V for Vendetta: A Daring Dive into Dystopia and Defiance on MAX
London, 21st century… Evey Hammond doesn’t want to forget the man who saved her life and allowed her to conquer her deepest fears. But there was a time when all she wanted was anonymity to escape an omnipotent secret police.
Like all her fellow citizens, too quickly subjugated, she accepted that her country had lost its soul and had given itself over en masse to the tyrant Sutler and his supporters. One night, as two “guardians of order” were preparing to rape her in a deserted street, Evey saw her liberator appear. And nothing was the same again. Her apprenticeship began a few weeks later under the tutelage of the mysterious “V”…
A rare example of a subversive blockbuster in a very formatted Hollywood landscape, “V for Vendetta” is a great film, carried by an extraordinary Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman. To see (or re-see) on the MAX platform.
Released in 2006, V for Vendetta brilliantly adapted the work of Alan Moore and illustrated by David Lloyd. A work (published between 1982 and 1990) that brewed eminently political themes, whose echoes still persist widely today: dystopia, anti-fascism, anti-nuclear, anarchism, authoritarianism, remote surveillance, media manipulation, state terrorism, citizen obedience, corruption…
In this way, it posed, in a terribly ambiguous form, the following question: to what extent is it legitimate to use violence to overthrow a government that oppresses its people and deprives them of the most fundamental freedoms?
Fans of the graphic novel, the Wachowski sisters had written a draft of the screenplay in the 90s. But they then embarked on the Matrix adventure, which had kept them busy for ten years. During the post-production of the second and third installments of the cult trilogy, they wrote a new version of the script, and entrusted the task of directing the film to their first assistant James McTeigue, who was making his feature film debut here.
It doesn’t really matter that Alan Moore disowned this film, to the point of asking that his name not appear in the credits (as does all adaptations of his works). The director avoids the pitfalls by delivering a subversive and sulphurous blockbuster like few Hollywood produces, carried at arm’s length by Natalie Portman and especially an extraordinary Hugo Weaving in the guise (or rather the mask…) of V.
