I watched most of V for Vendetta last night while folding clothes. It came by NetFlix. I thought it would never end. All the explaining and explaining.

I suppose if movies such as Independence Day can blow up 1600 PA Ave., the Brits can blow up Parliament on film. But, on a certain level, blowing up vacant legislative facilities as a protest and call for political reform is like shooting yourself in the foot. I mean, where is this new government you're calling for going to meet?

I like the film better thinking of it in terms of the early 80's, Margaret Thatcher, etc. I'm uncomfortable thinking of it in terms of the present administration. Whether that was intended or not¹. It's a better movie without "going there". In fact, I found those present-day parallels cheap, distracting, discrediting.

Sure, I've heard of Guy Fawkes. What Anglophile hasn't? But I didn't know what he looked like. Of course, if they burn him in effigy every year, they must have some idea of his appearance. Unless they just paint a face on a burlap bag. And I never would have guessed that the dictator was supposed to bear some resemblance to James Stuart. I tend to think of him, I mean, of the king, as a younger man than in the film because he assumed his thrones at young ages.

I was glad to learn that Guy Fawkes Night isn't a sectarian thing anymore, for the most part, and that other, more contemporary enemies are also remembered. And that, as this movie hints, there are occasions when Fawkes is something of a hero, in a British root-for-the-underdog way.

I think that I was capable of appreciating the movie intellectually and artistically even without being British, without having that milieu. And there were times that the direction was smart, stylish, beautiful. I read online that the dominoes were genuine. I hope so but I would have thought otherwise. I would hope that people are still willing and able to do such clever things.

Sure, it's Orwellian. But, if you can stomach the violence and torture (of a woman) ... which I can't and had to look away ... then it's worth seeing, I think. Oh, the Mengele allusion was also very disturbing, especially as carried out by a female doctor. The memorial to the children killed in the St. Mary's incident is too faintly reminiscent of The Children's Memorial at Yad Vashem.

¹ Moore remarked:

"[The movie] has been "turned into a Bush-era parable by people too timid to set a political satire in their own country.... It's a thwarted and frustrated and largely impotent American liberal fantasy of someone with American liberal values standing up against a state run by neoconservatives — which is not what the comic 'V for Vendetta' was about. It was about fascism, it was about anarchy, it was about England."

Also, The letter V, the number 5.