The Phantom Of The Vendetta



I saw 'V For Vendetta' today, at the newly reopened Crossroads Theaters. It's bigger. That's about all I can say about it. As for the movie, it's entertaining. It starts off thrillingly, and like too many movies these days, loses nearly all of its narrative energy in about 20 minutes. We get spoon fed a lot of stuff in the middle that should be shown instead of told (interestingly, we get scenes reported to us by characters that then proceed to be dramatized, piecemeal). Natalie Portman is cute as a button, speaks in a passable English accent, and Hugo Weaving does a lot of thankless acting behind a mask.

The biggest issue by far is whether the film glorifies terrorism. I applaud the filmmakers for even raising the question of when is terrorism justified, and they do a reasonable job of leaving the question up to the viewer, but the film confuses the issue. For one, terrorism, the murder of innocents, is never justified. Period. Once you commit to random bloodshed of this sort, you conceed defeat. Your objectives can't be attained militarily, or politically. Terrorism, as widespread and horrific as it is, has never achieved anything for its proponents other than protracted semi-warfare that states either learn to accept (Israel) or will not tolerate (America). The film wants to have V a rebel against a vicious, Nazi style regime. No one would object to standing up to this kind of oppression, but V doesn't kill innocent people. He murders the architects of his country's facisim, and destroys its monuments. The destruction of Parliment is truly breathtaking -- literally -- but you can't imagine Americans thinking Timothy McViegh justified in his actions. To take it a step further, no campaign of domestic terrorism aimed at destabilizing the Bush administration would garner the support of Americans, regardless of their political leanings. Anarchy in the USA? Sure. T for terrorism? Never.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mirror, Mirror

Image
Recently I bought a copy of a pretty well reviewed and promoted speculative fiction novel.  About two chapters in, the main character looks in a mirror and describes themself.  I literally closed the book and stopped reading.  The novel had other issues, but this put me right out of the story.  This technique - being generous here - occurs a lot in first person narratives, about as often as a story beginning with the main character waking up from a dream.  The mirror device is best avoided, but not necessarily because it's so overused - it's best avoided because simply put, it's so easy.  A character, especially a protagonist, should never be described; they should be imagined.
Read more

Conversations With: Dr. Daniel Dahlquist

Here's what I hope is the start of a new weekly (or so) feature on the blog: a mini-interview with writers about the craft. My good friend and teacher Dr. Daniel Dahlquist inaugurates the series. Dr. Dahlquist is a wonderful poet; his poetry has appeared in respected literary journals such as Prairie Schooner, New Virginia Review, River Styx, Kentucky Poetry Review, and the Louisville Review. He graduated from the University of Iowa's storied Writer's Workshop and holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Southern Illinois University. His first book, SPEECH TO THE DEAD PEOPLE, was published in 1997 by Cedar Creek Press. You can read an excerpt from the book (and my favorite of his poems) here . Without further adieu: Q: What poets or other writers do you consider influences? A: The apocalyptic poets appealed to me when I was very young. I started writing poems at age sixteen, on my grandfather's 1928 L.C. Smith typewriter, largely to impress my English teacher.
Read more

My Advice For Writers

More and more I get asked for advice from aspiring writers. Mostly this is because I have a book, not because I really know anything. I'm not good at giving advice. Actually, I'm pretty good at it, just not very good at following it myself. So take all of this with a grain of salt. Actually, you should probably just click away to some other website right now. If you're still here, or have just reached the end of the internet, seriously: I've given a lot of thought to what I say to a serious writer who is asking me for serious perspective, and in so much as I can give it, I usually speak to these things: Find your faults . You have them. We all do. One thing my day job has taught me is to actively seek out process improvement. Usually we wait for problems to come to us - it's how we know they're problems - but most often in business, this can get you in trouble. The same applies to your art. It is a process; you should actively seek to impro
Read more