V for Vendetta Casting Choices

[Shade Everdark]

I realize there is already a thread for personal reviews of the overall film. I thought this topic was particular enough that it warranted a spin-off thread.

I saw V for Vendetta on Sunday, with a good friend. (She is a board member, but I won't out her; she may do so, if she chooses ;-). What struck me immediately afterward about the film, which I remarked to my friend, was the particular casting choices made.

Quite frankly, whatever else can be said for this lush Victorian-esque dystopian vision (and despite a rather lackluster romance between Portman and Weaving, the movie was quite though-provoking), the casting choices, in my humble opinion, were inspired. The casting director skillfully employed actors in roles in direct opposition to the roles that became iconic for them. Consider:

-Hugo Weaving. He achieved superstar status (at least in America) with his role as Agent Smith, in the Matrix. In V for Vendetta, he takes on the role of V, lone freedom fighter against oppressive government, making him the Neo of this film against his Agent Smith in the previous.

-Stephen Rea. His blockbuster role (and really, the only one I can remember him in) was as Fergus, in the Crying Game, as the soldier who spends the film going through a change of heart about alternative lifestyles. Here, his role is as police detective for a regime with an explicit intention of eradication homosexuals within its borders. He undergoes a change of heart here, as well, but only because he has found the truth--there is no lie or opinion to hide behind.

-John Hurt. Perhaps the most inspired casting choice in the film. One of John Hurt's most classic roles was as the redoubtable Winston Smith, all-too-human protagonist of the 1984 production of Orwell's classic 1984. Here, in a movie that draws wholesale from Orwell's chilling tale of government fear, propaganda, and totalitarian control over everday life, Hurt takes the opposite end of the spectrum, playing essentially the role of Big Brother-cum-Adolf Hitler.

Perhaps I read too much into the coincidences of an actor's life, but I don't think so, at least not in this instance. This lends itself to the idea that McTiegue and the Wachowskis really put some thought into a film that questions the nature of terrorism, the limits of government, and how far personal freedoms extend.