"V for vendetta": The graphic novel (1982-1985) and film (2005):
The last film produced by the Wachowski brothers is again a piece of work worth of the authors of Matrix (as opposed to the two improvised sequels of such film). It has to be said that much of the merit should undoubtedly go to the graphic novel by Allan Moore in which the film is based. However, the screenplay is a faithful adaptation of the story, and the film is excellently directed. The action occurs without leaving time to wander off. Obviously, there are parts of the graphic novel missing (the film is already over two hours long), but the main aspects of the story are there, although it might sometimes require a bit of extra attention to get some details.
"V for vendetta" was written by Allan Moore after the shift to the right of British opinion that brought to the power the Tories and Margaret Thatcher. In the graphic novel, Moore presents a British society subjugated by a extreme-right-wing government, oppressing and controlling its citizens in the process of 'protecting' them from the disastrous state of chaos that ravages the rest of the world (there are continuous references to the civil war and famine in what had been the US, not to speak of other countries). Television offers the usual share of totalitarian state propaganda and hatred against foreigners, 'deviants', and 'terrorists; there are night curfews, the state-police are free to harass and take advantage of citizens... Until someone dressed like a Shakespeare contemporary and wearing a smiling mask, starts getting the attention of the government and the population by performing daring terrorist attacks. The story shows the progress of the vengeance of such character and his terror campaign to bring down the government, and his attempts to wake up the rest of the citizenship from their sheepish compliance.
Given the appalling outcome of previous attempts to adapt Allan Moore novels into the big screen, I was pleasantly surprised that finally this time the film contains all the grim view from the original novel and not only the fancy characters or the surface story. It is specially refreshing in these times of ultra-mild Hollywood cinema, where the most anti-social activity of villains is to smoke, that the script keeps the original darkness, sometimes pessimism, and specially that it is uninhibited by political correctness conventions. "V" is a hero, but in more ways than one is an evil hero. He pretends to save British society from its apathy in front of a tyrannic government, and any mean is acceptable to gain that end. During the process he also takes revenge on those who wrong-did him and many others in the covert chemical and bacteriological research centers of the government. Quoting from the film "What they did was monstrous, (...) and they created a monster".
The story contains some weak points, specially how a lone man could build single-handedly the infrastructure to perform those daring terror attacks, but that could be taken as a literary licence (this being a story originally addressed to teenagers and young adults), being that the important message is not the 'how', but the 'what' and 'why' and more important still, the 'to what end'. I guess another quote that would summarise the moral of the story comes from close to the end of the film "(...) because behind this mask there's an Idea, and Ideas are bullet-proof".
