V For Vendetta (2006)

V FOR VENDETTA (Blu-ray)

Release Date: July 7th, 2008
Certificate: 15
Running Time: 132 minutes

Director: James McTeigue

Cast: Natalie Portman, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, John Hurt, Tim Pigott-Smith, Rupert Graves, Roger Allam, Ben Miles, Sinead Cusack

As the Met Office warns of outbreaks of rain in London tonight, becoming heavy at times, it looks like we’ll have a wet and windy Guy Fawkes. So if you’re staying in rather than standing in the rain trying to light sparklers, here’s a piece on one of our favourite movies, V For Vendetta, which includes quite a lot of references to gunpowder and treason on the 5th of November!

Written by the Wachowski brothers, and set against the futuristic landscape of totalitarian Britain, Evey (Natalie Portman) is rescued from an attempted rape by a masked man (Hugo Weaving) known only as ‘V’. He leads her to the rooftops and together they watch the destruction of the Old Bailey before he takes over a television network the next day. V urges the people of Britain to rise up against their fascist government and in a show of support, to meet him outside the House of Parliament in exactly one year on November 5th.

As Evey uncovers the truth about V’s mysterious background, she also discovers the truth about herself – and emerges as his unlikely ally in the culmination of his plan to bring freedom and justice back to a society fraught with cruelty and corruption.

But as V fights against repression, what about the real events of the 5th of November? The real-life Guy Fawkes was born in York in 1570 and having converted to Catholicism, went off to fight in the Dutch War of Independence, (1568–1648) on the side of Catholic Spain. When he returned to England, his friend Thomas Wintour introduced him to Robert Catesby who was planning to assassinate King James I in order to restore a Catholic monarchy. The trio began plotting and secured a lease to an undercroft beneath the House of Lords and Fawkes was placed in charge of stockpiling gunpowder. When the authorities received an anonymous tip-off and searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, they found Fawkes, and the explosives.

After being questioned and tortured, he finally confessed and was sentenced for execution on January 31st. Before it could be carried out though, he leaped off a piece of scaffolding from where he was to be hanged, breaking his neck in the process and escaping the agony of being drawn and quartered.
Though they failed to assassinate anyone or to blow anything up in 1605, the events of the 5th of November have been celebrated since then with effigies of Fawkes being burnt and fireworks set off. Only a handful of movies have celebrated Fawkes on screen. Wonderland (1999) by Michael Winterbottom, a tale about lonely Londoners, features a brief scene at the beginning of the Guy Fawkes festivities. The film noir classic, Hangover Square (1945) features a murder victim being placed on a bonfire in front of a unsuspecting crowd cheering on the murderer. And then there is V For Vendetta.

Some of our other firey favourites, click for bigger view

V is a cleverly written and well executed film; daring and challenging and exactly what we like in our movies. It walks a fine line between portraying V as a terrorist and freedom fighter, while at the same time, offering a completely new take on November 5th while remaining faithful to the Guy Fawkes traditions. It’s also got one of the endings which takes your breath away in a moment of realisations of the “what ifs”.