Time has an article on V for Vendetta, a soon-to-be-released movie from the makers of the Matrix trilogy, and which contains a hero who is a terrorist.
Is it possible for a major Hollywood studio to make a $50 million movie in which the hero is a terrorist? A terrorist who appears wearing the dynamite waistcoat of a suicide bomber, and who utters the line–from beneath a full-face wooden mask that he never takes off–“Blowing up a building can change the world”?—-These are not rhetorical questions. V for Vendetta, set for release March 17, is that movie, and it is the most bizarre Hollywood production you will see (or refuse to see) this year. It’s the kind of film that makes you ask questions like, Who thought this was a good idea?—-V had superhuman strength–he was the product of a monstrous government medical experiment–mad fighting skills and a cruel sense of humor, and he used them to manipulate the media, assassinate officials in creative ways, stab people with big shiny knives and blow up buildings. Early in the comics he rescued a woman named Evey from government thugs, and she became his sidekick; later on he tortured Evey, to “help” her see his point of view. V was a freedom fighter, no question, but Moore never let you forget that he was also a terrorist, and as such he was both hero and villain. That was the sick, sad genius of the comic book: the government had taken everything from V, even his goodness.—-V for Vendetta is a movie about a heroic terrorist. However unjust the regime he opposes–and we know it’s unjust because it features a pedophile bishop, a jowl-shaking Big Brother figure, a spittle-spewing telepundit, concentration camps, institutionalized racism, religious intolerance and homophobia–V is a guy who goes around blowing up parts of London, and he likes his work. That was repugnant enough back when Moore wrote his comic book, two decades before Sept. 11. It’s become even more so since last July, when terrorists actually did bomb three subway trains and a bus in London.—Everybody associated with the productions–Portman, McTeigue, Weaving, Silver–forcefully, insistently stresses that V is an ambiguous, ambivalent figure. They express their hope that the movie will spark debates about the definition of terrorism.
Portman in particular does so: a recent Harvard grad still in the habit of philosophizing, she name-checks, among others, Gandhi, Elie Wiesel, Menachem Begin, George Washington and the Maccabees. Portman is also, lest we forget, Israeli-born. “In Israel you know tons of people who have been hurt by terrorist violence,” she says, “and you know people who have committed violence. It’s ever present in a way that you don’t feel in the States.”
She points out, quite correctly, that the question of what is and is not a legitimate use of violence has never been more vexed and that hyper-charged labels like “terrorist” aren’t helping much to clarify matters. “I think the most important thing is that people will go home and fight about it,” she says. “We all realize that at a certain point, violence might be the only means of effectively combatting injustice, but it’s always going to be subjective–what injustice is great enough to provoke you to harm someone else?”
Without having seen the film, it is presumptious of me to assume that the film will be sending the wrong message about terrorism?
Update: This from another review of the film:
Moore wrote V for Vendetta and David Lloyd illustrated as a rebuke to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the conservative “Iron Lady,” who headed the British government throughout the 1980s. The Wachowskis have taken liberties with Moore’s story, eliminating some characters and subplots and updating the evil empire to the U.S. under the Bush Administration, though there’s not specific reference to Bush.
