V for Vendetta
Wachowski brothers

Lee Jones
posted 7 April 2006

Within ten minutes of the start of this film, a masked anarchist has blown up the Old Bailey and is planning the next year to destroy the Houses of Parliament: it's 2020 in fascist Britain, the lights of democracy have gone out and only the mysterious 'V' (Hugo Weaving) can rekindle them - by blowing things up.

Ostensibly, this is a deeply subversive film: its hero is a suicide bomber. 'Blowing up a building can change the world,' 'V' tells us, invoking 9/11; his female sidekick, Evie (Natalie Portman), later appears in an orange smock and black hood that invokes Abu Ghraib; and the bombs to destroy Parliament are delivered via the London tube, invoking July 7. But what is actually subversive about this movie? One of this film's many cynical slogans is 'artists use lies to tell the truth; politicians tell lies to cover it up'. So, at the (very high) risk of taking the Wachowski brothers' claim to political philosophy far too seriously, what is the 'truth' V for Vendetta tries to communicate?

There isn't much truth at all, in fact - just a profoundly debased and cynical view of mass politics. Britain becomes fascist under High Chancellor Adam Sutler (John Hurt) via a landslide election victory because, as 'V' later chides them via a TV broadcast, they were foolish, irrational and allowed their fear of terrorists, avian flu and Muslims to get the better of them. 'People should not be afraid of their governments; their governments should be afraid of them,' 'V' declares - but of course, as we see in our present government's authoritarian tendencies, it is precisely the fear (and contempt) that governments feel for their peoples that lead them to stoke the politics of fear.

And in reality, of course, no fascist government was ever elected: rather, they were pushed to seize power by a fearful ruling class terrified of genuine, popular, left-wing radicalism that threatened to overthrow their dominance. Such was the pattern in Italy after the 1919-20 land and factory seizures scared the Liberals into supporting Mussolini, and in Germany in 1932 where, despite electoral defeat, Hitler was appointed chancellor by aristocrats and industrialists. In Spain, it even took foreign intervention for fascism to triumph over leftist populism. The view of the masses as an irrational, sheep-like herd tendency is sustained throughout: 'V' himself does not convince people of a political agenda, he just sends them disguises so they can provoke violent chaos and disorder on the streets, enough to distract and disturb the government to permit him to carry out his terrorism. The only radicalisation is Evie's - and by a monstrous process designed to mimic 'V''s own descent into inhumanity, asserted as the only way to true enlightenment and revolutionary commitment. Worse - it doesn't even stack up with the scenario: unlike in Orwell's dystopic vision in 1984, the language and thought of politics and resistance is left untouched by the regime.

'V' claims, 'beneath this mask there is not only a face, but an idea, and ideas are bullet-proof' - but what is the idea? At times, we're told it's hope, but V is for vendetta - 'V' is out for revenge, having been experimented on at a government facility, determined to kill everyone who had a part in his gruesome treatment. There is no hope in vengeance, and no politics either, just nihilistic destruction. 'V', in fact, has to be destroyed in a final blaze of glory, because he really has hit the end of the rails - his only concession that 'it's up to them [the people] to decide' what happens next reflects not a faith in democracy but a recognition that he can go no further because, having destroyed his tormentors, he has no more purpose in life. Despite Evie's assertion that V is 'you, he's me, he's everyone', we can only hope that he is not.

To some degree, there is an intriguing challenge in Vendetta: we are asked to sympathise with the terrorist as hero. There are also powerful and touching moments in this film. The two scenes that deal with the repression of gay men and women under Sutler's regime are particularly poignant and reflect the film's origins in a 1980s comic book. But ultimately the vision of politics being pushed by 'V' and the Wachowskis is one of despair. The final denouement, the destruction of Parliament to the tune of Tschaikovsky's 1812 Overture, is gratuitously shocking (more, I admit, than I ever thought it could be): rather than reclaiming the institutions of democracy from Sutler's bankrupt regime, they are simply destroyed in a blaze of nihilism. 'Blowing up a building can change the world,' but certainly not on its own. At least we are guaranteed no god-awful sequels à la The Matrix - the Wachowskis, like 'V', wouldn't know where to begin.