V for Vendetta : H for Hope?
We took a day off blogging yesterday to take advantage of the dry weather and lick the garden into shape. Much digging and clearing up of a winter’s worth of cats’ detritus, dead foliage and green smelly gunk ensued. It took all day, but now we have a pocket courtyard that’ll be a riot of scent and flowers through the summer – if I can win the long war of attrition against the slugs. Evil things. One of my jobs as a child was to go out in the evening with a container of salt and salt any slugs I saw. I was such a sadistic little beast I really enjoyed watching them thrash about, choking in their own slime. But I’m grownup now, and have put away childish pleasures, so now it’s that reliable organic standby the beer trap. Drown drunk, you mucusy, hosta-eating bastards!
We also were given an unexpected gift, a whole carrier bag of home-grown from the next door neighbour the market trader in plants, from the giant cannabis indica plant he grew last summer and which he insisted he was growing just to see if he could. Uh-huh.
Anyhow, I’ve done well out of it, for which I thank our neighbour most kindly.
The other reason I didn’t blog yesterday was that on Saturday night we went to see V for Vendetta, and it hit me so hard I needed a day to think about it. I really didn’t expect it to affect me like that, but a few minutes in ( before the film had even really started) when the Old Bailey was blown up to the strains of the 1812 Overture, I was so overcome I actually burst into tears. I think maybe you have to be English, and a lifelong libertarian socialist, to understand why I had that reaction. It was like that Christina Rosetti line ‘The birthday of my life had come ‘.
It’s hard to explain why but I’ll try. It’s not that I want to see death and destruction, it’s just that when you’ve been working through ‘acceptable’ channels to stop the perversion of government that has occurred over the past 30 years and that’s accelerated under New Labour – and got nowhere at all, even when 2 million people marched on Parliament, then to see someone, even in just a movie, say “Fuck this” and blow up the very symbols of the people you’ve been fighting against all these years- well, it gets to you.
Because Britain actually is on the verge of falling into a fascist dictatorship by dint of sheer boredom and disinterest. When that determined Blairite paper, the Observer, can carry this op-ed the danger is real, not imagined:
The constitution relies firstly on statutes such as the 1215 Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights of 1689 and Act of Settlement 1701. They define freedoms and rights of the ordinary man, the business and powers of parliament, the sovereign’s succession. Added to this are the laws and customs of parliament, the case law of constitutional matters decided in court and the opinion of experts such as Walter Bagehot and AV Dicey.
Only in Britain would you have such a quaint portfolio of rights, conventions and opinion and yet it worked pretty well because a fairly easy-going consensus existed that was tolerant in the main and did not see the point in codifying what it believed to be the immutable virtues of the national character.
It is expressed in two great principles – the supremacy of parliament and the rule of law. The first is easy to understand. As Sir Edward Coke, the great jurist and parliamentarian during the reigns of James I and Charles I, said: ‘The power and jurisdiction of parliament is so transcendent and absolute, that it cannot be confined, either for causes or persons, within any bounds.’ Owing to men such as him, it used to be the case that nothing or no one could challenge parliament, a point of acute interest when we come to look at two recent pieces of Blair legislation which challenge the authority of parliament.
The rule of law is defined as that which allows the rights of individuals to be determined by law and not the arbitrary actions of authority. There can be no punishment unless a court decides that there has been a breach of the law, and everyone is subject to the law. It incorporates habeas corpus and such things as the right to silence, the right to a trial by jury, the presumption of innocence, the freedom of association, a free press and free speech.
At the beginning of the last century, the rise of prime ministerial power began to threaten all of these things. ‘The Cabinet,’ wrote AV Dicey, ‘under a leader who has fully studied and mastered the arts of modern parliamentary warfare, can defy, on matters of the highest importance, the possible or certain will of the nation.’
Add into the mix the ranks of special advisers such as Alastair Campbell who wield enormous unaccountable power, and you begin to understand why parliament – your and my elected representatives – has been sidelined. Take the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. I had not read it fully until a week ago, but I was shocked to find that during an emergency – which can be declared by Ministers orally and without parliament being consulted – the government can make special legislation in a seven-day period which allows the forced evacuation of people, the seizing of property without compensation, the banning of any assembly (which conceivably might include parliament itself) the conferring of jurisdiction on any new court or tribunal that it wishes. And guess what: the Minister only has to believe that an emergency is about to occur to grant himself or herself these powers. If it turns out they are wrong, mad or have acted in bad faith there is no sanction.
Meanwhile, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, presented under the guise of cutting red tape for business, grants ministers powers to alter legislation without the scrutiny of parliament in almost every area of government. Yet you could hear a pin drop in parliament as these measures were debated.
My sisters and I are probably of of the last generation that as children sat out collecting with a homemade Guy – usually a pillowcase stuffed with newspaper, tied in the middle to mke a head and a body, with a bearded, saturnine face drwn on with felt-tip pen and one of Mum’s hats -collecting money for fireworks while chanting ‘Remember, remember, the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot’. Oddly enough, in light of current events, the best place to collect was outside the Labour Club. One year a man gave us a ten shilling note. Try and collect money there now and you’d get an ASBO.
Although we were children we always knew Guy Fawkes night was our chance to flout authority. None of your imported Halloweeen rubbish, it was a positive duty to flout authority on November 5th in the northern village where I spent a large chunk of my childhood. It had been staunchly Catholic in the time of the purges, and feelings still ran high regarding Fawkes and his fellow recusants. To locals he was no traitor, and Guy Fawkes night was a celebration, an opportunity for ordinary people to buy explosives, set them off and give a symbolic fuck you to Them In Charge, ie Protestants.
So you can see I came to the movie with an immense amount of baggage. I won’t bother expounding the plot, you can look it up. besides, we’re pretty much living it – but in terms of sheer movie-making I’d call it almost, but not quite, a tour-de-force. There are big flaws in some of the performances. Portman’s accent, for instance, veers alarmingly between ersatz Emma Thompson and a genteel suburban Australian, but her character was supposed to have spent her childhood in British detention centres. She’d much more likely’ve come out sounding like Vicki Pollard. Hugo Weaving, playing V, has all the necessary mellifluousness of tone , but there were moments when he came horribly close to sounding exactly like Captain Blackadder. The ‘Voice of London’ character was clearly meant to an amalgam of Bill O’Reilly and Peter Hitchens ( yes, he is the brother of Christopher, and is a rightwing demagogue for the Express) but was so overdone it lost most of its menace.
Of all the performances, Stephen Rea’s understated yet deeply emotional portrayal of a man undergoing a political epiphany impressed me most, especially compared to the histrionics of some of the otherwise stellar cast. John Hurt, as the Chancellor, literally drooled with rage at one point and Tim Pigott-Smith as Creevey merely reprised the ‘Jewel In The Crown, evil British protofascist cop’ schtick that’s served him so well in his career so far. But that’s not how villains are now. They’re charming and they’re media savvy, like Blair, and Bush and Condi. They oppress with charm. ‘A man may smile and smile and yet be a villian’.
The supporting roles and the backstory are what gives this film its strength, not the melodrama of the V/Evie storyline. The very ordinariness of all it all; office life and home life just the same as now, but with curfews accepted as a matter of course, life punctuated by ‘disappearances’ detentions, torture and arbitrary, summary justice by corrupt security police. It’s completely plausible. A populace that if not content, is at least complaisant, all their information and entertainment centralised their lives safe, but unfree. It’s all too horribly close for comfort.
What also redeems the film are the production values: the art design is right, contemporary, real, sharp but not too glossy. Every now and then you get a frame that is perfect comic book. The use of the 1812, that revolutionary overture, is just beautiful, as is the way London looks. So many American directors manage to absolutely mangle London ( ‘From Hell’ anyone?) either making it look like a Regency park or a Victorian slum.
The Warchowskis seem to have managed to ally the gritty reality of something like seventies political thriller ‘ Edge of Darkness’ with the polish of modern post-production techniques. They’ve pedaled back on the trademark tricksy camera stuff but you still get that eye catching Warchowski style and all-round coolth.
But what really hits you are the ideas. The script is fantastic – I have rarely heard such huge, basic political ideas – This isn’t right, We’re free people, If we want change it’s up to us – expounded so eloquently and so simply. I came away from the film deeply moved and vindicated in my political beliefs. I’ve seen many, many movies in my life, lots of them also dealing with big political ideas, but rarely have I come way with such a visceral reaction as I did to V for Vendetta. I knew what believed was right, knew it in my gut. It seems the zeitgeist believes it too.
For all its flaws, and there are many, this really is an incendiary film . We all could do with a kick to get us out of our accustomed apathy, and this is one. I’m amazed Blair hasn’t tried to have it banned for glorifying terrorism. Go see it, take your parents, take your kids, take your friends. Before he does.
Read More: V for Vendetta Movies UK Politics
