Old Reviews from the Original House of Reviews

V for Vendetta
(There may be spoilers in this review—so, if you want to see this movie cold or with only the carefully worded risk-averse reviews of commercial pundits and bought journalists in your head, then stop reading, go see the film, and come back later and we can discuss…)
Let me preface this by saying that I still haven’t seen (and have no immediate intention of seeing) the second and third Matrix movies. In fact, I didn’t see the first Matrix movie for at least a couple of years after its initial release and (perhaps out of sheer orneriness) despite my general enjoyment of The Matrix, if I were forced to make a cinematic Sophie’s Choice between the last known copy of The Matrix and the last known copy of Tron…I would choose Tron. Sorry, folks. That’s just who I am.
Oh, and that decision stands for the video games based on the respective movies too.
I never did get past that spider level in the Tron arcade game, and in any sort of post-apocalyptic world where there’s enough electricity to power up video games I feel that I might finally have enough time to get really good at that game.
I feel that preface is necessary, because I don’t want my defense (or defence) of V for Vendetta to be confused with unswerving loyalty to the Bros. Wojczeski or whatever their name is.
I think making a film that essentially condones terrorism as a tactic in this day and age is a bold choice. And it says something about our right to free speech that we can freely see this film. It also says something about our world that the release of this film was delayed in part because of the
Londonbombings. (Well, you might understand if people get touchy when a movie features the uncontrolled demolition of
Whitehallwith a public transit delivered device, in the wake of bombings on public transit vehicles.)
V for Vendetta is provocative—and if that makes us sit and talk about the implications of this film for our own societies that’s a good thing.
If it makes us defensive and testy, well, maybe that just shows how close to the head of the nail this film gets.
Close, but sometimes a bit ham-fisted. The oblique references to “
America’s War” and tying the film to an evolution/progression of our present policies and ‘activities’ is thought-provoking, if a little strained. There may be too much “telling” and not enough “showing” in this film—but that’s the price of the medium. To “show” the audience how the world got from where we are now to the future represented in the film would be a) tedious b) long c) still require some degree of narrative explication or d) all of the above.
That said, we do get a lot of pauses in the action as we trace the pre-history of the movie, but in a way that’s a function of the fact that this is structurally less of an action movie and more of a mystery. Not so much a film about V the action hero and more about Finch the detective trying to put the pieces together.
Yes, this film has many similarities and thematic relations to the Matrix films. And this makes it intolerable because…? Well, you tell me. If we’re going to be such sticklers on that point shouldn’t we condemn every new romantic comedy because it retains massive overlap with the hundreds of romantic comedies made before it?
But then, I can understand reviewers not wanting to spend more time talking about how Natalie Portman’s Evey and Stephen Rea’s Finch (a police officer, no less) ultimately collude to go ahead and blow up Parliament at the end. (It’s a spectacular explosion, and worth the price of admission on its own as a visual treat.)
The thoughts in this movie, even when mishandled, over-handled, panhandled, or whatever, are worth talking about. Is violence an acceptable means of achieving something good? And before we dismiss that as a partisan question, we should remember that war is violence too. And if you think that blowing up the Parliament building is acceptable, then you might also have to admit that there might be good reasons to go to war.
Should we trade freedom for security? If you are a fan of fascism, you won’t like this movie. I’m not saying that if you dislike this movie that you’re a fascist, but merely observing that if you approve of fascist methods and arguments then you have every reason to dislike where V for Vendetta is going.
On the other hand, one might take pause at celebrating the benefits of anarchy.
Our queasiness about the issues of blowing things up to make our government better are slightly allayed by the nature of the government in question. By the end of the film we discover that the Sutler government 1) perpetrated a terrorist attack on its own people killing nearly 100,000 people 2) had ties to drug companies that profited massively from the treatment for the biological attack that they themselves perpetrated 3) rounded up everyone who wasn’t (or couldn’t pretend to be) a white heterosexual Christian 4) disbanded democratic institutions in favor of a police state.
These are just a few of the reasons why it becomes easier for us to swallow terrorism as an option. By the end of the film, the populace of England seems to buy into the premise too—mind you, this is an England in which owning a copy of the Koran is a capital offense and gets Gordon Deitrich (Stephen Fry) taken out and shot. Though, it’s fair to say that after he turns a pair of look-alikes for Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt) into props for a Benny-Hill sketch (the single most hilarious part of the film) his days are numbered anyway.
The extremity of the fascist state in this film is what makes it easier to understand the extremism of the reaction. It also gives us a bit of a distancing effect—which can either make us deliberate and take pause at lurches toward bigotry and extremism, or make us complacent as we look at the extreme picture and say “It can’t happen here.” Well, at least not exactly like that.
All of which is to say that V for Vendetta is a film worth seeing if you want to spend some time afterwards thinking and perhaps even (if you must) talking about (with other people, possibly with differing opinions) some scary things.
But, don’t worry. If you don’t like to think or if you figure you’re a white heterosexual Christian (or can get away with pretending to be one) and have nothing to lose even if things turn out as ‘bad’ as they do in this vision of the future, then you can just talk about how pretty Natalie Portman looks even with a shaved head. You’d be in good company—all the other reviewers seem to only want to talk about that.

The Fog
What happened to The Fog? The original scared the giblets out of me. (And my first time seeing it was less than a year before I saw the new one, so it's not a matter of nostalgia.) So...why is it that with all the advances of modern technology the new Fog didn't quite scare me? The answer is simple...it wasn't meant to.
First, why wasn't it as scary?
1. While the CGI ghosts were more gruesome, there was something more primal about the vengeful dead with the glowing red eyes from the old Fog. Something...unnatural. Bones and rotten flesh--that's a natural phenomenon, but glowing red eyes--now, that's something for which there is no natural precedent and no possible explanation.
2. Having a live person turn out to be one of the ghosts may be a fascinating--if completely inexplicable--twist, but it only serves to humanize and explain the ghosts. And the more we understand the ghosts the less frightening they become.
Which brings me to...
3. These ghosts have an objective, and once it is achieved and they are mollified they go away...in peace. And that...well, that's just not scary. Because fear breeds in situations where logic fails--once you have logic, there's no fear. And this is ultimately where the original Fog was more genuinely frightening. Because in the original we get to the point where we believe the ghosts are pacified and, having been given their due, they can go away and not bother anyone else. That's exactly when they come back and kill Hal Holbrook.
Now, if the new Fog had worked in the same way then the vengeful dead would have had to kill a few more people for absolutely no reason. But even within the logic of the new film--wherein the new ghosts killed off descendants of the men who did them wrong--the new ghosts were neither thorough nor particularly more gruesome about it. Oh, to be sure they were more technologically proficient about it--the scene with shards of glass being the best--but anytime you end a movie with a ghost making out with his newly reunited spouse--well, that's frankly more touching than scary.
Which brings me to the societal point? What are we trying to about ourselves here?
Here's one hypothesis: The Fog (2005) is a more bleeding heart liberal movie than anything Michael Moore has ever made.
Why?Consider this: The ghosts have an old grievance. They commit acts of violence on a seemingly innocent community which is mostly aimed at avenging the sins of the fathers.
The ghosts even have a sleeper cell in the form of the long-lost girlfriend.
And when the ghosts have gotten what they want and have been thoroughly understood, appreciated, and respected...they go away, never to bother the poor innocent and thoroughly chastised people of the island.
You see, it was all a matter of giving them what had been so cruelly taken from them. Once they make up for the fact that their treaty was violated they stop and they go away...in peace. It's as if you make a movie that starts with restless spirits in a house built on an Indian burial ground and you end the movie with the ghosts and the people in the house smoking a peace pipe--isn't that a pretty dream.
So is it obvious yet what this movie says about us today?Our real fears are the ones that shadow this movie and which made the original Fog so scary.
What if the ghosts are really thorough? What if they demand the half of the island that was promised them? What if they don't stop killing until all the descendants of the murdering founders are dead?
And what if they just don't stop at all? What if all they can promise one way or the other is that they'll just come back with the next fog?
But apparently we can't handle that possibility...even in (or especially in) fiction these days...perhaps because we can't handle the uncomfortable possibility that the next fog will bring more terrorists (er...ghosts) and that there'll be more killing...and that it may not be just because we wouldn't let some lepers live near us in peace.
The new Fog is a fairy tale about how someday we can have peace again...if only we could let the terrorists (er...leper ghosts) win. And maybe that's the really scary part about this movie.

(Originally posted at http://houseofreviews.blogs.friendster.com/northrop_ftyes_house_of_r/)