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January 12, 2006
V FOR VUCKING VANTASTIC
The Matrix series was many things to many people. The first film was a revelation, both of concept and delivery. The Wachowskis managed to tell a story that many others were also interested in telling - about breaking out of your acceptance of the world as it controls you - but they told it as one of the great action movies ever, not an ounce of fat, loaded with iconic moments that have been riffed on ever since. The first sequel, The Matrix Reloaded, turned the original idea on its head. It built out the notion of cycles, our struggle being more with our own natures, even when we think we know the score. It was also brilliant, though massively misunderstood. The third film I was surprisingly quiet about, in great part because of its content. It's a movie about acceptance. But acceptance is not terribly exciting drama. There were some great moments in this film as well. But the emotional drive of the first two films was lost to the ultimate answer to the trilogy… acceptance.
V For Vendetta is a return to the style of the first Matrix film. But in many ways, it is a more powerful, more important film, even if it can never match the visual freshness of the Wachowski's first big budget film. V for Vendetta reaches past the purely visual and may well be the best film of 2006. (It won't have much competition for the honor when it opens on March 17.) And no, I am not exaggerating.
The film is, like The Matrix, about a world under the control of a totalitarian regime. Here it is human… and people are not being tricked. We are conscious. And we accept. We accept out of fear. We accept out of apathy. We accept because we have forgotten to be free.
In this world, we wander with Evey, played by Natalie Portman. She's rebel enough to be out past curfew but still, she is part of the machinery around her. Facing deadly trouble, she is saved by V, a masked vigilante who speaks in Shakespeare and fights with speed and knives. He wants to change the world. She is not ready to do anything like that. Their journey together is the story of the film.
I'm not going to get into a review of the film at this point. After one viewing, I am hard pressed to find a single flaw in the film… and that is probably overstating it a bit.
But I sat in the dark and I thought to myself, the Wachowskis, director James McTeigue, graphic novelists Alan Moore & David Lloyd, and producer Joel Silver, are asking moviegoers to reach farther than any studio filmmakers have asked people to go in many years. The style is both simple and arch. Martin Walsh's editing is full of great tricks. And the language… oh the language… it has the simple, perfect eloquence of Edmond Rostand with Shakespeare pulls to boot. And you go with it. You have to go with it. Because there is such power in these ideas… in these characters. (And don't think for a second that Sinead Cusack's appearance in this film was a coincidence. She played Roxane in the legendary Derek Jacobi version of The Royal Shakespeare Company's version of Cyrano de Bergerac in the early 80s.)
Portman is pretty perfect in this film. She is beautiful indeed, but it is in her eyes that we see her true power as an actress. She never gets a laugh, a break. This is a hard journey. But you believe she could survive, as Evey must. The impossibility of a man in a mask that completely covers his face, whose eyes you never see, whose body and eyes are all you ever get to go on, is overcome by the very underappreciated Hugo Weaving, who doesn't sound like he has in any of his previous incarnations, but who never is anything less than completely believable, no matter how hard it is to embrace him. And the supporting cast, from John Hurt's unforgettable tyrant, to Stephen Rea's hangdog cop, to a shockingly restrained and perfect turn by Stephen Fry and on and on… just great.
And there are turns in the story you can never see coming. This film, shockingly, makes the most powerful statement about accepting people who are different that I have seen in a film, small or large, in a long, long time. (No, I'm not going to tell you anymore about it. You'll want to experience it for yourself.)
Some people are going to try to paint this film as political in a specific way. The same was true of The Matrix. But it is not what the Wachowskis are about. If a specific American administration feels like a reflection of the state in V For Vendetta, so be it. But it really isn't about the forces of evil. It is about the power of humanity.
And as I watched the movie, I have to admit, tears came to my eyes at times, not only from the drama of the film, but from knowing that people who resist films of this weight - and it is a serious, very R-rated (not hard R, but very R), challenging film wearing the cloak of a terrific action movie - will be enthralled by the filmmaking and find themselves in touch with the messages. And at this, no filmmakers have ever been as brilliant as the Wachowskis (with due respect to director McTeigue, who more than carries his weight here) in delivering message with classical movie fun.
Perhaps had Wilder made a massive CG action movie, he could have gotten there. Steven Spielberg might do it one day. M. Night Shyamalan has convinced himself that he already has. Jim Cameron is all about love and metal. Soderbergh is too good at intimacy to try for it. We have hope for others, like Fincher, whose Fight Club is a brilliant, but coarser, less accessible variation on this theme. But at the risk of invoking Kubrick twice in one week, I wonder whether A Clockwork Orange felt like this when it was first released. Clockwork is a very entertaining movie, really, painful as some sequences are. But even that film is tougher to take than this one. The Wachowskis know just how big a spoonful of sugar will make the medicine go down without you ever knowing you were taking any medicine. (Thank goodness they are decent, spiritually generous men… from frickin' Chicago… who like to blow shit up.)
I could have a crush… I could be proven wrong… but I think this movie will play even with the aging Academy audience. It is a movie that could be laughable, but is not… not in any way. And if it does play to that crowd, don't be surprised to see it hanging around next year at this time. The only reason I hope that V For Vendetta isn't the best film of 2006 is that we would all be fortunate to have a handful of films that can hope to match it's emotional, intellectual power as the year goes along. Surprise, surprise, surprise…
January 3, 2006 - Reflections On A New Year
January 6, 2006 - Sundance Preview
January 5, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 1
January 9, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 2
January 11 - Munich In Sequence | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3
