V for Vendetta

[rm]

I just came from seeing V for vendetta.

Leaving the theatre, a girl meets a group of her friends outside.

"How was it?" a boy asks. "Was it fun?"

"No. It wasn't fun. It was too realistic."

--

The first 45 minutes of it are shakey -- V has all these huge, highly verbal speaches but they're coming at you fast and from behind a mask. It's easy to miss things. The rhythm seems off, one prepares to get dissapointed.

And then the whole thing just kicks into gear and I cried for an hour solid of it today.

Because I had forgotten how much of the story is about childhood and movies and lesbians and about how there isn't any such thing as coincidence.



Basically once Evie is being tortured the film gels. And it gels incredibly. That whole squence is amazing. The notes, all of it.

Obviously the film has flaws, both in terms of teh source material and just the Wachowskis being the Wackowskis, but even with the half-assed 30-second out-of-nowhere V and Evie are in love weird heteronormative thing (which doesn't work as V is supposed to be chil-like and mad and feminine in his nature -- and all these things come through in Hugo Weavings performance, and then we get smacked with the script), and the thing where everyone is V as opposed to Evie merely taking up his mantle, it's a fabulous film. And the everyone is V thing is redeemed for me by something in the crowd shots at teh end, but I'm not giving it awa, it's so wonderful.

And among other things, the film is a celebration of nerds -- academic nerds, awkward nerds, fannish nerds -- they're all in here, and they're all well-loved by this film.



I first read V for Vendetta in college at the behest of someone I was in a very complicated and very toxic relationship with, in the way that lives are toxic and complicated when you're eighteen and stuck in a permanent Ricky Fitts moment and people hate you because of things about yourself you just think are boring and ordinary. I slept on the floor a lot then, of various dorm rooms for various reasons, and there were few things I understood the value of.

But I understood that for V to have been V, that meant Valerie was VI, and ever since I was a very small girl, six has been my lucky number and I've never believed much in coincidences either, at least not the way you're supposed to.

Go see this.

Comments

[alterjess.livejournal.com]

for V to have been V, that meant Valerie was VI

No, Valerie was in room four.

[rm.livejournal.com]

argh! fair enough. Damn.

[kill.livejournal.com]

I just read back to this because we just saw it -- and IV could be related to Evey, and then I remember him saying "Of course you are" when she told him her name.

But I haven't read the comic.