Naked (1993)
'Naked' was the first Mike Leigh film I saw and I don't think any film since has ever changed me quite as much. It's rather like when I read '1984' when I was a teenager - nothing was the same afterwards. For one thing it kick started my love of Leigh's work and instigated that thrill of excitement whenever I hear he has a new film coming out. But I also experienced once again that rare feeling that an artist is telling me the truth in a world of lies.
It's about Johnny, played by David Thewlis, who is a fucked up genius who wanders round London spitting sagacious venom at everyone he meets. It's difficult to describe this performance but he's rather like Jesus - he is Messianic and I suppose you could get deep here about Mike Leigh being Jewish and searching for a Messiah - I don't know... could you?
He is frightening, cowardly - the film opens with him apparently raping a woman - and yet we grow to feel deep affection for this character who is so vulnerable and so astonishing. He spends some time with an optimistic security guard and poisons his mind, we feel, with his thoughts about the end of the world - taken from the Bible, from the book of revelation.
'the BAR CODE Brian, the ubiquitous fucking BAR CODE'
I just can't explain it to you the way he does. You have to see him shout at Brian in a dark room, the two of them in shadow, the camera fixed there forever it seems. What is this obsession with the future Brian? There IS no future...
When asked how his mother is he says :
'she's dead actually. She's still a good fuck though. Course I get it at a cheaper rate being her son and all...'
His dark eyes probe mercilessly into the hearts of every other lost, lonely, abandoned character on the screen and into YOU as you watch. There is no escaping him - he will own you after you have seen this film - if you have a glimmer of imagination, he might just become someone you want in your life,
even though he smells and is covered in his own blood.
He asks : 'what's it like being you?' - without irony. He wants to know.
I'm not quite sure where 'Naked' came from - it bucks the trend of sweet and sour social observation - it's still intimate but on a grand scale, if that makes sense.
I borrowed it from Strood Library and the Librarian gazed at me with excited eyes as she handed it over and told me how good it was. She must have been another Mike Leigh type person.
Like Well Self - I saw him interviewing Leigh once and he did nothing but talk about 'Naked'. Is it any wonder?
This is Ballard. This is Joyce. This is Dante.
Don't get me wrong, kids, this isn't an easy film to watch. In fact, it's fucking harrowing and difficult and terrifying - but essential.
A true work of utter, utter, utter, utter fucking genius - ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mike Leigh's
'Was I bored? No, I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody - you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the living body explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the universe explained to you and you're bored with it, so now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn't matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as it's new as long as it's new as long as it flashes and fuckin' bleeps in forty fuckin' different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I'm not fuckin' bored.'
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