Molecularizing 'V for Vendetta'

It's a surprise that litterateur Alan Moore found it reasonable to distance himself from the silver screen depiction of his creation, V for Vendetta, because, having watched the movie for the hundredth time, I finally understand what it takes for a director to have his movie be a desirable fixture in every young man's hard drive.

If the Wachowski siblings had decided to stay true to the novel, a novel with all of its poetic licenses and all the liberty assumed to allow the ideologue to run amok, the movie would have turned out like Boondock Saints - which is not a bad movie to turn out like except that it bombed at the box office. V, on the other hand, was a huge success - which means the producers are happy - and also commands a cult following.

One of the most intriguing points of departure I've come across about the movie was Sean Burns' analysis for the Philadelphia Weekly:

" [It's] fairly dim, adolescent stuff... barely decorated sets with television-standard overlit shadow-free cinematography by [the late] Adrian Biddle. The film is a visual insult."

I concede that it is adolescent, but the political message on the other hand doesn't seem to be all that forgiving either. Movies are commercial ventures, and if they disregarded that in favour of promulgating political viewpoints, Thomas Paine would be the only happy man (apart from the fact that he's dead).

The film is definitely a visual insult but only insofar as a concession is made for its popularity with the audience. I'm sure a choice was consciously made backstage to lose certain excesses to sequester the principal idea and content of the production from the literary paraphernalia that surrounded it. Being very different forms of information communication, I'm sure you'll agree when I say that a movie cannot afford multiple paths of interpretation because that will conspicuously limit the extent to which each demographic can be targeted. Why do you think there are hundreds of great books coming out each year as opposed to only a few great movies?

However, that being said, I must side (in parts) with Moore's bones of contention: the movie is bland in places where it could've been something richer, something more mischievous. All of the on-set props seem to be there because they play some role in some scene while the inclusion of anything else could've made the sets seem much more natural and native to the drama being played out.

In fact, the movie seems to borrow significantly from many of its predecessors that dealt with dystopia: American Beauty (1999) didn't have a single bright-seeming scene, 1984 (1984) assumed no liberties on top of what the book already provided so it could retain that same emotional tone, Bladerunner (1982) employed the climate, pollution and over-population of Los Angeles as depicted in the movie to employ the implications of dystopianism, amongst other examples. In other words, V relies heavily on its content and doesn't have that corroborative quality of its own.

Even more: the Wachowski siblings' obsession with inserting references to V and the number 5 in the movie seemed like unwarranted indulgence with the technical aspects of production and, frankly, took away from much of the plot's circumstantial significance. Imagine sitting in a theater and being surrounded by geeks looking for Easter eggs on the screen.

At the end, if you ask me, I'm glad these two creative forces played out the way they did to deliver the movie as it is because, having watched it, I can confidently say that I'd have found other things to be disappointed about other than just props and ideas and the like. It's important for any movie to be evaluated - rather experienced - this way because the satisfaction of understanding it down to the last millimeter of reel is not only what makes it more remarkable but also what makes it more memorable.