Naked (Criterion)
One of the essential films of the 1990s, Mike Leigh’s brilliant and controversial Naked stars David Thewlis as Johnny, a charming, eloquent, and relentlessly vicious drifter in London. Rejecting all those who would care for him, the volcanic Johnny hurls himself into a nocturnal odyssey through the city, colliding with a succession of the desperate and the dispossessed and scorching everyone in his path. With a virtuoso script and raw performances by Thewlis and costars Katrin Cartlidge and Lesley Sharp, Leigh’s panorama of England’s crumbling underbelly is a showcase of black comedy and doomsday prophecy, and was the winner of the best director and actor prizes at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
Member Reviews
Bleak but great - rnhaas
This is quite the movie. First off, Thewlis is incredible. This is one of the performances of the decade by any measure. He is so utterly convincing as Johnny you really forget you are watching an actor and almost start believing this guy exists. The film itself doesn't have much of a narrative but it's a compelling - often hilarious, often disturbing - series of vignettes that portray underclass London in the early 90s. I might have trouble believing some of it if I didn't live in a downtown myself.If you're depressed or bi-polar DON'T rent this film - Bobbie
David Thewlis' interpretation of Mile Leigh's edge-of-intellectual-insanity-in-urban-decay script is worth the price of admission alone - along with the late Katrin Kartlidge at the top of her game. No surprise that Thewlis and Leigh received recognition from several important fest's but frightened the more commercial events. Warning: This dark study of monologue/dialogue, personal demons and social decline is a long and painful pinball game - but brilliant nonetheless.Naked - Coco
Mike Leigh’s greatest film is Candide for disaffected urban wastrels who would rather see damage done with the tongue than with tools more explicitly militarist is origin. Leigh is also outspoken concerning the influence of Renoir’s (likewise recently Criterionized) Boudu sauvé des eaux (’32), and Naked shares that film’s implicit criticism of our tendency to fetishize figures from the margins whose behavior we would find deplorable if it were to emerge from our own cloistered circles. As such the film is both a picaresque/carnivalesque treat and an implicit critique of the bourgeoisie machinations of popular cinematographic practices. David Thewlis’ insanely brave performance, and consequent physical transformation into misanthropic Johnny, with his veritable hard on for apocalypses of all shapes and sizes, is one of the major totemic achievements of 90s cinema anywhere. Fans of British cinema who are tired of over-quoting Withnail and I to their friends would be well advised to dip into the grab-bag of colloquial downers endlessly on display here (“may all yr children be born deformed!”). A ruthless and bleak film that will make you cringe at the fact that you occasionally break down into teary-eyed fits of uncontrollable laughter. Not one to watch with yr English nana.
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Bleak but great - rnhaas
This is quite the movie. First off, Thewlis is incredible. This is one of the performances of the decade by any measure. He is so utterly convincing as Johnny you really forget you are watching an actor and almost start believing this guy exists. The film ...If you're depressed or bi-polar DON'T rent this film - Bobbie
David Thewlis' interpretation of Mile Leigh's edge-of-intellectual-insanity-in-urban-decay script is worth the price of admission alone - along with the late Katrin Kartlidge at the top of her game. No surprise that Thewlis and Leigh received recognition from ...Naked - Coco
Mike Leigh’s greatest film is Candide for disaffected urban wastrels who would rather see damage done with the tongue than with tools more explicitly militarist is origin. Leigh is also outspoken concerning the influence of Renoir’s (likewise recently Criterionized) ...