Naked

Reviewed by J. Lunden on July 6, 2011

Director Mike Leigh has a fascinating process. He and his actors choose a subject and situation and then build the script through rigorous rehearsals. The script is then refined by Leigh and brought to production. It is an atypical cinematic process that has yielded extraordinary results. Leigh’s sense of inceptive collaboration offers his actors the unique opportunity for creative ownership and total inhabitance. As a result, some of the finest screen performances can be seen in Leigh’s work. When watching Leigh’s films, I often imagine the rehearsals and wonder about the pleasures and pains of such a process. I image Naked was among the most ferocious.

The antihero of Naked is drifter Johnny, played by a furiously raw David Thewlis. In Johnny, Leigh and Thewlis create a self-perpetuating monster—a creature of pure, defensive ego whose intelligence and penetrating articulation render existence down to a nearly unbearable state. The character claws at the grand facade, wild with lonely anarchistic maladies, until nothing remains but blackness. And, as Johnny admits, he cannot stand the quiet.

Johnny’s intelligence and isolation often manifest as cruelty, especially towards his lovers, whose affections he cannot accept. For Johnny, sex is used as either a destructive act or as a failed conduit to some genuine emotional catharsis. (If the Joker had any sexual proclivities, I’d wonder if perhaps Naked were responsible for his scars.) And it is during an act of sexual violence that we are hurled into Johnny’s life. The film opens on a controversial scene wherein Johnny engages in rough sex with a woman in a dark Manchester alley. After the dirty deed is done, the woman warns Johnny that revenge will be swift, so he flees Manchester and descends upon the London flat of ex-girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp). While waiting for Louise to return from work, Johnny meets her junkie roommate, Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge). Recognizing their analogous damages, the two quickly fall into a pathetic relationship. But Johnny finds no solace with Sophie and soon wanders back out into his cold reality.

Many have accused Naked of being a work of blatant misogyny, which I find odd considering Leigh’s body of work. While I think the accusation is blindly reactionary, it seems that Leigh foresaw such a reaction and chose to write in a devil to juxtapose Johnny throughout the film. This devil, sometimes called Jeremy (Greg Cruttwell), is a genuine psychopath and rapist whose narrative travels alongside Johnny’s before converging near the end of the film. Jeremy, like an amateur Patrick Bateman, functions as a class comparison to Johnny’s working class drifter, but also as a comparison between the purely evil and the disaffected damned.

Mike Leigh’s Naked is surely one of the most provocative (and darkly comic) works of 20th century British cinema, and David Thewlis’ gnashing, mesmeric performance is surely one of the finest ever filmed. It is a film of exhilarating observation and careful construction. As Johnny wanders through the dimly lit streets of cinematographer Dick Pope’s post-Thatcher London, he encounters a gallery of fellow souls, lost and disturbed. Yet, his rage and isolation do not allow him to commiserate. Instead he uses his curse for articulation to eviscerate all who cross his path, savaging their beliefs and enabling constructs, ranting to the secure about apocalyptic circumstances with only slightly less alliterative fervor than Alan Moore’s V. And as his victims reel in his wake, Johnny swaggers away, like the shark that can never stop swimming.

Note: David Thewlis has a line in the film where he claims to be a werewolf. I wonder if this inspired the Harry Potter producers to cast him as lycanthrope Remus Lupin. Aaahoooo, werewolves of London.

Naked comes to Blu-ray in its original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The transfer utilizes the AVC codec, takes up 36GB of space on the disc, and has a video bitrate of 31.99Mbps.

If you’ve seen Criterion’s solid, but now very dated, original DVD transfer, prepare to be very pleased. This new Blu-ray edition improves the image on every front. Color is far more accurate, black levels and contrast are excellent, and the now visible grain structure gives the transfer a far more filmic appearance. All of Dick Pope’s moody subtleties have been restored to the image and the 35mm elements are nearly free of damage. This is the only way to watch the film on the home stage.

Naked is presented here with a 24-bit DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track at 2057Kbps.

The provided DTS-HD mix does a stellar job of communicating the film’s dialogue and ambiance, but also Andrew Dickson’s score; the lulling-yet-cautious harp playing and the unnerving percussions play beautifully across the two-channel spectrum.

All of the excellent features from Criterion’s original DVD pressing have been ported to this new Blu-ray edition.

Commentary:
This is the commentary included on Criterion’s 2005 DVD. It features Leigh, Thewlis and actress Katrin Cartlidge. This is a wonderful track, featuring invaluable insight (anecdotal, technical and intellectual) into Leigh’s cinematic process.

Neil LaBute on Naked (13min):
An interview with filmmaker Neil LaBute on the film.

The Art Zone: The Conversation (37min):
Novelist Will Self interviews Mike Leigh in a pub for the BBC show The Art Zone.

The Short and Curlies (17min):
A 1987 short by Leigh and starring Thewlis (with optional director’s commentary).

Theatrical Trailer:
The film’s original theatrical trailer.

Booklet:
Included is a 16-page booklet featuring essays by critics Derek Malcolm and Amy Taubin.

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