V for Vendetta - 2006

I had watched this only once, years ago. I didn't remember anything, just the feeling that I liked it very much, that somehow it got to me deeply, but couldn't remember why. I came to think that maybe I hadn't been objective, maybe at the time I had a thing for Hugo Weaving and therefore liked this movie... I was really starting to think something like this, I'm telling you, then today I saw it again. And wow! it blew my mind. I'm not sure I can explain why, it's a combination of things. Mostly I'd say it has lots of good actors I like, and that means that wherever they turn there's someone I like, and that's not common. Then there's the matter of the voices. All the voices are like silk, quiet, poetic; come to think of it I think there were only two characters that used a loud voice, and they were both bad. But the good ones, they never shout. V is like poetic silk, if you can understand what I mean, but all the others too, quiet voices speaking slowly as if to give more importance to the words. Sutler is the one who shouts all the time, because he wants to impose himself.
It all starts with Evey's voice (Natalie Portman) reciting a rhyme "remember remember the fifth of november, the gunpowder treason and plot, I know of no reason why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot". At night she gets attacked because she's walking after curfew hour, and V (Hugo Weaving) comes to save her. They meet there for the first time. He always wears the mask, he never takes it off. They live on a future England were intolerance and fear are the government, under the slogan England Prevails. V wants to end this, he wants people to realise this. He goes to a tv studio forcing his program to be shown to all the people, to all the screens. I'm not sure, but it looks like there's only one channel..they all see it. So they see him talking and "sit down and have a little chat"; he tells them that They don't want this because words have power, and "the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression, and where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting submission" and that if you're looking for guilt "you need look into a mirror. I know why you did it. You were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. [ ... ] fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now High Chancellor Adam Sutler", then he asks them to "stand beside me, one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a 5th of November that shall never ever be forgotten". When he's escaping the building, he's stopped by cop Dominic (Rupert Graves), and Evey sees him and helps him. V is not sure what to do with her, if he should leave her where she is, unconscious on the floor to be found by the police that will for sure arrest her, or take her with him where she could never again be let free. He decides to take her, and brings her to his home. He tells her he wanted to help her, but now she can't leave because she could lead them to him. She doesn't know what to think, he saved her and seems nice, but also strange. She freaks out, though, when she realises that he has stolen her pass in order to get near a man, the Voice of London on tv. He doesn't deny anything, he says "yes, I killed him" and then "you seem upset", just like that, and she doesn't know how to deal with that. After a while, she tells him of when she was little, and her parents were protesting against the war, until men got in their house and took them away. She tells him that she's not brave like them, that she's afraid, but that she wants to help him, if she can, so he accepts her help, in order to get close to a disgusting bishop with a preference for little girls; Evey tries to warn him!!! This really sickened me for a moment, because she surely knew what he was! Thing is, she feels like a prisoner in V's house, and wants out of that whole story and thinks if she saves the bishop then it'll be even and she'll be free, which is quite naive, but V kills him anyway. Evey escapes and finds refuge in the house of tv showman Gordon Dietrich (Stephen Fry!!!). He takes her home, keeps her safe, and even tells her his own secrets "the truth is, you wear a mask for so long, you forget who you were beneath it". V goes on with his plans. He's killing all the people that years ago took part on a particular project. Now it's Delia's turn, and he appears in the dark of her bedroom: "you've come to kill me" - "yes" - "thank God" and they talk while he waits for the poison to kill her. She was one of the people that made experiments on people, killing many. Inspector Finch (Stephen Rea) starts to doubt everything he knows, his government, and where justice truly is.
Evey is living safely in Gordon's house, until one day he broadcasts a show he wrote that didn't go through cersors, where he ridicules Sutler (John Hurt). Gordon minimizes the problem, saying it'll be fine, but when they come to get him at night, he tells Evey to hide, and protects her while they bag him and take him away, like they did with her parents, and the last look he gives her is painfully touching. How wonderful was to find Stephen Fry in this movie, and his character is great, and obviously he does it wonderfully!
Evey tries to escape, but a man takes her, throws her in a little cell, shaves her head, asks for information about V. She doesn't say anything, and she's kept isolated, with food that even the rats refuse to eat, she's tortured, and every day she refuses to say anything. She finds in her cell a letter from a woman, Valerie, who was disowned by her family and then arrested because she had fallen in love with another woman. She reads "our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch, we are free", and she finds strength in her words, and every time she's left alone in her cell, she keeps reading it. It comes the day where she's told she'll be executed if she doesn't talk, and she calmly replies that she'd rather die. At that point, she's let free, and discovers that while Gordon was arrested and executed, she was found by V who took her to his home, and gave her this treatment to help her overcome her fear. Now she's stronger, she's not afraid any more. She's free, truly free. Evey is not sure how to take this, knowing that it was him who tortured her, but admits that she's different now. She thought everything was fake, that he wrote that letter, and that would have been very low and painful, but he didn't, and somehow this makes all the difference in the world. He explains that the letter was true, and he had found it years ago, when she had died in the cell next to his, then Evey goes away, no more afraid of being alone.
Finch finds out about that project, and thinks V is William Rookwood, the only man that was never found, while all the others died. V gives him an appointment and tells him and Dominic the true story of that project, where they were researching bioweapons, and discovered a terrible virus and used it against their own country, poisoning the water and causing thousands and thousands of deaths (at least 80.000), that lead to a state of fear among the people, and the persons involved in the project became rich selling the antidote. The people's fear lead them to elect Sutler in the new position of High Chancellor, practically a dictator. It turns out the police has a body that has been identified as Rookwood's, so who is V then?
When the 5th of November comes, Evey goes to his house to meet him one last time, as she had promised him; this surprises him "I didn't think you'd come". They dance and he tells her he leaves everything to her, even the choice to start the train that will blow up the parliament, then he goes to kill Sutler and those of his men still alive. V goes back to Evey to tell her that after twenty years he had found love again with her, then dies in her arms.
From everywhere people masked exactly like V come out in the street, all headed in the same direction, towards the parliament. All the policemen don't know what to do because no orders are coming, this because Sutler and Creedy are dead, so the man in charge orders them to stand down, and the people simply walk through them, until they are in sight of the parliament. Finch finds Evey and sees V's body, but she says England needs hope, and starts the train= big explosion, parliament down, fireworks in the sky. Finch asks Evey who was really V, and she tells him that he was 'my father, my mother, my brother, he was you, he was me, he was all of us" and as to confirm this we see all the people taking the masks off, and we see lots of faces. We see Dominic, but we also see Gordon, Valerie and the child that was killed. V is all of us, the idea that determined Gordon's and Valerie's actions.
Saying it like this it looks too plain, I don't know how to express the emotions. It was done really really well, loved the lights, loved the choice of actors, all of them. Wow when I saw Stephen Fry! and Rupert Graves! Now he has aged well, hasn't he? He's even sexier now.
I like that V never takes off his mask, and even after watching the end of the film we still don't know who V really is. Who was he? Apparently he can't be Rookwood, if he's been dead for years. While he was cooking we saw his hands were burnt, and we thought he was all burnt like they were showing him to us, escaping after the fire, burnt but not dead. I know though that when he was playing the torturer, his hands and face were not burnt. Okay, we don't see his face clearly, never, but it's not possible to mistake Hugo Weaving's jaw. There were no scars on his hands, either. We will never truly know who he was, because that's how he wanted it  It's not the name that's important. It's the idea, the story that will go on.