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shewhomustWhen I was a child, way back in the second half of the twentieth century, the English celebrated Bonfire Night on the fifth of November. As October came to an end, you gathered wood for a fire, and you made a guy, a dummy figure of old clothes stuffed with newspaper, and wearing a papier mâché mask which you bought from the newsagents. Maybe you put your guy in a wheelbarrow and took him from door to door asking for "a penny for the guy" to buy your fireworks, or maybe your parents bought them. But come the fifth, you put your guy on top of the bonfire, you let off your fireworks, and you celebrated the failure of the plot to blow up Parliament in 1605 (unless you were in York, in which case you might have some sympathy for Guy, as a local lad).
If you didn't grow up here, or if you grew up after Hallowe'en had displaced Bonfire Night, fireworks become an all year round entertainment, and trick-or-treat replaced penny-for-the-guy, then you may know about the Gunpowder Plot as a historical event, you may even have heard of Guy Fawkes ("the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions", we used to say). But you won't greet V for Vendetta with the immediate recognition of English (possibly British, but I can only be certain of the English, on this one) people of a certain age. One American friend, flicking through my copy of the book, was baffled: "Remember the fifth of November?" she said. "I do - it's my Dad's birthday."
What has this to do with the film of V for Vendetta? Only that I see no point in evaluating a film on the basis of its faithfulness to its source material; and I've lived too close to the comic for too long to see the film independent of its source. So this is not a review, but a collection of random remarks.
I enjoyed the film; I didn't love it, as I love the comic, and there were one or two points where I did not want to believe what I was seeing and / or hearing; but I enjoyed it, and it certainly didn't feel like over two hours. And given the government's determination to make it illegal to glorify terrorism, we owe it to ourselves to support a film which makes the terrorist the sympathetic character - not necessarily the good guy, so to speak, but with his heart in the right place.
The two big changes in the original material are obvious from the very start of the film. The comic begins with a very young Evey painting her face and listening to the Voice of Fate on the radio; the film begins with a glamorous young woman preparing for a date while watching television.
The film makes Evey older and stronger, from the start; it gives her a radical family background. Her initial encounter with V comes about because she is out after curfew, on a date (not necessarily an entirely romantic affair, but a dinner date with a man she likes); she is a grown woman, not a hungry child, desperate for cash, picking the wrong man to proposition. Evey relates to V as an equal, not as a child to a father-figure; the relationship between them becomes less of an opportunity for V to explain his political ideas, more a conventional romance. But - perhaps because the film ends with, shall we say, a much bigger bang than the original - there is no suggestion that Evey will take the final step of assuming V's mask on her own terms.
It's in the nature of the medium that a film will be glossier than a comic; especially if that comic was originally designed for black-and-white printing. This film goes with the flow; Evey is more glamorous, the explosions are bigger, the Voice of Fate is transformed from a persuasive radio broadcast to a hectoring televisual shock jock (while V's voice, from behind his impassive mask, has all the power of that unseen speaker), the Shadow Gallery is less a glorious confusion and more a richly stocked museum. Yet despite this transformation, individual shots acknowledge David Lloyd's artwork: when V welcomes Evey to the Shadow Gallery, or descends in a swirl of drapery to dispatch a bishop, identifiable panels are translated to the screen. The credits acknowledge David Lloyd as the artist of V for Vendetta, Alan Moore having asked not to be credited as writer (and in this connection, what was that about with "William Rookwood"?), but don't mention that Lloyd was also co-creator of the character; the Guy Fawkes connection was his idea.
The change of medium makes it inevitable, too, that the chaper titles, all beginning with V, would be lost; but the V motif has been abandoned more generally. The signature rose becomes a Scarlet Carson (though Google would have explained who Violet Carson was); the juke box in the Shadow Gallery plays Julie London's Cry me a River, instead of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas; Thomas Pynchon vanishes without trace. The other absence from V's gallery was Valerie - presumably to allow the audience to share Evey's suspicion that her letter is part of V's deception.
Ah, yes, Evey's imprisonment, torture, brainwashing - there is room for debate about whether V can be forgiven for this. My own problem with it is a step further back, in that I can't quite find it believable. V's resources and ingenuity are infinite, we take that as given (he is, in his own way, a superhero, with his secret origin in room V): but this episode is exceptional, in that it also requires collaborators. The greater realism of film makes this implausibility more glaring, and this adaptation makes no attempt to gloss over it; though the emotional scene between V and Evey following her release was so embarrassing as to act as a distraction. Still, at least we didn't have to wait five years for it...
There are some fine performances: Hugo Weaving was fine as V - in as far as you can judge a performance from behind a mask. Stephen Rea was excellent as ever, playing the good cop, for a change, instead of the terrorist. Stephen Fry played Stephen Fry, and it wasn't his fault that the character was designed as a faint echo of V, with the same taste for objets d'art, the same bizarre way of cooking eggs and the same weakness for the grand gesture (though less skill in getting away with it).
All the same, the comic is better.
England prevails.
If you didn't grow up here, or if you grew up after Hallowe'en had displaced Bonfire Night, fireworks become an all year round entertainment, and trick-or-treat replaced penny-for-the-guy, then you may know about the Gunpowder Plot as a historical event, you may even have heard of Guy Fawkes ("the last man to enter Parliament with honest intentions", we used to say). But you won't greet V for Vendetta with the immediate recognition of English (possibly British, but I can only be certain of the English, on this one) people of a certain age. One American friend, flicking through my copy of the book, was baffled: "Remember the fifth of November?" she said. "I do - it's my Dad's birthday."
What has this to do with the film of V for Vendetta? Only that I see no point in evaluating a film on the basis of its faithfulness to its source material; and I've lived too close to the comic for too long to see the film independent of its source. So this is not a review, but a collection of random remarks.
I enjoyed the film; I didn't love it, as I love the comic, and there were one or two points where I did not want to believe what I was seeing and / or hearing; but I enjoyed it, and it certainly didn't feel like over two hours. And given the government's determination to make it illegal to glorify terrorism, we owe it to ourselves to support a film which makes the terrorist the sympathetic character - not necessarily the good guy, so to speak, but with his heart in the right place.
The two big changes in the original material are obvious from the very start of the film. The comic begins with a very young Evey painting her face and listening to the Voice of Fate on the radio; the film begins with a glamorous young woman preparing for a date while watching television.
The film makes Evey older and stronger, from the start; it gives her a radical family background. Her initial encounter with V comes about because she is out after curfew, on a date (not necessarily an entirely romantic affair, but a dinner date with a man she likes); she is a grown woman, not a hungry child, desperate for cash, picking the wrong man to proposition. Evey relates to V as an equal, not as a child to a father-figure; the relationship between them becomes less of an opportunity for V to explain his political ideas, more a conventional romance. But - perhaps because the film ends with, shall we say, a much bigger bang than the original - there is no suggestion that Evey will take the final step of assuming V's mask on her own terms.
It's in the nature of the medium that a film will be glossier than a comic; especially if that comic was originally designed for black-and-white printing. This film goes with the flow; Evey is more glamorous, the explosions are bigger, the Voice of Fate is transformed from a persuasive radio broadcast to a hectoring televisual shock jock (while V's voice, from behind his impassive mask, has all the power of that unseen speaker), the Shadow Gallery is less a glorious confusion and more a richly stocked museum. Yet despite this transformation, individual shots acknowledge David Lloyd's artwork: when V welcomes Evey to the Shadow Gallery, or descends in a swirl of drapery to dispatch a bishop, identifiable panels are translated to the screen. The credits acknowledge David Lloyd as the artist of V for Vendetta, Alan Moore having asked not to be credited as writer (and in this connection, what was that about with "William Rookwood"?), but don't mention that Lloyd was also co-creator of the character; the Guy Fawkes connection was his idea.
The change of medium makes it inevitable, too, that the chaper titles, all beginning with V, would be lost; but the V motif has been abandoned more generally. The signature rose becomes a Scarlet Carson (though Google would have explained who Violet Carson was); the juke box in the Shadow Gallery plays Julie London's Cry me a River, instead of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas; Thomas Pynchon vanishes without trace. The other absence from V's gallery was Valerie - presumably to allow the audience to share Evey's suspicion that her letter is part of V's deception.
Ah, yes, Evey's imprisonment, torture, brainwashing - there is room for debate about whether V can be forgiven for this. My own problem with it is a step further back, in that I can't quite find it believable. V's resources and ingenuity are infinite, we take that as given (he is, in his own way, a superhero, with his secret origin in room V): but this episode is exceptional, in that it also requires collaborators. The greater realism of film makes this implausibility more glaring, and this adaptation makes no attempt to gloss over it; though the emotional scene between V and Evey following her release was so embarrassing as to act as a distraction. Still, at least we didn't have to wait five years for it...
There are some fine performances: Hugo Weaving was fine as V - in as far as you can judge a performance from behind a mask. Stephen Rea was excellent as ever, playing the good cop, for a change, instead of the terrorist. Stephen Fry played Stephen Fry, and it wasn't his fault that the character was designed as a faint echo of V, with the same taste for objets d'art, the same bizarre way of cooking eggs and the same weakness for the grand gesture (though less skill in getting away with it).
All the same, the comic is better.
England prevails.
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-31 10:25 am (UTC)But I shall look forward to seeing your reaction to the comic!