V for Vendetta is out (Page 1 of 3)

We saw this tonight, it was worth the full price of admission.  I rarely if never see a movie in the theater anymore, but this was of course a must see.   There are some things that are not explained, back story that's left out, and a couple of plot holes, or stuff that's sort of skipped over, but it's still a very good movie.

There's so much to say about this movie I don't even know where to begin.  A second viewing this weekend is on the agenda, that much is for certain.   

**** WARNING **** SOME SPOILERS AHEAD ****

Roses roses everywhere, given to the targets of assasination by V = Rosicrucians?

The Cross of Lorraine becomes England's new flag symbol;

Then there's of course the mind control symbolism.  V's porcelain mask and everybody else wearing the masks by the end.  What's even more intriguing is how author Fritz Springmeier has said that the porcelain mask mind control symbolism ties into the idea of the victim's face melting.  Victims are given hallucinogenics and convinced their faces will melt off;  Well, V wears a porcelain mask because his face literally melted in a fire at the detention camp thing where he was experimented on with injections and such.

Domino Programming.   Another mind control symbol is dominoes, (don't ask me why, but it apparently is) - and the night before going through with blowing up the Parliament building, V constructs an elaborate black and red (occult colors) "domino knockdown" thing in the shape of the V in a circle.   The "trigger" before the Big Act.  People may scoff and think I'm reading too much into things, but fact is, there is domino programming.  Does it really make sense to have a domino knockdown??  I mean, how many movies ever have something like that?  It doesn't fit with anything before or after, and seems to exist solely as an intriguing visual "filler" - but is it?   I doubt it. 

Breaking the mirror.  Mirrors, more symbolism heavily used in mind control.   V takes off his mask..........................and breaks the mirror with it.   Sarah, in the movie "Labyrinth", another major mind control vehicle, breaks the mirror to escape the dreamworld of the masquerade ball just to give you a comparison.

I'm sure you alll think I'm crazy, but, this stuff is in there!      It has actual meaning.  It's a Wachowski movie - nothing is in there as filler.  At this point, the only thing missing would be rainbows, keys, spiral/helixes and an owl or two!     Sorry.  Mind control humor. 

V was part of that round up detention camp scenario where he was experimented on and tortured, which changed him into the killing machine bent on anarchy that he became;  he in turn "trains" Evie in a similar way by keeping her locked in a cell and tortured until she loses all fear of death and toughens up;  she transforms, losing her fear, and becomes an anarchist herself.   Programming, re-shaping somebody, etc. etc.  Also representative of the warped mindset of loving your handler/controller who inflicts pain.  Pain is love and all that topsy turvy inverted reality stuff.  She doesn't know at the time that it's V, but after she learns it's him, she's only mad at him briefly before forgiving him and then being in love with him.

There's even parallels to Fight Club, another mind control trigger movie- anarchy, blowing shit up, even Evie's shaved head look - which she chooses to keep while back out in the real world, representing the new her - is reminiscent of the Project Mayhem "Space Monkey Army" look with the shaved headed anarchists;

There's more, so I'll be re-watching this again to catch what I missed during the first go....

I can accept the idea that this movie potentially created a sleeper army of people. The idea of the movie was perception and the makers of the film wanted to show how our perception can be taken of advantage of by totalitarian governments and when we need to wake up to this.
        There was a lot of symbolism in the movie; the character V's mask was never taken off because I think what he symbolised was an idea, the idea that he represented was idea itself and well much more I'm sure; and that's why the Wachowski brothers did not have his face revealed at all during the movie because they did not want him to resemble any kind of humanness, but only to resemble the potential of humanity within us and that all of us are capable of that and that is why at the end Evie says "he was my mother, father, brother, you, me and all of us.
        Also, near the end of the movie where the people were dressed as V and were marching towards the armed troops guarding parliament, there was a drift of mystery wether the troops were going to actually shoot down their own citizens or not. I think when that tension line was broke and the troops were told to stand down it represented that the people are the ones with the power and that the government is the one to stand down and that those people wearing the V mask represented the symbolicness of V himself and that the idea V represented will prevail and showed that by means of the crowd marching through the scary armed and dangerous government troops and that is when the mental fear barrier of the big bad government was broken down.
I think a lot of us can agree on another point that was continually made in that movie is that "there is no coincidence only the illusion" and a coincidence that I might point out is that this movie will coincidently come out on DVD on November 5th lol but we'll see.

V was still a symbol in the movie even if it was the most obvious thing in the movie. He was a man but he represented more, the mask was his representation and what did that mask represent, it was a symbol. Another thing, I stated the obvious symbolism about V so that my next paragraph would make some sense. Symbolicaly, by the people wearing the V masks (which has its own symbolic meaning) and walking through the government, that represented something; it said something on a deeper level symbolicaly.

thanks mystic

But see that's the problem itself; when you emphasized on how it wasn't *that* tyrannical, how tyrannical does a society have to become until IT IS *that* tyrannical? It's all a matter of perception. Just like how V said in the movie when he got on the news network and made his speach he said something along the lines of "you don't see it how I see it" and started to going off on how the citizens were the ones to blame because they were willing to put up with that amount of tyranny. It's all perception. THAT is the main weapon of the government.... to sway our perception into believing what is ok and what isn't via media which was also presented in the movie too.

Before the Iraq war, one million British people marched in London.  That is near enough 2% of the population - 2 in every 100.  That is a *lot* of people in anybodys book.

It achieved nothing.  The people were ignored.

You don't live in the UK...but as it stands right now - the UK is currently totaltairian enough that given the right circumstances I am pretty sure far more than one million people would march on Parliament.

That fact that we could think that it isn't that totalitarian just goes to show how subdued we have already become...

Indeed.  It's very easy for people to oppose violence when they are nice and safe themselves.

Yep, beneath the "mind control" themes Lyra pointed out - I felt there were some very spiritual and metaphysical points.  From what Lyra says - she saw people possibly being programmed to act like V.  Personally what I saw was that – inside us deep down we are all the same.

Where one person saw torture, I saw a metaphor for spiritual cleansing (not really the right term, but the only way I can phrase it).  Essentially the removal off all the bullshit from someone’s life and mind until only *they* remain.  The trick with media like movies - is that they need to portray these themes visually.  And in general these aren't themes that are easily communicated.  So yes maybe the mind control themes are there.  But then I have to ask; why are certain mind controls techniques so successful.  Perhaps they access something very deep inside of us - like a key into the inner us.  If so...the themes themselves wouldn't necessarily be bad.  Rather how they are used would be the issue.

The movie gave me the shivers, and almost brought tears to my eyes a few times.  It was very powerful, and conveyed a very important message.  Some of those messages came across in sledge hammer format so even the dullest of people will have trouble missing them.

I like looking for Symbolism and the like in films.  But is it possible that some movies are more than the sum of their parts, and that when we look at movies in their small components - we lose some of the message?

Hmmm, I feel differently about those scenes.  Firstly I don't think Evie nor V were Anarchists...

Secondly I feel the prison scene was more of a metaphor; an internal battle if you will.  Stuart Wilde talks about a plane of desolace where everything is stripped away.  I think that idea can be applied here.  V never said he did what he did to Evie for love.  He said he did it because she didn't want to know fear any longer.  When Evie walked out into the rain, she was reborn - I can't remember the line exactly - but when the rain drop hits her, she talks about feeling God.  For me that was one of the most powerful scenes in the film.  Because to be reborn - to be who she truly was inside - she had to understand that all the external bullshit of life means nothing.  That her beliefs about reality - were just that - "beliefs".  What happened to her stripped all that away.  I remember thinking during that scene that it will be many, many years before the average person understands what transpired in that particular part of the movie.

It's one thing to understand it intellectually - and a whole other thing to know what was been shown.

To me - Evie's shaved head was a statement telling us that she had found her true self...and Self isn't found in image, words or hair-style.  Similar message to Fight Club - but far more powerful and deeper in this context.

Anyway, V realised he was a "monster" for the manner in which he did this, he knew that "tomorrow wasn't for him".  His kind had to go into the past...

Another very powerful part of the movie.  The Chief Inspector at this point was talking about how he finally came to the realisation that everything is connected.  And that ultimately everything works together syncrositically to achieve a certain goal.  V toppled the Dominoes at this point illustrating how he had put many of those things in place - but further combine this with the scene at the end - where all the people took off their masks - and the dead people where there, again showing how they were themselves pieces (dominos) of the pattern that allowed the revolution to occur.  V was simply the trigger.

Dominos can be used as a mind programming technique.  But does it necessarily follow that this was a mind programming scene - or could it be that the technique was used to make the scene all the more powerful?

Either way – the messages in this movie came across loud and clear.  It gave me tingles to see Big Ben blow up Symbols are very powerful – and the movie stated that too.  Best film I have seen for a very long time indeed…