V For Vendetta
Natalie Portman Starts A Fire
By Cole Smithey
At a point in history when George Orwell’s dystopian nightmare of "1984" has been realized and surpassed by a deceptive brand of fascism that goes under the anesthetizing moniker of capitalism, "V For Vendetta" (written by Alan Moore between 1981 and 1988) comes across as a scathingly subversive political satire. Moore seamlessly folds together elements of "1984," "Fahrenheit 451," "Brave New World" and "The Diary Of Anne Frank" with iconic superhero mythology and a dash of spaghetti western to form a highly original and complex story about the nature of social revolution.
"Every action will create an equal and opposing reaction," murmurs the Guy Fawkes-inspired literary anti-hero V (Hugo Weaving) who never takes off the harlequin mask that conceals the horrible burn scars he suffered while imprisoned in a government detention center not unlike the American prison at Guantanamo Bay. V becomes involved in a complex catch-and-release relationship, with the lovely Evey (Natalie Portman), which turns the story into a narrative maze of mirrors. It’s only when Evey makes her crisis decision that the story brings full circle the public uprising that Guy Fawkes hoped for when he ineffectively attempted to blow up Parliament in 1605.
Since enthralling audiences at the delicate age of 13 with her bold debut big screen performance in Luc Besson’s "Leon The Professional" (1994) Natalie Portman has blossomed into a versatile actress with a range that expands exponentially with every new role she takes on. Famously petite, expressive and athletic, Natalie Portman’s outsized talent seeped through every pore of her nubile skin at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Manhattan where she sat in her chair with exquisite poise like a dancer anxious to leap onto an empty stage. Accompanied by "V For Vendetta" director James McTeigue, illustrator David Lloyd and producer Joel Silver, Natalie confirmed her reputation as a consummate professional in answering our questions with warmth and honesty.
CS: I enjoyed your performance in "Free Zone" at Cannes last year, and that’s a film just as politically charged as "V For Vendetta." Do you keep a close eye on political issues?
NP: I guess I’m politically aware, but I think I get sick of the news after a while because I’m a pretty optimistic person, so I like to go back to personal joys too.
CS: Natalie, what attracted you to this part?
NP: Well, I was really excited about the movie as a whole–just the prospect of making a really entertaining two-hour action movie that actually had substance in it. And for the character, I think that I’ve always been so interested by what would lead someone to commit violence. What would bring someone to the point where they thought that violence was a justifiable means to express their political beliefs and that was an exciting sort of mindset to try and understand.
CS: Have any of your personal political opinions changed since making the film?
NP: I don’t know about political [opinions], but my thinking about violence deepened. They’re questions that don’t have answers but that you can get more of a complicated understanding of.
I think the luck of having the story take place in an imaginative future is that it respects the audience to make their own connections to real historical and current events. People see so many different things in it. Joel [Silver] tells a story about this South Korean reporter who was convinced it was about North Korea. So, you see how what context people come from, they bring to the story.
CS: And how was it to play a romantic scene with a guy who’s always wearing a mask?
NP: Well its amazing you know, doing these interviews the past few days, all the women are like, ‘wow he’s so sexy!’ And I’m like, (laughs) I think there’s this thing about the mask that, because you’re always wondering what’s going on behind it, you’re trying to figure out what he’s feeling. You’re trying to see is he laughing under there, is he crying under there, is he angry, is he desperate? You know, and because you’re thinking so much what he’s doing, you almost become him in a certain way. There’s this engagement with the character that the audience feels that you feel when you’re standing in front of it.
Hugo is an incredible actor so even though he had that barrier of not being able to use his face, which we’re so used to using as film actors—with the camera right there, he was able to use his physicality and his voice to really create his character.
CS: There’s been a lot of discussion about the scene where your hair was cut off. What were you thinking about as they were cutting off your hair?
NP: Well, I was very focused on being where the character is at that moment, which is in a very traumatic place with this violence being committed against her. We only had one shot to do it because you can’t go back and re-shave the head. We had several cameras on and we had rehearsed the head shaving with volunteer guys from the crew. But, for me personally it was a choice I was happy to make.
CS: Your character Evey is an innocent who becomes a revolutionary. But isn’t it true that her parents were really big activists and they came to an unfortunate end? Isn’t it possible that she was already ripe for the transformation that she undergoes?
NP: Right. Absolutely, but I think she has an aversion to it, an innate aversion to it because of what happened to her parents too. So I thought that’s always a really interesting conflict, where people have to sort of think about what they would want to do to help make, you know, the world better in general. Basically, helping strangers as opposed to helping their family, like she obviously was in a position where her parents chose their political ideals over her in a way and also there is always the argument that by doing nothing you’re doing a sort of violence too. Conforming to the status quo is you know, allowing that violence to occur. So she goes from one kind of violence to another.
There’s an article I read about Iran in Time magazine about how consumerism was used to quell the masses, because young people, because they’re allowed to have Mercedes and Gucci bags, are not raising their voices against the lack of freedom of press, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, that we enjoy.
CS: You worked with a dialog coach to adopt a British accent. There are different word meanings in our native tongue – for example, if I said, "Would you like to see my new pants?," you might be slightly offended in England. Was it as difficult to adapt to the differences between the meanings of words as opposed to learning the accent?
NP: It was definitely a challenge to take on the accent because I wanted to, first of all, not be focusing on it too much when I was working that it actually broke into the character. I worked with a dialect coach for a month in Israel while I was there, and then she was there with me the whole time so that I could be comfortable enough that I could throw it away.
CS: Although the movie was shot in Germany, I presume you’ve spent time in England. Is there anything in particular that you like about England, and would you ever consider living there?
NP: Living there, I don’t know because my friends and family are in New York and that’s the most important thing about where you choose to live. But I do end up working in London a lot and I really love it there. It’s like the best film-going city I’ve ever been to. With all of the theaters showing repertoire stuff on the weekends, it’s a fun place to be on a weekend.
CS: Who has been the most inspirational person in your life?
NP: My parents, as most people’s parents are for better or worse, are the most inspirational people in my life.
CS: Do you see a parallel between Evey and Anne Frank?
NP: Well a lot of people have thought that, but it certainly wasn’t present in my mind as being Anne Frank referenced. Obviously, there’s a lot of Holocaust-type imagery and ideas because Nazi Germany is the prime example of totalitarianism of our recent past that I think is most strongly echoed in our visual imagery and that sort of thing. But obviously, the benefit of having it exist in an imagined future is that you can relate to many of the historical and current events, you know, make many connections that it sort of has a layered affect of historical events, historical illusions I suppose.
CS: What kind of movies are you looking to do at this stage of your career?
NP: I’m just trying to do stuff that’s different all the time–something new and interesting for me that will hopefully be interesting for other people to watch. I definitely want to make movies that people like. I mean, the point of creating a movie is to interact with an audience and to give them some sort of entertainment and also some sort of feeling.
