What I found most interesting about V for Vendatta was that it conveyed not only how ideas and ideologies can be a powerful force but also how, in the absence of scrutiny, individuals can employ morality to justify almost anything. The actions of both sides of this political battle raise question an important question: When do the ends justify the means, and who gets to decide when the ends justify the means? As we were watching the film, I kept asking myself what makes a person realize that the ends no longer justify the means and whether there are truly some people who never reach that realization. Specifically, I wondered if it is humanly possible for a person like Chancellor Sutler, for example, to sincerely view every act, regardless of the harm it inflicts, as furthering the creation of some world or forwarding some goal that will result in an amount of good that far outweighs the harm. A key insight that I took away from the film is that scrutinizing the means often reveals whether those means are actually in service of some purported end. Indeed, it is in finding out how Chancellor Sutler rose to power that Finch begins to fully understand that the intolerant, oppressive acts the government imposes in the present are not in service of realizing and protecting some larger political and moral vision for the country.
Additionally, the film offers a powerful reminder of the importance of interrogating the ideologies that govern our society and shape the way we see the world. If we never take those ideological glasses off, they become a blindfold. By offering that reminder, the film also made me consider how crucial a role dissent plays in society. When there is always someone willing to step forward and voice a dissenting opinion or provoke others to view matters from a different perspective, it becomes harder and harder for people to turn a blind eye toward the discrepancies between an action and the ideological framing of that action.