V for Vendetta - Maybe Spoilers

[RC]

"People shouldn't be afraid of their governments… governments should be afraid of their people."

I saw this movie last night. I can see why the bu$hbots have a problem with it.

I noticed that in one scene V seem to be crying. They had a closeup of his mask and the mask look to be on the verge of tears. In others scenes the mask seem to be happy and in still others sinister, yet all had the same expression.

Anywho, Discuss the movie. What are your thoughts.

[ngant17]

1. a little more revelant than "1984"

"V for Vendetta" helps you to look thru the charades of 9-11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A British movie, but I think it will be a big hit here in the US.

Wish there was some references to our phoney electronic voting, that's the only thing I missed in the movie. Was it there but I didn't notice it?

[lonestarnot]

2. You have to wait for me... I'm not going until the weekend.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Kagemusha]

7. Well, read my post below and all but...

"V for Vendetta" was written to champion a very specific political view via fiction. Often one can say that films are primarily about the action and any political stuff is just token. This case is different. Without the politics the action (the terrorism) is meaningless. But, it's not politics in the sense of seeking to replace the old management with new management, but to smash the management altogether. As for "V", he is the embodiment of an idea in his own mind. This creates problems in going into depth about the man himself.

[BootinUp]

8. Ok I'll bite....Why do you call yourself a bushbot? n/t

[Nutmegger]

11. Don't bother to wait for an answer. Looks like they got TS'ed!

:rofl:

[BootinUp]

12. for a minute, I thought he replied, lol. n/t

[reichstag911]

13. TS'ed? Temporarily suspended? n/t

[Nutmegger]

14. Tombstoned! [nt]

[reichstag911]

15. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh...

Thanx.

[Burried News]

4. It is worth seeing just for its commentary on and portrayal of

the media.
The sword action at the end is a little too far out. I saw it with my daughter and would like to go again with my wife. I go to about one movie a year.

[Kagemusha]

5. A friend got me to read the print version yesterday.

He felt the movie was a very good adaptation. Anyway, in the print version, during a broadcast by 'V', he lectures the public on its acquiescence that has made possible the tyranny that oppresses them, not just then and there, but in the preceding several centuries back to the dawn of modern liberal democracy. He tars them as complicit, but rather than seeking to punish them, he urges them to change, laying down a time frame and saying if you don't do something about it, I will, in essence.

I have not seen the movie.

I'm writing this because of the poster mentioning electronic voting. Actually that spin on things would take all the meaning out of V's position. He sees the people as responsible for their oppression until they free themselves in their own minds.

[BootinUp]

9. well that is close to my take on the film

I took away that it was about a society failing to govern itself and how this created violence.

[chat_noir]

6. Another DU thread

Right wing review of V FOR VENDETTA says why we should ALL see it
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=678331

[tocqueville]

10. I read the plot on Wikipedia

another version of the lone hero myth. Of course the "enemy" can be identified as the Bush administration, but I think the choice is pure demagogery, since all dictatorships are quite alike. The whole story is preposterous as all lone hero stories. Real changes are only achieved by the masses, not individuals, even if the later can have a catalyst role. Since the masses are absent, it causes more harm than good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_For_Vendetta :

V himself is something of an enigma, whose history is only hinted at; it is strongly suggested that he is physically disfigured. The bulk of the story is told from the viewpoints of other characters: V's admirer and apprentice Evey, a sixteen-year-old munitions factory worker; Eric Finch, a world-weary and pragmatic policeman who is hunting V; and several contenders for power within the fascist party. V's destructive acts are morally ambiguous, and a central theme of the series is the rationalisation of atrocities in the name of a higher goal, whether it is stability or freedom. The character is a mixture of an actual advocate of anarchism and the traditional stereotype of the anarchist as a terrorist.

Moore stated in an interview:

...the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn't want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think, and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history. <2>

.................................................

insurrectional anarchism has given as results Franco's Spain, contributed to the raise of Hitler and Mussolini and in Russia the dictatorship of Lenin....

[leftstreet]

16. I didn't see it that way. V actually WAS the catalyst for the masses

The best scene involves thousands of people in identical masks/robes.

[WildEyedLiberal]

18. Thanks, that's what I was going to say

The most moving scene is at the end when you see that, without the people, V's revolution would have been meaningless. A building would have blown up, but nothing would have changed. Because the people took to the streets en masse, the message is clearly that while they needed V to wake them up, so to speak, only they could overthrow their oppressor.

[tocqueville]

20. catalyst to chaos, not construction nt

in the final insuurection, the result isn't a new democratic order, but... anarchy

it's only another version of mass manipulation

[leftstreet]

21. You should probably actually see it first n/t

[tocqueville]

22. I recommend "Secret Army" of the BBC (on DVD)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Army_%28television%29

the anarchist Zorro theme is nothing for me, except the value of entertainment

[mondo joe]

17. Would Ghandi be a "lone hero"? How about Malcom X?

Or MLK?

And you'd have to miss the movie to think the "masses are absent".

[Dhampir Kampf]

19. I LOVED the end.

How it was set up, so that when the building blew up, they lifted up their masks, to symbolize that V, himself, was actually the PEOPLE, not just one man, but each and every person.

[Generator]

23. I felt like I was watching our collective past and -shudder-

possible future. I cried through many bits-but then anybody that reads my posts knows I'm uber emotional-but the ending was quite powerful. I acutally had to put a thread on ignore here that called it boring-because if you haven't noticed the Orwellian nightmare that keeps growing everyday then well how could you call a nightmare boring?

I read the future in it-if we don't stop the monsters-we will have to end up giving our lives. Fascism never ends easily. Black bagged. It was one of the most horrifying movies I've ever seen. And also the most positive. How's that for an enigma? BUT it feels so good-to FINALLY have my reality acknowledged. My fear. My horror. My hope. I plan to buy the film.