Nineteen Eighty-Four for a new generation.

It was inevitable. If you read my blog, than you know that I jump on bandwagons... sometimes, early, sometimes late. The simple truth is, I feel the need to jump on the rapid moving V for Vendetta review bandwagon.

So, I actually saw the film, going to the theatre with much trepidation, as I have mostly heard negative reviews of the film. Some said it was of little substance, some that it was poorly made... one friend even remarked that V for Vendetta is "What would happen if Michael Moore made a comic book."

I'm not sure if I agree with any of these assesments. I think it was a wonderful film. I really honestly enjoyed it. The epithet I thought up for it you have read already - Nineteen Eighty-Four for a new generation. If you look at the film, which is based on a comic, it is easy to see how it was influenced by the famous novel by Geroge Orwell: England - England, Fingers - Thought Police, High Chancellor - Big Brother, Surveilance and propoganda both work in very simmilar ways in both stories as well.

The stories, however, differ fundamentally. The powerfully moving last line of Nineteen Eighty-Four is "He loved Big Brother." Winston, in the end, loses to the oppresive government. The final scenes of the film depicts what Guy Fawks was unable to do - the spectacular destruction of the parliment building.

A major theme of both novel and film is Hope. Winston loses it. The citizens of London in V for Vendetta gain it. The fundamental difference is the crux of the epithet.

The times now are not what they were when Orwell wrote Ninteen Eighty-Four. Many people view that novel as a warning - Orwell, for them, was a prophet of what could come if things went the wrong way in the very scary world of post World War II. The whole world had been subject to so much propoganada and destruction that nobody really knew what to think - Orwell warned us not to let the powers that be do the thinking for us.

In our time, the world is a different place. Our media is rife with propoganda even if we realise it or not. Michael Moore tried to show us - albeit hypocritcally, as he just turned the tables and use anti-Bush propoganada. V for Vendetta takes this growing realisation that the people have - this realisation that everything the TV shows can be taken for truth and flies off in a cinematic dreamland. The film acts like Orwell's novel, warning us of what could happen - biological warfare, the fall of Empire of the United States of America (there's some propoganda I have worked in there myself - notice the word "empire"), civil wars, food and water shortages. We, however, don't need more warnings against what could happen. The PATRIOT Act shows us that, in truth, Orwell's world is, in part becoming reality. V for Vendetta give us what Winston had taken away - Hope. Hope that justice and freedom will be upheld for what they are, and not be used as puppet words.

Although the Superhero dies in the end, it is not so much a tragedy. The end is uplifting, because when V kills all of the evil people that have created the dystopian world (and therefore himself), it roots the world of most (but not all) of the evil. What remains is himself - the last offspring of a corrupt society. He dies and the bad part of him, the part that was the corrupt british society, dies with him. But what lives on, in the population, is his hope that he held to repair the society that has been so corrupt. In the end he is figurativly, and literally, the vessle of change.

Political film? Yes. But tastefully done, not over-the-top anti-bush propoganada. More fantasy than reality - the politics - inescapable, but not so important to the film that the underlying left-wing values detract from the overall entertaining aspect.

All in all, I have to say, I probably enjoyed V for Vendetta more than any other film I've seen in the past year.