Naked (1993)
Directed by Mike Leigh
Genres - Comedy, Drama |
Sub-Genres - Black Comedy Film |
Release Date - Aug 6, 1993 |
Run Time - 132 min. |
MPAA Rating - NR
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Pablo Retana
April 27, 2022
Johnny (David Thewlis) asks the question “[are] you with me?” 11 times in Naked. He uses it colloquially to mean something like ‘do you understand what I’m saying’ (and well he might ask, given his frequently esoteric discourse), but we can sense a hidden meaning – an ironic plea for company that is not at all unlike the “self-fulfilling prophec[ies]” that he mentions at one point; since Johnny’s self-loathing is only surpassed by his loathing for the very few people actually willing to be around him, he’s constantly either pushing others away or pushing them into pushing him away.
Thewlis’s Johnny is reminiscent of Richard E. Grant’s Withnail, only much, much darker. He is quick-witted and sharp-tongued, but the targets of his unforgiving sarcasm are either low-hanging fruit, innocent bystanders, or totally oblivious to his surgically precise puns. He is highly intelligent but delusional and paranoid. He despises clichés but his entire belief system is one big, fat cliché. He has a way with words, but never has a kind word to say to or about anyone. In short, Johnny is, like the Green Day song, a walking contradiction (and he does spend a lot of time walking around the cold London streets, whither he has fled to escape a beating in his hometown of Manchester, only to get a beating anyway, in yet another self-fulfilling prophecy).
All things considered, Johnny is a repellent character but a fascinating character study; he’s someone you wouldn’t want to meet, but wouldn’t mind getting to know from a comfortable distance. Curiously, there is another character who is even more unlikable than Johnny, and who may or may not be in the film exclusively to make Johnny seem not so bad by comparison; no need for that, though, considering that writer/director Mike Leigh and Thewlis do not render Johnny fully inaccessible – on the contrary, they wisely allow him moments of vulnerability (the best of which is non-verbal; Johnny may be a bullsh*t artist, but his body language doesn´t lie), revealing his wicked sense of humor as a defense mechanism so well oiled that it has gone from defensive to offensive.
Thewlis’s Johnny is reminiscent of Richard E. Grant’s Withnail, only much, much darker. He is quick-witted and sharp-tongued, but the targets of his unforgiving sarcasm are either low-hanging fruit, innocent bystanders, or totally oblivious to his surgically precise puns. He is highly intelligent but delusional and paranoid. He despises clichés but his entire belief system is one big, fat cliché. He has a way with words, but never has a kind word to say to or about anyone. In short, Johnny is, like the Green Day song, a walking contradiction (and he does spend a lot of time walking around the cold London streets, whither he has fled to escape a beating in his hometown of Manchester, only to get a beating anyway, in yet another self-fulfilling prophecy).
All things considered, Johnny is a repellent character but a fascinating character study; he’s someone you wouldn’t want to meet, but wouldn’t mind getting to know from a comfortable distance. Curiously, there is another character who is even more unlikable than Johnny, and who may or may not be in the film exclusively to make Johnny seem not so bad by comparison; no need for that, though, considering that writer/director Mike Leigh and Thewlis do not render Johnny fully inaccessible – on the contrary, they wisely allow him moments of vulnerability (the best of which is non-verbal; Johnny may be a bullsh*t artist, but his body language doesn´t lie), revealing his wicked sense of humor as a defense mechanism so well oiled that it has gone from defensive to offensive.