James Mcteigue's Film V For Vendetta

James McTeigue’s film, V for Vendetta is about a fascist government dubbed the Norsefire party taking power through fear and intimidation, the only person opposing them is an anarchist vigilante whose only moniker is V. The director uses the character V to illustrate the idea of revenge, whilst reinforcing the theme through the use of camera angles, sound, lighting and symbolism throughout the film.

Throughout the film, McTeigue uses V to display the idea of revenge in his film. This is explained in that while V is a person, the director gives him lines of dialogue that represent what he has become such as the line “Beneath this mask there is more than flesh, beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof” this indicates

An example of this is during the scene between V and Lewis Prothero. V startles Lewis causing him to fall onto the ground, where the camera angle switches an over the shoulder shot from V’s perspective, this shows that V has more power than Lewis and that he intends to exact revenge on Lewis. In addition, the music during that scene is indicative of V’s intent to exact revenge as the music it is very dramatic and evil. Another example of the director using camera angles to display V’s power over someone is evident during the scene between V and Delia, where the director uses a two shot to both display v’s relationship with Delia and to show his power over her. Also during the scene v is shrouded in darkness which is indicative of his V’s relationship with the viewer, as we are in the dark about whether V’s plan is to exact justice or to exact revenge on the people who wronged him. During the near final scene of the film, the director uses a close up shot to show that Sutler has lost all his power and that V’s plan had finally been completed. As shown in the scene beforehand with the dominos, Sutler was the last domino to be toppled over and with his death, V’s plan had been