Remember, remember the fifth of November!

I just finished watching “V for Vendetta” (again) in 720p HD , still an amazing movie. I can only recommend it. There are two things which I pretty much liked more than the whole movie. The first was the the scene before the first explosion in which V was reciting the following:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Now this was the short version, the full version reads like this

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

The poem is about the famous failed Gunpowder Plot in 1605, in which Catholics tried to blown up the Parliament with King James I of England and VI of Scotland, his family and most of the Protestant aristocracy inside it.

I love poems recited in movies when and if they are fitting the moment. Which is also why I love the one scene with Captain James T. Kirk where he recites Hamlet to Q (“What a piece of work is man..”).

The other scene I loved is where V introduced himself to Evey:

Voilà!

In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate.

This visage, no mere veneer of vanity is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished.

However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition.

The only verdict is vengeance, a vendetta held as a votive not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous.

Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose.

So let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

In a nutshell “V for Vendetta” is about a totalitarian governed Great Britain by the right-wing fascist Norsefire party. V, the movie protagonist, is an anarchist whose only goal is the total abolishment of the totalitarian government and and the death of former detention camp employees by any means necessary.