fawkes, who in 1605 plotted to destroy Parliament with 36 barrels of gunpowder. With the help of the young, pretty Evey (the daughter of "activist" parents abducted and killed by the government), V plans to carry out Fawkes' dreams of violent insurrection. "Blowing up a building," he tells her, "can change the world."

If there's any question about the film's political targets, "Vendetta" opens with a ridiculously racist and homophobic screed by Prothero, the Bill O'Reilly-like "Voice of London" who speaks on what appears to be the country's only television channel. "The former United States is the world's biggest leper colony," he spits. "And it wasn't because of the immigrants, the Muslims or the homosexuals, or the war that they started. No," he says. "It's because they're Godless!"

In contrast to Edward R. Murrow's famous signoff of "Good night and good luck," the nasty Prothero ends his ultraconservative broadcasts with the jingoistic "England prevails."

This isn't subtle stuff. In a blatant nod to George Orwell's "1984," "Vendetta's" U.K. is ruled by Chancellor Sutler, a vituperative, "deeply religious conservative" seen Big Brother-like on a large television screen (and played by John Hurt, "1984's" ill-fated everyman). Sutler's ruling philosophy is the politics of fear. "We will show him what terror really looks like," he screams after V's arrival onto the scene.

Anthony Kaufman has written about films and the film industry for the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and Utne magazine.