V for Anarchy?

Go see it. Reviewers have called V for Vendetta's politics juvenile, irresponsible, and dangerous. V is a ruthless assassin of his country's leaders. He's a cop killer. He's a saboteur, a usurper of his nation's airwaves, a sower of discord in the streets, and a one-man demolition crew of his government's stately architecture. Scandalous, then, that this man is held up so unequivocally by the film's creators as a force for good, a great mind motivated by love as much as by the desire for justice–the hero the world has been waiting for. V's world lies a few decades in the future. The former United States, riven by civil war and disease, is merely a cautionary tale in the background, begging for medicine on the world market, a "leper colony," an "ulcered sphincter," according to a leading English TV host. His screed against the US opens the movie proper, and it's a compelling one: the fall of this would-be empire is so total, its destitution so pathetic, that it inspires no pity, only his jowl-wobbling, spit-flecked disgust. But England has inherited its fantasy of unlimited power, and the movie unfolds in a London of curfews, water rations, arbitrary detentions, and a state-owned media by which a Hitlerian chancellor keeps everyone in a constant state of fear. Posters everywhere demand compliance. Secret police in plainclothes operate with impunity, raping and beating whomever they please. Televangelical fascists rail against immigrants, homosexuals, Muslims, and terrorists alike, there being no meaningful distinction between them any more. Obviously, a government this rotten has got to go. And the filmmakers (via Alan Moore, the story's original creator) have crafted a brilliant blueprint for its destruction. Bodies pile up along the way, of course, and that leads us to the first of Hollywood's two inroads. There are few action scenes, but they're marked by the usual gorgeous slow-motion whirling and twirling. In a movie this politically savvy, these scenes beg the question: do we have to keep making violence look so attractive? The cop-killings in particular are shot in that contemporary style often called "balletic," and which really do impart a kind of glamor to mass murder. But in the end the issue boils down to a question of character. No doubt those who take issue with the movie's high cop-body count think of them as innocent bystanders who happen to be in uniform. They aren't evil men; they're only following orders. But this is a regime as bad as any dictatorship in world history. It has killed untold numbers of people. Those willing to lend their muscle to a gang of murderers this corrupt (the filmmakers argue) can't expect mercy. Opposed to them, and at the center of the movie, stands V, full of pathos, rigid, poetic, tender and violent all at once. He kills quite a few people. But he's also the victim of a monstrous persecution; his personal, even more than his ethical, motives are convincing enough to save those scenes of violence from what might otherwise be mere showcasing for a special-effects carnival. By the tenets of the movie, V richly deserves his vengeance; his victims richly deserve to die. In any case, the most powerful scene is one which people on both sides of the violence-vs-nonviolence debate have long fantasized about. Then, too, its treatment of gender roles is by-the-book Hollywood. V and Evey (the female lead) meet when he saves her from being raped by the secret police, power shifting from would-be rapists to a male savior rather than their intended victim. She's fearful and compliant; she betrays her hero; she hides; she cries; she's weak. And he gives her a thorough mindfucking to whip her into shape. But V's role, at least, gets tweaked in some unusual ways. He dresses in a frilly apron and cooks for her. The love-song he plays her, "Cry Me a River," is in a woman's voice. Overt parallels are drawn between V and a closeted gay character. And his own political awakening, we discover, came by the grace of a lesbian's tale of oppression. To be sure, he's no androgyne. With his Guy Fawkes mask and rich, deep voice, he's very much a man, almost a caricature of a man. Ultimately, though, his character is more than a male wish-fulfillment. The essential point of the movie, underscored by his most effective act of sabotage, is that V embodies what each of us could be, and wants to be: an unfearing hero. V expresses that part of ourselves that we've been taught to hate, to keep hidden under a mask, but that's in fact noble and beautiful, and impels us to act with courage for justice. And its concessions to Hollywood are necessary. This movie was made to appeal to the widest possible mainstream audience. Its messages–that things don't have to be this way, that the dominant politics of our age are a menace to freedom, that fundamental change is within our reach–need to be heard. The average audience-member who sees this movie isn't going to take to the streets, but V for Vendetta is a big step toward making the idea of revolution legitimate again in a pacified and fearful culture. Which brings us to the silliest critique I've heard of this movie. It comes from Alan Moore, the creator of the graphic novel on which the film is based; some of his fan club; and a few voices on the anarchist left. Purists complain that the movie isn't faithful enough to Moore's vision, which shouldn't trouble anyone who hasn't made a holy relic of the book (definitely worth reading). Their bigger problem? The word "anarchy" isn't mentioned. It is, actually, once, when a petty thief and evident Sex Pistols fan hollers "Anarchy in the UK!" Even while omitting the frequent references to anarchy in Moore's work, though, the film illustrates some core anarchist principles. Perhaps the word's conspicuous absence is another concession to Hollywood. And words are potent. But to misquote the film's heroine a little, this world needs more than a word right now; it needs an ethic more than a vocabulary lesson. And the ethic is definitely there. This movie is about destroying oppressors and returning power to the public, and it maps out a solid route: Repossess the media and use them to wake people up from their torpor. Undertake a few successful and spectacular anti-government actions to show that there's still hope, that no fortress is impregnable. Sever official lines of communication. Play the pathological self-interests of the leaders against them. Give the downtrodden a working method by which they can reclaim the streets as their own. And, most importantly, learn to face down your fears or nothing will ever change. This movie, of course, won't inspire any revolutions. It doesn't show any alternatives, either, though it suggests them. But that's just as well: it's really a paean to freedom, meant, as V says, to celebrate "someone's death, or the end of some awful, bloody struggle." And expanding the limits of acceptable political discussion as far as it does is an important step. It's not hard to imagine that, in another few years, a movie like this would have been killed by studio execs or government censors before it reached the storyboard. It's that subversive. And that V for Vendetta can still be made and get wide release is a sign that we still have time to safeguard, at the very least, our freedom of speech.