I worked on this review until 1 a.m., got up at 5 a.m. and kept working on it. Then, realizing I had 2,500 words, I had to cut it back to the word-limit: 1,500.
I didn’t quite make it.
So it’s likely that, in the haze of my sleep deprivation, I may have missed a thing or two.
But anyway, here is it is… my review of the I love the most from the past year, maybe two…
I think they got the byline wrong.
They did. They’re fixing it. I sent in a death threat.
I’m so very glad this is a good film! Malick rocks. I’m seeing TNW tomorrow night. Thanks for the review, Jeffrey.
Sounds like you write reviews the way Malick makes films. Will there be a slightly shorter edition with a few extra comments that dramatically affect the review as a whole in the next few weeks? 🙂
That’s exactly right, Peter. I have a review of “The Thin Red Line” that takes 4 1/2 hours to read, but I’m never going to release it. It stars Adrian Brody.
I originally had no real interest in this film…but you and Peter have me interested now…
there is a big difference between a terrorist indiscriminate bombing of a country not his own. And a rebel trying to inspire his own countrymen to stand up and change their country for the better. If you can’t see the difference you are blind my friend.
The two extremes you have just set up are rather drastic simplifications, don’t you think?
I mean, if by “a terrorist indiscriminate bombing of a country not his own” you mean Dubya, wow, I don’t know where to start. A president trying to hunt down those plotting to atack his country, and a terrorist just indiscriminately bombing someone else’s country… those seem like *slightly* different things to me.
And before you get going, no, I’m not a raving apologist for the current administration. But beginning a conversation by employing severe overstatement, well, that just guarantees an unproductive conversation.
If by “a rebel trying to inspire his own countrymen to stand up and change their country for the better” you mean the character V, then I would ask “Where is V’s vision for a better country? What does it consist of?” And does “changing their country for the better” include the murder of people within the buildings he’s bombing? What I see is a suspicious, vengeful character whose first impulse is to resist with violence that endangers the lives of others, making him a questionable leader at best. And any populace willing to sign on and follow V without further investigation is a populace asking for trouble.
I’m not blind. I just demand to see things more clearly than by gross caricatures.
Now, I’m only going to say this once, folks: Keep your comments on this entry focused on the movie in question. If this starts veering toward a debate about the ethics of the Iraq War, I will refer you to the zillions of other Web sites preoccupied with that discussion. I’m weary of shouting matches here at this blog, and if folks start throwing fuel on political fires… if we depart respectful and gracious dialogue… then I’ll have to start deleting posts.
Been thinking of this since V for Vendetta came to the silver screen. While I’m not for the anarchy of V (and those two latest reviews are right on target), Christians are not in any agreement with regard to civil disobedience. I think a movie like this is a good start for getting Christians to think about the ethics of that by pointing out the extremes and then moving from there towards a reasonable argument towards whether civil disobedience could be a socially acceptable means of making changes in government and government policies. My two cents worth.
The “V” of the movie is a disappointment compared to the “V” of the book.
The “V” of the book treated his actions as an undesirable but also sadly unavoidable evil based on the current condition of his country.
Interestingly, he was grooming Eve (which phonetically is a backwards “V”) to take his place as the “Creator” V who would lead the people into Utopia — if they allowed it — while removing himself (the “Destroyer” V) from the picture because his time was past. In the book, Evey ultimately rejects violence and thus sets herself up as a contrast to the first V; in the movie, she embraces violence.
V’s eventual suicide in the book was purposeful and larger than himself; he was tacitly stating that destruction and violence are not good things, they are only useful for leveling a defunct society so that one can rebuild, and then violence must itself be done away with, like toys that we have outgrown as we have matured and thus no longer serve any good purpose.
I could respect the V of the book, who was much more complex, less revenge-driven, and overall more negative on violence than the V of the movie — where violence to me seemed glorified rather than heavy-heartedly accepted as inevitable.
The movie really lost the heart of what made V himself. It was a real disappointment and probably has done more harm than good by its sloppy brush strokes.
In all fairness, nothing in Mike’s statement suggests Bush. Afterall, in Iraq there are terrorists helping the insurgency who are “blowing up a country not their own.” Not saying your initial reaction was incorrect, but there is the possibility he did not mean Bush at all.
Fair enough. But I live in Seattle, where 90% of the cars have Bush-hating bumper stickers, so forgive me if I’ve been conditioned to assume…
Fortunato has it spot on; Moore’s book proposed that neither the extremes of facism nor the extremes of anarchy are good for the people. The film could have – and should have – been able to make us as an audience think outside of the boxes of current political rhetoric.
As I said in my review:
“It’s not as if there were no opportunities. Evie, clearly not of the government, need not have been of V either. (And considering her circumstances, she shouldn’t be on V’s side.) V comes right out and tells her (and us) that the future should be neither of the fascist or the anarchist – it belongs to Evie. So what does Evie stand for?
“She blows up parliament, voting for anarchy. Mostly because she wasn’t offered an alternative by the film makers. There was no third choice to consider – and there should always be a third choice.”
I go on there to suggest a third choice that could have raised the movie above its genre, as well as become a positive artistic influence on society.
But alas, the vision of the film suffered from something that Looking Closer strives to fight: It knew what it was against, but it didn’t know what it was for.
-Sean
PS Jeff, I have to say that I didn’t see any Bush reference Mike’s comments. “And a rebel trying to inspire his own countrymen to stand up and change their country” seems to be a reference to Timothy McVeigh – which, quite frankly, scares me.
As V said in the movie the building is but a symbol. I do doubt that anyone would have been in the parlimant building on that Nov. 5th. This is just a movie after all, but one that makes you think.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson (1791)
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790), Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962
I’m not a fanatic , heck I don’t even believe that capital punishment is right. Death is to permanent and life is just to hard to come by. I think what the movie makes you realize is that the time to act to save your liberty and freedom is while you still have enough liberty and freedom to effect change, wait to long and peaceful change is almost impossible.