V, not a sissy avenger.

I know a lot of people didn’t like V for Vendetta, thought it was not anarchistic enough like the original was, too “Hollywood liberal”, etc. But I liked it a lot. I thought watching it yesterday on the computer and dissecting it would reveal its flaws to me. Or at least V’s flaws, like it did the new Batman’s. But I emerged from a four-hour viewing of it with my affection for the film intact. I am listening to the soundtrack right now as I type up half of a dissertation chapter on the proper way to hate.

What I was hoping to pick up and did in fact find in the film was that V’s hate and revenge transcended his own suffering and pain. At the end, he shows us that his destruction of Parliament and the new world it will usher in are his preferred goals, and they are not for him at all. He won’t even pull the lever and instead offers it as a gift to Evey.

Which is not to say that the film is not about revenge. In the end, though, V separates his own revenge from the destruction of Parliament by giving the train-bomb to Evey and the future. He proves that there is “more” or “something else” than his own life, in a ham-fisted way.

But you know, I really enjoy any revenge movie where the baddies get their comeuppance. Who doesn’t?