In the past few years I’ve fallen in love with Mike Leigh’s work. The first film of his I saw was 2004’s Vera Drake, a dark and disturbing picture that doesn’t necessarily represent the side of Leigh I love, but is nonetheless a powerful film. It wasn’t until Happy-Go-Lucky in 2008 that I saw my second Leigh feature and the sheer lust for life that was exhibited in that film from Sally Hawkins’ performance to Leigh’s script won me over. Since then I’ve enjoyed Secrets and Lies, Topsy-Turvy, Another Year and now Naked as Criterion has upgraded their 2005 DVD edition to a beautiful Blu-ray transfer, that allows for Leigh’s direction and script to shine along with powerful performances and Dick Pope’s wonderful cinematography.
However, I won’t be quick to recommend Naked as a blind buy. This film is an alt-Happy-Go-Lucky and hues closer to Vera Drake in its darker tone as Johnny, a homeless and lost soul, navigates the streets of London, observing the world around him and doesn’t like what he sees. As Johnny, David Thewlis brings fury, compassion, wonder and frustration to the character. We first meet him from a distance, having sex in a dark Manchester back alley. The camera closes in to reveal what appears to be a rape. The female on the violent end of Johnny’s rage wrenches herself away and shouts at him as he runs off into the distance. From here he steals a car and makes way for London, where he plans on crashing at his ex-girlfriend’s (Lesley Sharp) place. The mood is set, but the overall intentions aren’t quite clear.
Leigh immediately casts our doubts about this character’s intentions and as the film plays on you can’t decide whether you want to sympathize with him or hate him as this tortured soul has grown frustrated with the world around him, and is acting out in the only way he knows how.
One of the reasons I like Leigh so much is he creates films that make you think, but he also doesn’t shy away from discussing them. He’s often been pegged as a bit of a curmudgeon and a crank, but when I interviewed him back in 2008 for Happy-Go-Lucky I found him very easy to talk to. In fact, looking back at that interview it would seem Sally Hawkins’ Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky is something of a similar spirit to that of Thewlis’ Johnny, the two simply go about their business in a much different way.
In a 2000 interview with author Will Self that’s included on this Criterion Blu-ray, Leigh describes Johnny as a frustrated idealist and not the cynic most people would peg him to be. Personally I think Leigh is being a bit kind to his protagonist, perhaps because there’s more of the filmmaker that inhabits this character than he would prefer to admit. Idealist or not, Johnny’s view of the world around him has become incredibly cynical as his frustration with advancements in technology and the dumbing down of society, despite the massive amounts of information surrounding people, is causing him to explode.
Perhaps Leigh’s intentions here are best represented in a quote he gave me back in 2008 when I asked if the state of today’s world would affect his upcoming films. Having not seen Naked at the time, I didn’t know the state of the world had already had an effect on his films. He told me, “[The] real point is we can sit around lamenting the way we’re destroying the planet and everything else that’s going on, but while we may do that there are people getting on with it. Poppy is one such. Teachers, people that nurture the future and those acts of optimism.”
In this respect Happy-Go-Lucky‘s Poppy and Naked‘s Johnny see the world the exact same way, one is simply optimistic while the other pessimistic. Maybe instead of calling Johnny a cynic, a pessimist would be more apt. Curiously, when Happy-Go-Lucky was released some critics loathed Poppy’s optimism… I wonder, would those same critics feel kinship with Johnny’s violent frustration?
Naked is a film, though, that didn’t capture me fully the first time around and maybe that’s why I disagree with Leigh on how to properly classify Johnny’s take on the world. I agree he’s frustrated. I can see he yearns for the days before everyone supposedly had all the answers and are now left to simply stare blankly into space, bored and without thought. His philosophical and religious rants are intriguing as I’ve had similar conversations myself, but his violent sexual outbursts I don’t find to be all that necessary, and are probably the main reason the film was labeled by some as misogynistic upon its release.
The film skirts that misogynistic label by presenting the violence as another outlet of Johnny’s frustration with the bored and impressionistic women he’s sleeping with. However, I don’t think that’s enough for me and neither is the argument that we live in a misogynistic world where relationships are violent. True, there’s a sense of reality to the film, but I think the line gets metaphorically blurred in this case. And matters aren’t helped with the inclusion of Greg Cruttwell’s Jeremy, a character that relishes in the power he has over women, but in a way far less concerned with the world around him. He’s presented as something of a counter to Johnny and it’s curious to hear Thewlis in the included audio commentary say he didn’t even know the early portions of Jeremy’s story existed until he saw the film.
Additional features on this Criterion release include a video interview with Neil Labute (The Wicker Man), the audio commentary I’ve already mentioned which is a patchwork of comments from Leigh, Thewlis and co-star Katrin Cartlidge and finally Mike Leigh’s 1987 short film The Short and Curlies which features Thewlis as well as Leigh’s ex-wife Alison Steadman. There’s also a booklet featuring essays by film critics Derek Malcolm (read here) and Amy Taubin (read here).
Who knows, perhaps after a another viewing this will be a film I can instantly recommend, but only for a specific audience. Then again, I’m pretty sure if you’ve made it this far in the review you’re well aware of what kind of films Mike Leigh has to offer. In that case this film is probably one for you and this Criterion Blu-ray is certainly a top notch product.
