« After 100 shorts, Area Six: Chicago's James Fotopoulos tries to go comm'l | Main | New Yorker anti-Normal?: Colleges screening pix without pay »
February 27, 2006
Leaving it to the divulgers: Wolcott on Vendetta
James Wolcott enthuses elliptically over on his corner: "If it seems as if I’m darting around V for Vendetta rather than zeroing in on what I liked/didn’t like, grading the performances, and pointing-out-subtle-details-to-prove-how-observant-I-am, it’s because I don’t want to give away too much of the movie, leaving that job to A. O. Scott and his fellow divulgers. To say that I found the domino montage as thrilling a coup de cinema as I’ve seen since DePalma first displayed his slashing mastery of crosscutting is to sound cryptic, but to be unelliptical I’d have to explain too much and wreck your fun. And make no mistake[,] V for Vendetta is fun, dangerous fun, percussive with brutality and laced with ironic ambiguity and satirical slapstick (a Benny Hill homage, no less!). But gives the movie its rebel power is the moral seriousnessthat drives the action, emotion, and allegory. That’s what I didn’t expect from the Wachowski brothers (The Matrix), this angry, summoning Tom Paine moral dispatch that puts our pundits, politicians, and cable news hosts to shame. V for Vendetta instills force into the very essence of four-letter words like hate, love, and (especially) fear, and releases that force like a fist. Off come the masks, and the faces are revealed."
Posted by pride at February 27, 2006 11:54 AM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)