is of course based on Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel depicting a lone semi superhuman intellectual's war against a near future Totalitarian Great Britain. Written as a sort of anarchistic fantasia and a brutal assault on Margaret Thatcher's Tory Government, V for Vendetta was a thing of it's time, built on anger, cold war certitudes and lovingly garnished with a healthy dose of classic British Post Apocalyptic pessemism.
Why the Wachowski Brothers elected to adapt it for film is a mystery.
The lead wears a Guy Fawkes mask through out the film reducing Hugo Weavings'
contribution to superior voice over work. Natalie Portman on the other hand, does a superlative job as "Evey" "V's" much abused and unwilling sidekick. And then there eis John Hurt as Britain's nominal dictator goes full circle, he was once Winston Smith, now he plays Big Brother. Big deal, the film is an earnest talky flop tarted up with a few too many of the Wachowski Brother's trademark slo-mo carnage.
The problem with V for Vendetta doesn't lie with it's Thatcher era politics or it's clumsy update to the age of terrorism, the source material itself, unabashedly political and heedless of consequences cannot be adapted for the screen. Alot of Moore's comic book writing is like that, the man writes for the picture pages not or the fluid spill of the cinema with it's editing and sundry special vocabulary.
Moore has as was the case with "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" denounced this film, now finally I get his point. He has already made this film, he just made it out of paper with drawn pictures instead of celluloid.
What is the point in making it again?
No comments:
Post a Comment