V For Vendetta: Last Chance to See

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For those of you who care, a film comes out next week based on V for Vendetta, a comic-book by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. I remember it as a gloriously anarchic black and white serial in Warrior Magazine in the '80s, and I'm looking forward to the film with some trepidation. However it comes out, once I've seen it I have a feeling that I'll never look at the book in the same way. I'll be reading the book over the next couple of days, although I only have a colourised version, not the original black and white. There is an exhibition of that original artwork at the Guardian's Offices - http://www.guardian.co.uk/newsroom/story/0,,1716178,00.html - which I heartily recommend.

I hope they do manage to retain some of the atmosphere of the original. The only review I've read so far, in Q, approves of the film descibing V as a terrorist, though, not an anarchist, and says that it's ditched Moore's "1980s" politics. So I worry.

A taste of the distopic England which V sets himself against can be gathered from the song which introduces Book 2 of the Graphic Novel - not quite the same without Lloyd's pictures (or David J's music), but I've reproduced the lyrics below.

They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
Then leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret

In no longer pretty cities
There are fingers in the kitties,
There are warrants, forms and chitties
And a jackboot on the stair.
There's sex and death and human grime
In monochrome for one thin dime,
And at least the trains all run on time
But they don't go anywhere.
Facing their responsibilities
Either on their backs or on their knees,
There are ladies who just simply freeze
And dare not turn away

And the widows who refuse to cry
Will be dressed in garter and bow-tie
And taught to kick their legs up high
In this vicious cabaret.
At last the 1998 show!
The ballet on the burning stage!
The document'ry seen upon the fractured screen
The dreadful poem scrawled upon the crumpled page!

There's a policeman with an honest soul
That has seen whose head is on the pole
And he grunts as he fills his briar bowl
With a feeling of unease . . .
Then he briskly frisks the torn remains
For a fingerprint or crimson stains
And endeavours to ignore the chains
That he walks in to his knees.
While his master in the dark nearby
Inspects the hands with a brutal eye
That have never brushed a lover's thigh
But have squeezed a nation's throat.

And he hungers in his secret dreams
For the harsh embrace of cruel machines
But his lover is not what she seems
And she will not leave a note.
At last the 1998 show!
The situation tragedy!
Grand opera slick with soap!
Cliff-hangers with no hope!
The water-colour in the flooded gallery.

There's a girl who'll push but will not shove
And she's desperate for her father's love.
She believes the hand beneath the glove
May be the one she needs to hold.
Though she doubts her host's moralities
She decides that she is more at ease
In the land of doing-as-you-please,
Than outside in the cold.
But the backdrops peel and sets give way
And the cast gets eaten by the play.
There's a murderer at the matinee,
There are dead men in the aisles.

And the patrons and the actors too
And uncertain if the show is through
And with sidelong looks await their cue,
But the frozen mask just smiles.
At last the 1998 show!
The torchsong no-one ever sings!
The curfew chorus line!
The comedy divine!
The bulging eyes of puppets, strangled by their strings!

There's thrills and chills and girls galore, there's sing-songs and surprises!
There's something here for everyone, reserve your seat today!
There's mischiefs and malarkies,
But no queers or yids or darkies
Within this bastard's carnival---
This vicious cabaret!