V for Vendetta

"Remember, remember the fifth of November..."

I finally saw V for Vendetta tonight. I have the graphic novel, and I loved it. The movie, while different, was also really good.

I am really impressed with the performances by Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman. Weaving managed to convey emotion without his face ever being seen. His whole body emoted. It was like what I think watching ancient Greek or Japanese Noh theater might have been like. He was graceful and powerful, but always human. Even though the face of the mask was fixed, by his body language, it almost seemed that it changed. It's amazing how much of what we know about the actions and feelings of other comes to us through their bodies.

Portman was as good as I've seen her. I like her in general, but she was strong and real in this movie. In the graphic novel, Evie was portrayed as more of a victim. Portman's Evie had a little more spine, and I liked that. This role couldn't have been an easy one to play.

The movie, as did the graphic novel, makes you think. They fit into the same category as 1984 and Brave New World. The scary part of all of them is that they are not impossibilities. They are worlds that we stand inches, thoughtless inches, away from. I'm not advocating the destruction of anything, but it scares me how little we think about what our governments do. One day, if we don't start thinking, if we don't start questioning, if we don't quit believing the old axiom that the ends justify the means, we might all wake up with V's world or John Savage's or Winston Smith's.

The older I get, the more I see Orwellian shades in the corners. I see Norsefire and Big Brother hiding behind the drapes, just waiting for a crisis, an opportunity to step in and give people a choice: security for their freedom. What are we going to choose? Are we already making those choices by inches? Are the things we've given away, especially our privacy, worth what we've received, or is it all just a big lie? How far have we gone toward our own personal dystopia without the majority of the people knowing it?

I know I'll use clips from V this year when I do my unit on dystopian literature. My students last year recognized our possible future in the novels. We had a lot of discussion about it, and that's the point of those books and of V as well. Maybe if we continue to talk about it, maybe if we can recognize the symptoms of the sickness, we can prevent the disease before it becomes terminal for our liberty.