V for very good movie

Catholic New Times, April 9, 2006 by Din Yalonen

V for Vendetta, starring Natalie Portman, Stephen Rea and Hugo Weaving. Directed by James McTeigue.

Our Hero "V" is based on the historical English Catholic revolutionary Guy Fawkes, and thus has more in common with Che Guevara than Jesus.

But what a character and what a movie!

I must admit feeling uncomfortable with all the pretty violence in the name of common good and freedom from oppression by the Empire, but brushing that moral pest aside I was able to really empathize with this flick. Like the historical Guy Fawkes (whose face is the basis for V's mask design) V intends to blow up the British Parliament. This is not so bad, as he gives everyone months of warning to the exact time, so that no one will be inside when it happens. The intention is to destroy the symbol of oppression, to give people hope and incite them to public action against a government that has killed a hundred thousand of its own civilians, under the guise of a phantom virus. As a result, the government used that fear to acquire complete and total power.

There are morally grey areas of this film, where often the means is seen as justifying the ends. As much as I disagree with this, however, the movie is wonderful because it touches on a need so deep within us all.

The need we feel for freedom from disinformation, from silence, from the patriot act, from illegal wars, from lies of WMDs, from 16,000 detainees in Iraq, from five illegally detained Muslims in Canada, from $100 billion spent on Iraq, from the hundreds of thousands of African Americans homeless in New Orleans, from the fear of the 'other' and the continued segregation of gay people from equal rights. Finally, we need inspirational and fantastical freedom from our own fear and the ensuing indifference to our own conquering and religiously fundamental, fanatical, Western government leaders.

For a bubble-gum movie, this touches deep on all these and more. A must see for any teenager or adult looking for a contemporary and relevant myth.