Ranting to /dev/null

I'd like an order of unreconstructed countercultural nonsense...

...with a side of paranoia and conspiracy mongering. That'll be to go.

I just saw V for Vendetta.

The basic thesis of the movie is that the Bush administration deliberately planned and executed the September 11th attacks in order to create a political climate that would allow them to push through a theocratic police state. Furthermore, the administration maintains dictatoral control over the media, overtly fabricates news, and censors anything that appears remotely subversive. Secondarily, personal growth and cultural enlightenment are the foundation for political revolution, and the means of said revolution - which is obviously necessary - is and ought to be murder, kidnapping, industrial sabotage, and terrorism.

The argument is, essentially, the same as The Matrix, wherein the mass execution of innocent civilians is entirely acceptable if those people stand in the way of cultural revolution. But the left never really has cared about people as persons, only as populations and aesthetic ideas. They've also never really clued into the fact that cultural revolutions... how to put this... don't work. I submit as evidence the fact that V for Vendetta was produced in America, with American corporate capital, will probably make a lot of money, and will produce little to no reaction from the government because no one there is silly enough to think that movies motivate political change.

The ironies of the movie are just dazzling, and entirely unintended. "What this country needs now is hope," says our heroine (played by the estimable Natalie Portman, who really can act when she isn't being directed by Mr. Lucas), as she flips the switch that will blow up Parliament. Does anyone else see how the willful destruction of civil landmarks and government buildings doesn't exactly serve to create an environment of hope? It is also, apparently, okay to torture people, if it's for what the torturer judges to be good for the victim.

This, dear reader, would appear to be the left's answer to The Incredibles, one of the more recent truly great political films. Whereas Incredibles was clearly a conservative film that espoused a family, civilization, and life-affirming message, Vendetta is nihilistic, narcissitic, relentlessly dark, and morally ambiguous. It's also rabidly anti-Christian. The reason I even bother to make the comparison is that it's a really good movie, unlike the recent drek that the left has produced.

V is prone to loquaciousness, and the fountain of words he produces in the first scene are really quite exquisite. His clever suggestion that "Who are you?" isn't an entirely appropriate question to ask a man wearing a mask (if he wanted you to know, would he be wearing the mask?) is delightful. References to Shakespeare abound, and are remarkably apt. "Remember, remember, the fifth of November" is used to good effect (though the lionization of anarchists and terrorists is further evidence of the Wachowski brothers' derangement). The writing is really very good.

As far as the acting, Hugo Weaving has an incredibly pleasant voice, and does well as a man in a mask. Portman suffers nicely, and actually looks just fine with no hair. John Hurt takes on a delicious role reversal from his previous work as Winston Smith by taking on the the Big Brother figure of Chancellor Adam Sutler.

The film is definitely worth seeing, provided you take your anti-psychotics before you go. Wouldn't want any of that nonsense rubbing off on you. But as a hallmark of the direction the left is taking in this country, it's clearly worth watching. A recurring line from the film is that "Artists uses lies to tell the truth. Politicians use them to obscure the truth." The truth being told by the movie is wrong, but the lies are beautifully told, which is more than Moore can say. At least these guys had the decency to call theirs fiction.

Posted by ryan at March 19, 2006 12:38 AM | TrackBack