V for Vendetta is a new British movie set in a totalitarian Britain of 2020 -
Don't worry, Tony, it's only a film (for now)
by PAUL HARRIS, Daily Mail
9th March 2006
It is several of Tony Blair's nightmares rolled into one.
Parliament is ablaze and the face of Big Ben is about to explode. The corrupt and authoritarian government is getting its comeuppance from an exasperated public.
To borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde, you'd need a heart of stone not to laugh. But don't worry, Prime Minister, it's only a movie.
The dramatic scenes feature in V For Vendetta, released next week with a cast including Natalie Portman, John Hurt and Stephen Fry.
Parallels
Set in 2020, it portrays a Britain with some curiously familiar parallels to the one being created by a certain New Labour government.
What, for example, if the police were to be given extraordinary powers of arrest, the right to enforce curfews, monitor everyone through CCTV and lock people up for speaking out of turn?
What if a totalitarian government were to control and censor the media, drive out freedom of speech where it didn't accord with state policy and send in security boneheads when someone dared to criticise the head of state at, say, a Party Conference?
What if there were a Ministry for Propaganda, tasked with spreading the government message through carefully-managed, presidential-style addresses and cynical disinformation briefings?
What if the government came to power on a platform of lies, broken promises and weasel words?
Of course, it couldn't possibly happen here.
In a remarkable coincidence, one of those who helped on the film was Tony Blair's teenage son Euan, then doing work experience.
Tanks and soldiers in Whitehall
Perhaps surprisingly, the producers won permission from the 14 relevant authorities to close off parts of Whitehall for around four hours one spring morning while they shot scenes involving tanks and 1,000 actors dressed as soldiers.
V for Vendetta was to have come out in November, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes's attempts to bring down the government of his day. It was postponed because the 7/7 atrocities were thought to be too fresh in the mind.
In the film, the uprising is spearheaded by a masked and caped anti-hero named V. Apart from Parliament ablaze, scenes include the scales of justice over the Old Bailey exploding into a million pieces.
Rather than using computer graphics, the special effects team assembled scale models in plaster of the buildings at Shepperton Studios, including a 20ft high Old Bailey and the Houses of Parliament measuring 42ft wide by 30ft high.
Director James McTeigue said: "It shows what can happen when a society is ruled by government, rather that the government being a voice of the people.
"It's not such a great leap to think that this can happen when the government stops listening to the people."
Stephen Fry, who plays a talk show host, said of the film: "We don't know what's going to happen in 20 years but it's certainly possible that the liberty of the individual will be compromised.
"If not by the state, by a combination of the state and billions of bits of data floating around us which anyone can access whether it's organised crime, corporate global organisations or whether it's individual states.
"There's no question that things will be up in the air in a way that we probably can't even imagine."
dailymail.co.uk
Don't worry, Tony, it's only a film (for now)
by PAUL HARRIS, Daily Mail
9th March 2006
It is several of Tony Blair's nightmares rolled into one.
Parliament is ablaze and the face of Big Ben is about to explode. The corrupt and authoritarian government is getting its comeuppance from an exasperated public.
To borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde, you'd need a heart of stone not to laugh. But don't worry, Prime Minister, it's only a movie.
The dramatic scenes feature in V For Vendetta, released next week with a cast including Natalie Portman, John Hurt and Stephen Fry.
Parallels
Set in 2020, it portrays a Britain with some curiously familiar parallels to the one being created by a certain New Labour government.
What, for example, if the police were to be given extraordinary powers of arrest, the right to enforce curfews, monitor everyone through CCTV and lock people up for speaking out of turn?
What if a totalitarian government were to control and censor the media, drive out freedom of speech where it didn't accord with state policy and send in security boneheads when someone dared to criticise the head of state at, say, a Party Conference?
What if there were a Ministry for Propaganda, tasked with spreading the government message through carefully-managed, presidential-style addresses and cynical disinformation briefings?
What if the government came to power on a platform of lies, broken promises and weasel words?
Of course, it couldn't possibly happen here.
In a remarkable coincidence, one of those who helped on the film was Tony Blair's teenage son Euan, then doing work experience.
Tanks and soldiers in Whitehall
Perhaps surprisingly, the producers won permission from the 14 relevant authorities to close off parts of Whitehall for around four hours one spring morning while they shot scenes involving tanks and 1,000 actors dressed as soldiers.
V for Vendetta was to have come out in November, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Guy Fawkes's attempts to bring down the government of his day. It was postponed because the 7/7 atrocities were thought to be too fresh in the mind.
In the film, the uprising is spearheaded by a masked and caped anti-hero named V. Apart from Parliament ablaze, scenes include the scales of justice over the Old Bailey exploding into a million pieces.
Rather than using computer graphics, the special effects team assembled scale models in plaster of the buildings at Shepperton Studios, including a 20ft high Old Bailey and the Houses of Parliament measuring 42ft wide by 30ft high.
Director James McTeigue said: "It shows what can happen when a society is ruled by government, rather that the government being a voice of the people.
"It's not such a great leap to think that this can happen when the government stops listening to the people."
Stephen Fry, who plays a talk show host, said of the film: "We don't know what's going to happen in 20 years but it's certainly possible that the liberty of the individual will be compromised.
"If not by the state, by a combination of the state and billions of bits of data floating around us which anyone can access whether it's organised crime, corporate global organisations or whether it's individual states.
"There's no question that things will be up in the air in a way that we probably can't even imagine."
dailymail.co.uk
The writer has asked that his name not be associated with the film[Alan Moore]
