V for Vendetta
Mar. 26th, 2006 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grimorieJust came from the movie.... and I just...
I *loved* it.
Its powerful.
And I completely agree with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala the Wachowski (sp?) brothers have redeemed themselves.
It just hit so many things for me, especially with the current situation here in the Philippines. It makes me question my stand on supporting Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
I *like* her, I really do, and I believe she's getting a bad rap and not enough acknowledgment for the things she's done and doing for the country. So, with the recent proclamation banning any sort of large political gatherings and the arrest of some media personalities... I'm really torn in half.
I like her, but I don't approve of her actions, and yet... and yet, there's this other part that's supporting her because I think the opposition is just making too much noise and making trouble for the Philippines. I think the Philippines need order, needs a chance for its economy to balance out and its disturbing for me to be so... blase about it. It really makes me question what I believe in and then here comes this movie, and V's words about how people who like order and peace would just be complacent and follow the government blindly.
Last February 25, was EDSA Revolution's 20th anniversary. How did we celebrate it? Fireworks? Rousing speeches? Unfortunately, we didn't celebrate anything. On the eve of the 25th, there were two army officers who plotted a coup against the President, the officers were arrested and the coup stopped but on the 25th, on the day itself, the President declared a State of Emergency and the proclamation 1317, forbidding any large political gatherings.
The police and the military picked-up three opposition congressmen and some prominent columnists over the course of the week, and just recently, the former Secretary for Social Welfare, Dinky Soliman was arrested for leading a walkathon and... well, for wearing black, which the police say is seditious.
Was I outraged?
Unfortunately... I was not. In fact, I was very annoyed with Dinky Soliman, I really thought -- think she's just causing trouble.
And its disturbing!
I was part of the second EDSA revolution and brought down former President Erap Estrada. It was... the most exhilirating thing I've ever felt at that time I thought things was going to change that it could only get better from there.
Boy, was I wrong.
All I feel now is tired and disgusted with politicians, with their endless bickerings and I just look up at the line-up of senators and I shake my head. We have more actors, former coup plotters, Marcos supporters and despair.
So, yes, V for Vendetta really made me face-up with the things I've been thinking in my head.
I loved the prologue and the theme about ideas. Ideas don't feel anything and that's what V basically is, an idea, a symbol. He doesn't have any compassion, not even to Evey.
No, let me correct that, he has compassion for Evey but no way of showing it but torturing her to make her -- in his mind -- equal to him. So she would be able to understand him, be loyal to him and his cause.
And he almost, almost succeeds, fortunately, Evey finds Valerie's letter and it is this that keeps Evey from falling in the same path as V. It gives her the courage to leave V, to go on with her life.
Evey wakes up a tiny spark of humanity in V, its not enough though, to stop V from fulfilling his mission, because like Edmund Dantes, V is far more in love with the vision of destroying the current order to give way for a more humane society. But the humanity Evey has sparked in him, is enough to wake V to the realization that he could not, should not exist in the society he is trying to create.
Right til the end, V's mask is never taken off, his identity to the end, is unknown, a mystery. But, I would like to think that V *is* Valerie, that he was changed so much he doesn't remember that he was Valerie, that the letter he read and passed to Evey, was a letter *he* wrote.
She became, was turned into a man, *became* V. The Angel of Fury and vengeance. The flowers, the tea and the apron are all feminine things... it may also be possible that V was a gay man, since it was apparent that the regime was against muslims, homosexuality and anybody different.
But then, V is anonymous, V could be anyone, everyone
Another scene that gave me the chills was when the Detective, never did get his name, but I know it was the actor, Stephen Rea, was explaining to his partner the certainty he got that everything that's happened is connected. As he explains this feeling there's a montage of Valerie, of Dietrich (Stephen Fry), V's liberation from the detention cells and everything that's happened intersped with V creating a dominos of the V sign, then by the end of the scene, the dominos start falling and its just amazing...
Hugo Weaving is fantastic. He had to work around the mask but he managed it... he managed to work around it and made V come alive. In the end, I pitied him but also believed him a monster. Wonderful.
And Natalie Portman... she needed this after playing the passive Amidala in the third Star Wars installment.
In fact, they all did well.
V for Vendetta is love.
I *loved* it.
Its powerful.
And I completely agree with
matociquala the Wachowski (sp?) brothers have redeemed themselves. It just hit so many things for me, especially with the current situation here in the Philippines. It makes me question my stand on supporting Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
I *like* her, I really do, and I believe she's getting a bad rap and not enough acknowledgment for the things she's done and doing for the country. So, with the recent proclamation banning any sort of large political gatherings and the arrest of some media personalities... I'm really torn in half.
I like her, but I don't approve of her actions, and yet... and yet, there's this other part that's supporting her because I think the opposition is just making too much noise and making trouble for the Philippines. I think the Philippines need order, needs a chance for its economy to balance out and its disturbing for me to be so... blase about it. It really makes me question what I believe in and then here comes this movie, and V's words about how people who like order and peace would just be complacent and follow the government blindly.
Last February 25, was EDSA Revolution's 20th anniversary. How did we celebrate it? Fireworks? Rousing speeches? Unfortunately, we didn't celebrate anything. On the eve of the 25th, there were two army officers who plotted a coup against the President, the officers were arrested and the coup stopped but on the 25th, on the day itself, the President declared a State of Emergency and the proclamation 1317, forbidding any large political gatherings.
The police and the military picked-up three opposition congressmen and some prominent columnists over the course of the week, and just recently, the former Secretary for Social Welfare, Dinky Soliman was arrested for leading a walkathon and... well, for wearing black, which the police say is seditious.
Was I outraged?
Unfortunately... I was not. In fact, I was very annoyed with Dinky Soliman, I really thought -- think she's just causing trouble.
And its disturbing!
I was part of the second EDSA revolution and brought down former President Erap Estrada. It was... the most exhilirating thing I've ever felt at that time I thought things was going to change that it could only get better from there.
Boy, was I wrong.
All I feel now is tired and disgusted with politicians, with their endless bickerings and I just look up at the line-up of senators and I shake my head. We have more actors, former coup plotters, Marcos supporters and despair.
So, yes, V for Vendetta really made me face-up with the things I've been thinking in my head.
I loved the prologue and the theme about ideas. Ideas don't feel anything and that's what V basically is, an idea, a symbol. He doesn't have any compassion, not even to Evey.
No, let me correct that, he has compassion for Evey but no way of showing it but torturing her to make her -- in his mind -- equal to him. So she would be able to understand him, be loyal to him and his cause.
And he almost, almost succeeds, fortunately, Evey finds Valerie's letter and it is this that keeps Evey from falling in the same path as V. It gives her the courage to leave V, to go on with her life.
Evey wakes up a tiny spark of humanity in V, its not enough though, to stop V from fulfilling his mission, because like Edmund Dantes, V is far more in love with the vision of destroying the current order to give way for a more humane society. But the humanity Evey has sparked in him, is enough to wake V to the realization that he could not, should not exist in the society he is trying to create.
Right til the end, V's mask is never taken off, his identity to the end, is unknown, a mystery. But, I would like to think that V *is* Valerie, that he was changed so much he doesn't remember that he was Valerie, that the letter he read and passed to Evey, was a letter *he* wrote.
She became, was turned into a man, *became* V. The Angel of Fury and vengeance. The flowers, the tea and the apron are all feminine things... it may also be possible that V was a gay man, since it was apparent that the regime was against muslims, homosexuality and anybody different.
But then, V is anonymous, V could be anyone, everyone
Another scene that gave me the chills was when the Detective, never did get his name, but I know it was the actor, Stephen Rea, was explaining to his partner the certainty he got that everything that's happened is connected. As he explains this feeling there's a montage of Valerie, of Dietrich (Stephen Fry), V's liberation from the detention cells and everything that's happened intersped with V creating a dominos of the V sign, then by the end of the scene, the dominos start falling and its just amazing...
Hugo Weaving is fantastic. He had to work around the mask but he managed it... he managed to work around it and made V come alive. In the end, I pitied him but also believed him a monster. Wonderful.
And Natalie Portman... she needed this after playing the passive Amidala in the third Star Wars installment.
In fact, they all did well.
V for Vendetta is love.
