Three films a day

(Ha. Just like with Silent Hill I’m going to be all conflicted with this one. Ready? Go!)

#50, 4/23 – The Notorious Bettie Page (2005) (tofw)

It’s kind of funny to me that going into this film the most information I’d ever gotten about Bettie Page came from an E! True Hollywood Story I saw the night it premiered, apparently almost eight years ago. It’s even funnier to me that, coming out of this film, that E! True Hollywood Story is still, really, my primary source of Bettie Page information.

Of course, I shouldn’t complain. In fact, I’m not complaining. I liked it, at least partially because I was interested in it. I think one of my big problems with biopics is that I’m really not very interested in most of the chosen subjects. I’m not sure whether Hollywood loves picking people whose bios fit into the formula made famous by Behind the Music or if Hollywood’s screenwriters have become adept at shoehorning nearly any life story into that mold. I think it’s a little of each. Regardless, I like seeing people who aren’t usually profiled in our celebrity and politician-obsessed biography market. Valerie Solanis, for instance, who Mary Harron immortalized a decade ago, is the kind of person I want to see profiled in a biopic. Or Samuel Byck. Or, OK, the occasional plucky American inventor might do it for me, too. But, really, I want the oddballs and the enigmas.

Though she’s a celebrity, Bettie Page certainly classifies as an enigma. And I think Mary Harron aimed in exactly the right area with this film, by trying to focus on the tension in Bettie’s life between her profession and her faith. How exactly did Bettie reconcile the two? To be honest with you, I’m not sure the film bothered to answer that question. (Some would argue with me on this, I know.) And therein lies the trouble. When it was over I just thought “gee, that was… superficial”. I wanted to know more but it had no more to offer. It was enjoyable and entertaining and I’m glad I saw it. Gretchen Mol was fabulous and the rest of the cast, full of people I like, weren’t at all slouchy. But it really didn’t do much in its 91 minutes. Tasted great, hardly filling.

OK, I am complaining a little bit. Sorry. And to be fair to the film, I just did a little looking and found out that Bettie Page did not involve herself with the film, though Mary Harron asked. So, the enigma remained an enigma and the film kept a safe non-actionable distance from, you know, the big question. It’s always tricky making a film about someone who is still alive and not cooperating with you and I can appreciate that. Still, I am a little disappointed.

Profiling famous pin-ups is apparently a risky business all-around. It’s been ten years since HBO (who also funded this, by the way) aired its slightly bizarre Norma Jean and Marilyn and I’m still not sure, exactly, how I feel about that one. Well, that’s not true. I didn’t like it. It’s just a question of how much I didn’t like it.

With The Notorious Bettie Page it’s exactly the opposite. I liked it. I’m just not sure how much.

[@Landmark Century Centre]

#49, 4/21 – Silent Hill (2006) (tofw)

So. Silent Hill. What on earth can I say about Silent Hill?

Hmm. Having never played the games, I’m a bit stuck. Which is odd. I’ll bravely state my case about a book adaptation, even if I haven’t read the book because I don’t feel like there’s some prerequisite to appreciating it. House of Sand and Fog? I don’t care how the book is, I hated the movie. V for Vendetta? Yes, I’d read Moore’s graphic novel, but I wouldn’t have had a problem keeping up with what was on the screen if I hadn’t.

I’m not sure why I think game adapations are different, but I do. They seem as different and as tricky to me as films which transition television series characters to the big screen. Perhaps I think game adaptations are different because, at its best, game immersion is something quite different from book or movie immersion. It’s more personal. I don’t know how else to explain it (for the people I know who tend to avoid the more involved sorts of games), other than to say that I will forever remember how I ducked one time while I was playing the single-player campaign for Operation Flashpoint. Were I reading the situation in a book or watching it in a movie, I would have been pulling for David Armstrong. Absolutely. Don’t die, buddy. You can make it. Like when I watched Band of Brothers and got knots in my stomach whenever certain people were in harm’s way.

But in a game you’re not a spectator.

It’s obvious what I mean, but I’ll go into detail all the same; cut me some slack, because I like telling this story. I ducked because I, David Armstrong, soldier stranded behind enemy lines, didn’t want to die. Not after I’d slowly crawled across an open field, evading patrols and trying to work up a plan for getting out of enemy territory. Not after I’d helplessly watched an allied soldier get gunned down clear across the way; it happened so fast I didn’t even time to consider whether to give up my position in an attempt to save him; he was quite dead, quite quickly. Not after I got discovered while crawling towards the hill which led to safety; I broke into a dead run across the last twenty yards of the field and up the hill with a tank’s machine gun plunking bullets into the ground behind me; I’m sorry that, for the sake of a fuller narrative, I don’t know how many foot soldiers may have been firing at me, too, but I didn’t stop to count. Not after I’d reached the top of the hill and then, knowing I didn’t have much time, I sprinted to a car and got on in. Not after I’d started my getaway vehicle up and sped right down a main road, through an unsuspecting squad on patrol. And this is where the problem came. After I sped past them at least one of the squad (again with the not stopping to look, sorry) started firing at the rear of my car. I could hear the bullets pinging off various surfaces behind me. And, after all I’d done in my escape attempt (a half hour of real-life time, easy), I wasn’t going to let someone’s AK-74 put me down. No freaking way. So, I (the guy playing the game, not the guy in the game) ducked. Instinctively. What would you do if you heard bullets hitting things behind you? It’s not that the experience was any more “real” than it would have been were I watching it on the big screen, or reading about it; it was just more… personal. I had more of a stake in it. That’s great game immersion. And there is no movie in the world which can recreate that kind of feeling.

But I imagine a good game-to-movie adaptation has to bring something of the game’s atmosphere over. The filmmakers can’t make the immersion “personal”, but they can certainly make it familiar.

There are lots of Resident Evil (game) fans who really don’t care for the movie adaptations. Since, again, I’d never played the games, I have no idea what the difference is, where the movies went wrong. As a fan of straight-up zombie films, though, I enjoyed watching the adventures of Milla and company quite a bit. I didn’t know better what to expect. I still don’t.

Which brings me back, finally, to Silent Hill. Having never played the games, I didn’t know what to expect. But it struck me, right at the end of the Radha’s first bad experience in Silent Hill, that the sequence I’d just seen was essentially a nightmare. And that clued me in about her next bad experience, and I spent the whole time sitting there willing our protagonists to “wake up” (or, well, to survive the experience long enough for things to transition back to calm). That second nightmare sequence was my favorite part of the movie. I loved every sweet second of it, and if the games immerse you in situations like that, my goodness would they be worth the time.

Is that what the Silent Hill games are about? Did Christoper Gans do a good job of bringing the familiar to the screen? I don’t know, and that’s why I’m having such a hard time with this one. I try to understand what each film I see was trying to do. Why it was made. With Silent Hill I feel like I’m missing a piece of the puzzle.

I unreservedly loved this movie’s visuals. I have no idea if they jived with the game, but I thought they were magnificent in their own right. And I enjoyed them so much that, yes, I will say that I got enough out of this movie; it was worth my time and money, mostly. In fact, the visuals were so good, it’s almost a shame we had to bother with the film’s kind of bizarre and dopey (to me) plot. As Mr. Ebert wrote, “Although I did not understand the story, I would have appreciated a great deal less explanation” (emphasis mine). Maybe I agree because the film’s attempt to explain offered promises which I feel were unkept. There’s still a fairly basic thing I’m not clear on. That is, the very end. What on earth happened in the final scene? No, really.

(A sure sign that this movie left me a little perplexed… I barely mentioned Radha.)

[@Century 12 Evanston]

#48, 4/18 – Inside Man (2006) (tofw)

While I’m admittedly working with a very limited sample size I feel confident enough to say right here and now that there are two distinct groups of people: Jude Law lovers and Clive Owen lovers. OK, if you want to be picky I suppose there’s a third group who don’t like either, a fourth who think they’re equally wonderful, and a fifth who simply don’t care. Whatever. For the purposes of this entry we’ll discard groups three, four, and five (who are statistically insignificant simply because I say so) and work in strict binary. 0 or 1. Jude Law or Clive Owen.

I am firmly in the Clive Owen camp. Jude could never have carried Croupier. Guy Pearce may have been able to, but he’s not a part of this discussion, now is he?

You know what I like more than Clive Owen, though? Heist movies. And Spike Lee, bless his heart, must like them too.

The daylight bank robbery is, for my money, the least sophisticated kind of heist. Walk in (preferably while hiding your identity), brandish weapons, take control of the situation, take some money (preferably a good deal of it), then get away; sure, it takes a level of brashness to try pulling all this off, but it’s mostly amateur hour, really. It’s the last part of the daylight bank robbery plan, the getting out, where things can get messy. The basic approach, which has worked for film’s bank robbers for years, is to keep it simple: leave in a very short amount of time (with the money), approach the getaway vehicle with due speed and hope you don’t see Al Pacino at the last second because if you do… you’re probably in for one of the greatest shootouts in Hollywood history. If you get away—and if you didn’t run into Al Pacino your odds of getting away are good—you can even relax with some skydiving later.

On the other hand, some folks understand that getting away is the hard part of the job and they take a more considered approach. Usually, when bank robbers resort to hostage-taking it means something went wrong. I mean, like Denzel says to Clive in this very movie… you saw Dog Day Afternoon (note: In that movie poor Al Pacino probably saw himself as he walked into the bank so his chances of getting away were immediately doomed). But some movie bank jobs incorporate hostage-taking into the scheme—the proverbial idea so crazy it just might work. Most famously (to me, anyway), Quick Change’s Grimm worked up a clever plan, including hostages, to engineer his crew’s escape from their daylight heist. And Dalton Russell, the ring-leader of the job at the heart of Inside Man, obviously studied at same school as Grimm. Whether or not he could pull it off… well, that’s up to the wily detective on the case, isn’t it?

Despite the clear difference in tone—and the lack of jousting men on bicycles in Spike Lee’s film—the comparison between the two brash-bank-robbers-trying-to-fool-wily-New-York-detectives movies, Quick Change and Inside Man, actually sticks. To a degree, anyway. Sure, it breaks down on some levels, because Quick Change is really about an attempt to get out of New York while Inside Man is just about an attempt to get out of the bank (something Grimm and gang do relatively quickly; thus they have plenty of time for jousting bike guys, Phil Hartman, Tony Shalhoub, Stanley Tucci, and Philip Bosco… among others.) But the comparison works on more than just the superficial level, much to my surprise. It’s the New York thing and the wily detective thing, and, yeah, trust me, they’re very similar in their way.

Anyway, yes, of course I liked Inside Man. It had Denzel, Jodie, Willem, The Operative(!), Ziggy Sobatka(!), Stu Gharty(!), Christopher Plummer, and the previously-mentioned Clive. And it had a bank heist. And it even had Spike Lee’s most ridiculously needless—but entertaining for dorks like me—actor-on-a-dolly shot ever.

For the record, my favorite of Spike’s actor-on-a-dolly shots was the superb blissed-out-Anna-Paquin sequence from 25th Hour. And with Cymande playing!

[@Village Theatre North]

#47, 4/15 – L’Enfant (2005) (tofw)

Sometimes I’m a bit slow on the uptake and, well, let’s just say I missed the significance of the film’s title until the final scene. I had that “oh, I get it now!” feeling Phoebe had when she finally understood the pun of Central Perk (I think that was the episode with Charlie Sheen but my memory fails me and I can’t be bothered to look it up). Better late than never, though, right?

The thing that’s crazy about film, of course, is just how much of it there is to see. Really. I’d never seen anything from the Dardenne brothers before L’Enfant and they’ve been making films for quite some time. Hell, I’d never heard of them. And while I’m not exactly the go-to guy for every last detail of cinema (it’s not like I can, off the top of my head, name any other Belgian filmmakers besides Chantal Ackerman), I do know my share. Apparently I need to brush up on my Palme d’Or-winner trivia, though; L’Enfant is their second film so-honored; I’d really like to see Rosetta, their first Gold Palm-winner, but, as my local movie buddy pointed out to me… not available on Region 1. Thanks a lot, world.

I definitely liked it. I will try to find ways to see more of what they’ve done.

[@Century CinéArts 6]

Remember The Rules of Attraction? I do, mostly for a pair of ridiculously cheeky scenes, including the pictured moment where Ian Somerhalder and Russell Sams lip-sync to “Faith”. In their underwear. Oddly, I’ve just reminded myself that there’s a song from the George Michael catalog I’ve been itching to listen to recently. Yeah, “Freedom”. That is, Wham!’s triumphant 1985 hit, not George Michael’s masterpiece, his same-titled (and, yes, triumphant) single from five years later; though, come to think of it, I could hear that about now, too. Er, anyway, the other scene from Rules of Attraction I always remember is Victor’s high-speed Eurotrip monologue (I know someone who can recite it word-for-word), which includes the infamous warning: “Don’t let people lie to you, hostels are for the ugly.”

Anyway, lest you think I am being entirely random, the Rules of Attraction thing came to me because I tried to watch Hostel last night. I really did. But, well, I think it’s ugly. It seems I can only take so much on-screen sadism before I just check out. I’m failing to fight my urge to break out the homophones (and I’m not alone) so I’ll just say Hostel is a hostile movie and then pretend I didn’t say such a thing.

Anyway, I couldn’t finish it. Much like with Takashi Miike’s Audition when I asked myself “Can I finish this?” the answer which came bubbling up from inside me was “Do I care what happens next?”. And I didn’t. So, I scrapped it. And watched Jacques and the cow a few times instead. (Credit where due: the Dim Dam Dom link comes from The World of Kane, though it’s Groove who actually got me to watch it)

#46, 4/8 – Brick (2005) (tofw)

Thank goodness for forgetfulness.

I didn’t realize this until the movie had started, but I’d seen the trailer for Brick back in January and it’d left me with absolutely no desire to see it. None. Fortunately, I’m quite terrible with connecting trailers back to movie names and I walked into this one thinking I knew nothing about it except that Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emilie de Ravin, two actors I know from tv, were in it.

Brick is absurd. So amazingly absurd I spent a good bit of it in shock. But the filmmakers don’t play it as a joke; it isn’t some wink-wink nudge-nudge say-no-more breaking-the-fourth-wall “cool” picture like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. No, the mystery here is as serious as the mystery underneath, say, The Blue Dahlia or Murder My Sweet, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s also patently absurd. And that combination of things is exactly why I love it. [Edit: And I forgot to say that while the movie is certainly not played strictly for laughs I think there are moments of pure comedy gold.]

And love it I do.

While I was watching it I couldn’t help thinking of the early episodes of Dawson’s Creek, where Kevin Williamson gave his teenaged characters lines more fit for 35-year-old New Yorkers and dared us to accept the device for what it was. Brick, however, does it more satisfactorily (for me) and goes even further, because it’s not just the lines, it’s the entire plot. And, really, what kind of nut sets a crime novel plot in a high school? And who does it with a straight face? I… cannot get over that. But the thing is, it’s so. freaking. good. It works because they took it seriously. Because Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Nora Zehetner and Lukas Haas(!) and Meagan Good and Matt O’Leary are all just on-song. JGL especially. I’ve always liked him, but in this film he exceeded my expectations.

I bet this is one of those love/hate things, but I’m not sure. I suspect I got something out of it because I’m a bit nuts about “noir” and I enjoyed the style just as much as I did the story. But, again, I really can’t say for sure. All I know is when the end credits came up, with “Sister Ray”, of all things, blaring behind them, I just sat there and grinned.

This one’s gonna stay with me for a little while and I’m happy about that.

[@Century CinéArts 6]

Random thoughts and upcoming movies

Somewhere near the end of Russell Banks’s “Rule of the Bone” (which I finished last night), the narrator—our protagonist, Bone—mentions Peter Tosh’s “Steppin’ Razor”. And sometimes, like last night, all it takes is the mention of a song and it’s in my head. This is fine, because I’ve always liked “Steppin’ Razor” thanks to the little vocal games Tosh played in the chorus. But now the chorus is looping around in my brain and it’ll be there for weeks. And weeks.

But this is supposed to be about movies, so let me mention the rumored film version of Rule of the Bone. IMDB and various other sources say Chris Noonan—he who directed Babe—is supposed to direct an adaptation of the book, but my half-hearted Google searching hasn’t unearthed any news of the production since 2004. And it’s supposed to come out this year. Not bloody likely. I suppose this means the project is dead, or frozen. While this doesn’t bum me out as much as the long-ago disappearance of the supposed Egoyan-directed Blind Assassin project (no, I still haven’t finished Atwood’s book, but I could tell from the early going that it would make an interesting movie and I think what I have read of it plays to Egoyan’s strengths), I still consider it a shame.

And speaking of Egoyan (who, of course achieved some notoriety when he adapted a Russell Banks book), I just saw a story which says:

While he is unsure what his next film project will be, he knows it will not be more mainstream than Where the Truth Lies.

“This is as close as I get to Hollywood,” he says.

Thank. Goodness.

Nothing against Hollywood, but I swear, Egoyan should be Egoyan and his preoccupations just aren’t very Hollywood.

Anyway, I went through the upcoming features list on Rotten Tomatoes and figured out which interested me in any way, shape or form. A weird thing about me which some of you already know… With few exceptions, I try to know as little about a film as I can before I see it. I don’t seek out trailers or read very much of the synopsis of an upcoming film. I go on instinct, and/or the director and actors involved.

Anyway, here are some of the things I’m considering. In some cases I know quite a lot more than usual. In other cases, I know the title and the stars and that’s it.

• The Notorious Betty Page - I kinda like Gretchen Mol, and I love Lili Taylor. That may be enough to help me overcome my “biopics, bad!” thing.
• Hard Candy – I caught just enough of the synopsis to see that the story is potentially squick-worthy. But Sandra Oh is in the cast, and while I’m still regretting the last movie I saw with her in it, I’m loyal to any of the Canadian actresses I’ve come to enjoy watching in the last five years. (Speaking of which, do Molly Parker or Sarah Polley have upcoming movies? Molly does! Rock.)
• The Sisters – I keep seeing the trailer when I’m at Landmark Centurty Centre and it makes me want to run in the other direction, as does the fact that it’s a movie based on a play based on a play. But… Maria Bello, Mary Stuart Masterson(!), and Eric McCormack. I won’t know how I really feel about seeing this one until it’s out.
• Silent Hill – Radha Mitchell. I don’t know the games at all. I haven’t seen a trailer. But… Radha Mitchell. And, hey, I watched Resident Evil for one reason—Milla—and I had a hell of a time, so this actor loyalty thing I’ve got going can work on these video-game-to-movie things.
• Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. I’ve seen the first two in this trilogy of brutal revenge films and it seems only fair to watch the finale.
• Clean. Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, Don McKellar. I have no idea what it’s about, but I’ll take my chances.
• Wassup Rockers. Chalk my interest in this film up to pain old masochism, I figure. I’m still recovering from the blows inflicted by Kids, Another Day in Paradise, and Bully and yet I want to see this one, kind of. I don’t even want to know what it’s about. But maybe I’ll save this one for DVD.
• The Proposition. Guy Pearce, Ray Wintstone, Emily Watson, John Hurt. I had written something else about it, but when I went to IMDB to get the link my eyes caught the headline of the featured user comment: “Leone meets Tarkovsky meets Patrick White meets Mad Max”. Say no to that. I dare you.
• Look Both Ways. 100% Instinct. If I see a trailer my mind may switch damned fast. But if I can help it I’ll just take the gamble and see it in the theatre. Besides, I seem to be having an Australian theme here. I may see Brick tomorrow, and Emilie de Ravin’s in that movie’s cast. Plus, Radha’s got me thinking about Silent Hill. And the Proposition come from and is set in Australia.
• Poseidon. I’ve never seen the original, so I won’t be walking in thinking “Oh, man, this is never gonna live up to….”. Since Undertow I’ve been itching to see Josh Lucas again; sure, I’d seen him plenty of times before, but I thought he was quite something in Undertow. My first opportunity to see him again was that Bruckheimer movie I carefully avoided. This one I think I’ll watch, even if I’m pretty sure it’s going to be kind of bad. But how bad can it be if it has Andre Braugher? Don’t answer that.
• X-Men: The Last Stand. While it’s not certain I’ll see any of these, this is as sure a bet as this list offers. I am sad that Bryan Singer went over to the other side and directed the Superman movie instead of this. But, well, I have some weird hope that this will be as enjoyable as X2. Let me hold on to that hope for as long as I can.
• A Scanner Darkly. I hope it rocks.

I think there were other movies which I meant to list here, but this is sufficient.

Oh, and I’ve just started re-reading V for Vendetta. My goodness, I’d forgotten so much.

#45, 4/3 – Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005) (tofw)

So, because it was made in Germany for a German audience I did not, for a second, read too much into Sophie Scholl:The Final Days, although my Spider-Senses would have been tingling quite a bit had the film been created in a different climate. That is, while I think Good Night, and Good Luck was more interested in the present I consider Sophie Scholl:The Final Days rather more invested in the past. This may be an error on my part, but so be it.

Anyway, I really liked it. It’s compelling stuff based on recently-found accounts of, well, the final days of Sophie Scholl. My superficial comparison to Good Night, and Good Luck is not as daft as it may first appear, simply because both films are relatively static, keeping their action to verbal confrontations. But that’s as far as it goes in my head. I don’t see much commanility in the stories because Scholl and Murrow were in very different situations, facing vastly different consequences.

I have one complaint about the movie, but it’s really minor. As the film ends, I think the filmmakers overplay their hand and bring out a few moments of big dramatic music to really make sure we feel some of the weight. Um, we just watched the movie unfold for two hours, guys. We’re feeling the weight plenty fine. I’m hypersensitive to such things, though, so apply whatever seasoning you think is appropriate to my grumbling.

Oh, but forget all that. Because Julia Jentsch? Awesome.

[@Music Box Theatre]

#44, 4/1 – V for Vendetta (2005) (tofw)

There aren’t many cheeky, cheery characters in V for Vendetta either; and it’s for people who don’t switch off the News.
—from illustrator David Lloyd’s 1990 introduction to V for Vendetta.

It seems I have unintentionally developed a weird and hopelessly unsustainable April 1st tradition. No fooling. (Hey, look, it had to be said.) For two April 1sts in a row now I’ve caught movie adaptations of famous “mature” graphic novels (and in the theatre, no less). Last year, of course, was Sin City. I hated Sin City. It’s my own fault though since it was only when the movie started rolling that I remembered how I really didn’t care for the source material. And so, sure, Sin City is faithful to the graphic novels from which it comes, but in my eyes that’s hardly a selling point. Blasphemous as it is to say such a thing, with the exception of his almost unimpeachable DKR and of course Year One, I never embraced Frank Miller the way I think I was supposed to. Shame on me. (Caveat: I’ve only read bits and pieces of the Daredevil stuff that made him his name, so I’m in no position to say whether I like that or not.)

It’s not that I respect Alan Moore more (And is it possible to think of one without also thinking of the other? I have my doubts), just that I’ve only read two things by him and love them both. Watchmen is, well, I have given my copy of it away three times now and have always happily bought a replacement. I consider Watchmen the gold standard of graphic novels and I doubt I’ll ever find one I like more. While I don’t feel as strongly about V for Vendetta, I have also happily bought replacement copies of that, since I lost one and ruined another in an unlikely mishap involving my knee, a phone call, and some low-quality hot chocolate. (That it was “low-quality” is probably an absurd thing to point out since it’s not like the book would have fared much better were it assaulted by a beverage of superior breeding).

Of course I should probably lay off the Alan Moore talk since he wants nothing to do with this film. And while I can see why (it steps away from its source’s context and loses quite a lot in the process), I still liked the film. More than I expected. Though it’s hardly perfect (and I would never compare it to the graphic novel for it would lose that fight in half a minute), there were many things to it I rather enjoyed.

I must admit that some of what I liked about the film really had little to do with the movie itself. For instance, as the film starts rolling the slightest hint of the 1812 Overture plays. This made me smile. And as the first scene played out and V started to blow shit up, we did indeed hear it in its full glory. And I cheered inside. Damned theatrical, that. I’ve loved the 1812 Overture since I was tiny—it was my second favorite LP side to listen to from my father’s Tchaikovsky collection—and hearing it applied here just made me happy for various dumb reasons. Yes, it’s kind of a bombastic choice. A little silly, even. But it worked for me. (Oh. My favorite Tchaikovsky thing was Capriccio Italien because my father playfully made a toothpaste jingle out of it. Again, no fooling.)

Tying this in to the quote up top (forget the cheery, cheeky part, I mean the bit about not switching off the news), for better and worse, much of the film’s atmosphere was simply picked from the air around us. This is exactly why and how it diverges from the graphic novel. It’s hardly insightful for me to say (yet again) that each work of art we get is a primary source of history because it reflects something of the people who made it, and it reveals in itself something of what the artists expected of their intended audience; fortunately, I’ve never promised insight so you shouldn’t feel cheated. I bring it up because the case of V for Vendetta illustrates this point as clearly as anything could hope to. How else to put this: The protagonist blows up buildings. In 1982, that was one thing. In 2006, it’s something quite, though not entirely, different. Yes, the Wachowski brothers could have tried to make a film more in line with the context of the graphic novel. They didn’t. And so I can’t blame Moore for disapproving of the adaptation (I wonder if David Lloyd likes it) because the core of his very totalitarianism-versus-anarchy dynamic is lost in this movie’s “well, gee, let’s stop this government and make a better one!” silliness. Yes, I called it silliness. Silly and very average for a Hollywood film set in a dictatorship. But still, yes, I liked it.

Obviously it’s not the failed plot from the fifth of November we here in the States are remembering when impressive-looking buildings blow up on screen these days. And once you get further into the film’s story, there’s even another possible (though I would reckon unintentional) angle and connection between the script and ideas about recent events. (Note: You may want to avoid the following link if you haven’t seen V for Vendetta and plan to, since it might spoil you a bit.) While explaining the way in which the government originally consolidated its power, the film reminded me quite clearly of the MIHOP theories mentioned in Mark Jacobson’s recent story in New York Magazine. I sincerely doubt the Wachowski brothers were intending to suggest anything quite so controversial about recent events but the similarities interest me all the same.

While I’m not one to go on and on about how an adaptation has veered from its source, some of the changes are simply baffling. For instance, the characters still make mention of fingermen, but either I wasn’t paying attention when I should have been (possible) or the script totally fails to mention the rest of the government-agencies-as-body-parts metaphor. The Eye (watching), The Ears (NSA listening), The Nose(sniffing around), The Mouth (speaking), The Finger (grabbing). Film is a great place for such shorthand. Why would they not use that?

There are more changes and omissions I find odd, too, but almost all of it is made up for by a casting move I simply must revel in. Remember the Spaceballs joke featuring John Hurt? Well, V for Vendetta’s filmmakers had their own fun by casting Hurt—who played Winston Smith in the (if you ask me) marvelous film adaptation of 1984—as a Big Brother-type. Oh, the joy of it! In fact, not too long after I got home I watched my copy of 1984 because it had been quite some time since I’d last seen it.

And, speaking of the cast… Natalie Portman looks more like Keira Knightley than I ever realized. When did that happen?

[@Century 12 Evanston]