Director/writer: Mike Leigh
Photography: Dick Pope
Music: Andrew Dickson
Editor: Jon Gregory
Cast: David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Katrin Cartlidge, Greg Cruttwell, Peter Wight, Ewen Bremner, Susan Vidler, Deborah Maclaren, Gina McKee, Claire Skinner
Naked made quite a splash when it first came out in 1993, getting a lot of love at Cannes that year, but it's a movie that is easier to admire than to like. The main character, Johnny, is one of the most detestable characters I know in fiction. David Thewlis puts him over completely in an amazing performance that was the source of most of the picture's honors. Naked opens on Johnny raping a woman in the street, stealing a car, and fleeing to London to look up an old girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp). She is cold to him, so he seduces her roommate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge and an indelible accent). Johnny never stops talking and mocking. Self-destructive does not even start with this guy. He's so extreme the idea of derangement and mental illness inevitably intrudes. He is highly intellectual and freely rants conspiracy theories, many rooted in the Bible and Book of Revelations. Whether he actually believes them, or is once again just "taking the piss," is hard to tell.
Last time I looked at Naked was my third time. The first was when it was new. I was caught up in the hype and liked it reflexively. It's by director and writer Mike Leigh who knows what he is doing making a movie. The second time I liked it less—the dreary look and feel, the harping rants, Johnny's prolific bad behavior. It's a lot. This third time I came down more in the middle, partly because I knew how to set my expectations. It's basically people being beastly to each other in serial fashion, although inevitably there are some good people too in this trainwreck, plus lots of ciphers. The main problem, and it's not just Johnny, is a kind of toxic immaturity, a selfishness and smallness to most of these people that is unrelenting. A typical exchange as someone is leaving someone else's premises: "Are you coming back?" "What the fuck for?"
Naked made quite a splash when it first came out in 1993, getting a lot of love at Cannes that year, but it's a movie that is easier to admire than to like. The main character, Johnny, is one of the most detestable characters I know in fiction. David Thewlis puts him over completely in an amazing performance that was the source of most of the picture's honors. Naked opens on Johnny raping a woman in the street, stealing a car, and fleeing to London to look up an old girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp). She is cold to him, so he seduces her roommate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge and an indelible accent). Johnny never stops talking and mocking. Self-destructive does not even start with this guy. He's so extreme the idea of derangement and mental illness inevitably intrudes. He is highly intellectual and freely rants conspiracy theories, many rooted in the Bible and Book of Revelations. Whether he actually believes them, or is once again just "taking the piss," is hard to tell.
Last time I looked at Naked was my third time. The first was when it was new. I was caught up in the hype and liked it reflexively. It's by director and writer Mike Leigh who knows what he is doing making a movie. The second time I liked it less—the dreary look and feel, the harping rants, Johnny's prolific bad behavior. It's a lot. This third time I came down more in the middle, partly because I knew how to set my expectations. It's basically people being beastly to each other in serial fashion, although inevitably there are some good people too in this trainwreck, plus lots of ciphers. The main problem, and it's not just Johnny, is a kind of toxic immaturity, a selfishness and smallness to most of these people that is unrelenting. A typical exchange as someone is leaving someone else's premises: "Are you coming back?" "What the fuck for?"
Johnny is scruffy and probably smells bad and he's not afraid to say practically anything to anyone. He's often funny when he goes off and he goes off continually—once he starts talking he doesn't stop. He fastens on to some point, usually a sarcastic one mocking his unfortunate interlocutor of the moment, and he grinds away at it like a squealing table saw. It's a wonder people put up with it and in the second half of the movie they basically don't, though not all the beatings are because of his mouth. The movie is often filmed on location, but there is a stagy, theatrical feel to much of it and a sense of improvisation. The scenes were indeed often worked up from improvisations but were generally finalized and rehearsed before shooting.
My favorite part of Naked is the middle section where Johnny encounters a strange, philosophical security guard (Peter Wight) and a series of strange women. The movie does not lose its primary caustic tone from Johnny in these interludes, but the scenes seem more dreamlike and unreal. He finds a young Scottish guy randomly screaming for his girlfriend. Then he finds the girlfriend randomly shouting for him. "Maggie!" "Archie!" When they finally meet up again Archie starts beating up Maggie.
The security guard Johnny quickly IDs as more of a sophist and goes to work needling him. For all his mediocrity the security guard is a kind man, taking Johnny in from the cold at the risk of his job. There's a woman across the way the security guard ogles nightly on his rounds as she undresses. Johnny, of course, winds up over there seducing her and then insulting her to the soul, knowing he is wounding the security guard too. Still later, Johnny picks up a waitress who reads him as kindly. It's not actually so hard to take him that way—he's often funny and can even be gentle. But that encounter goes to some strange and dreamlike places too. Finally, back in the street in the middle of the night, he starts mouthing off to the wrong people and finds some who aren't having any of it. Johnny is so unlikable we don't even mind that much when people start knocking him around.
The whole thing takes a farcical turn at the end as a character we have been observing along the edges, the depraved rapey landlord Jeremy (Greg Cruttwell), comes more to the fore and Naked starts to feel like an early cut of 1997's Funny Games. But somehow Leigh makes that work too. Lesley Sharp as Johnny's true love more or less, and Katrin Cartlidge as her roommate Sophie who falls hard for Johnny, carry it home in the finish. At the very end, true to form all the way, the injured Johnny robs them and hobbles away into the city. More beatings are likely ahead with nightfall and that seems to be fine with Johnny, and honestly, once again I don't particularly mind either. Problems of a problem protagonist—sadly, he deserves it, given that no one deserves it. I'd say Naked is worth at least one look for most, bearing in mind content warnings (see DoestheDogDie.com).
My favorite part of Naked is the middle section where Johnny encounters a strange, philosophical security guard (Peter Wight) and a series of strange women. The movie does not lose its primary caustic tone from Johnny in these interludes, but the scenes seem more dreamlike and unreal. He finds a young Scottish guy randomly screaming for his girlfriend. Then he finds the girlfriend randomly shouting for him. "Maggie!" "Archie!" When they finally meet up again Archie starts beating up Maggie.
The security guard Johnny quickly IDs as more of a sophist and goes to work needling him. For all his mediocrity the security guard is a kind man, taking Johnny in from the cold at the risk of his job. There's a woman across the way the security guard ogles nightly on his rounds as she undresses. Johnny, of course, winds up over there seducing her and then insulting her to the soul, knowing he is wounding the security guard too. Still later, Johnny picks up a waitress who reads him as kindly. It's not actually so hard to take him that way—he's often funny and can even be gentle. But that encounter goes to some strange and dreamlike places too. Finally, back in the street in the middle of the night, he starts mouthing off to the wrong people and finds some who aren't having any of it. Johnny is so unlikable we don't even mind that much when people start knocking him around.
The whole thing takes a farcical turn at the end as a character we have been observing along the edges, the depraved rapey landlord Jeremy (Greg Cruttwell), comes more to the fore and Naked starts to feel like an early cut of 1997's Funny Games. But somehow Leigh makes that work too. Lesley Sharp as Johnny's true love more or less, and Katrin Cartlidge as her roommate Sophie who falls hard for Johnny, carry it home in the finish. At the very end, true to form all the way, the injured Johnny robs them and hobbles away into the city. More beatings are likely ahead with nightfall and that seems to be fine with Johnny, and honestly, once again I don't particularly mind either. Problems of a problem protagonist—sadly, he deserves it, given that no one deserves it. I'd say Naked is worth at least one look for most, bearing in mind content warnings (see DoestheDogDie.com).
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