Clearly, love it or hate it, this is a film that is uncomfortable to watch and gets under your skin — this is largely to its credit. It follows a few days in the life of Johnny, a violent, disaffected, philosophical and transient young man who flees a rape scene to his ex-girlfriend’s flat in London, manipulating her and her roommate, and takes to the streets again to bully, lecture and tease a series of interesting Londoners. The dismal realism of the cold city nightscape Leigh has captured here emphasises the film’s prevailing nihilistic tone.

I very much appreciate a movie that eschews traditional plot, that tries instead to portray a ’slice of life.’ I appreciate a movie that passes no moral judgment, delivers no retribution, features no absolutely good characters or suggests in its characters monumental change for the better in a matter of days, introduces people we find despicable and dares us to sympathise with them anyhow. Naked is very much anti-Hollywood, and ordinarily that puts a film well on its way to my list of favorites. But that in itself is not quite enough.

The thing is this. To classify Johnny as a ‘complex anti-hero’ is inadequate and misguided at best. Call me a raving bitter feminist if you must, but I cannot find it in me to sympathise on any level with a character who is essentially a rapist. The film is deeply misogynistic, presenting all women as victims always and all men as rapists at worst and voyeurs at best. It is difficult to criticise the film on this level because it sounds like I’m demanding a healthy dose of morality or an indomitable heroine be injected into the story. It sounds like I’m saying no movie about sexual violence and victims ought to be taken seriously. But this stark portrayal of outwardly sexually confident women who are easily broken and outwardly philosophical men who are easily turned to violent sadism is irredeemably anti-women and doesn’t do much for the image of men, either.

Johnny is undeniably a complex, intriguing character, and Thewlis delivers what I would without hesitation hold up against the finest performances of all time. His long philosophical rants bring out what humanity is in him, showing him for the desperate human being searching for truth he really is rather than some erudite philosopher. The dialogue is sometimes fantastic but sometimes rather reminds me of conversations I had in the college dorm at 3 am on a Tuesday night — oh, we found ourselves tremendously clever at the time, but it’s really just so much self-obsessed existential blather. All at once, I found myself delighting in Johnny’s wit and laughing out loud at what struck me as ‘babble babble babble, you with me?’

All things considered, it is a good film, a very bleak and philosophical look at human frailty and violence, and interesting for its improvised feel. Not for everybody, but highly recommended for any fan of Thewlis, independent filmmaking and existentialist philosophy. But I think it’s a film you respect more than like.

This is a surprisingly sensitive film about the atrocities and senselessness of war, about honor and human bonds. Tom Cruise is Nathan Algren, a disgruntled American army captain who fought with Custer against the Native Americans. Having learned something about the humanity of the indiginous people and witnessing (and participating in) the killing of innocent women and children, he is tormented and defeated. But he’s good at what he does, so a Japanese representative of the Emperor, interested in modernizing his country, approaches him with an offer to train a peasant army against the rebellion samurai force.

In the first battle with the samurai, one Algren knows the soldiers aren’t prepared for, the troops are held back easily and Algren, after a valiant fight, is taken captive by Katsumoto (Ken Wantanabe), who wants to learn about his enemy. Slowly, Algren and the samurai learn about and come to respect one another, and by the time Algren is set free, his perspective is irrevocably changed. War is a foregone conclusion, but now he has known honor, fairness, fighting as an act of love for your country, your people, your way of life. He could never return to the indescriminate, brutal violence of his people and, by extension, the Emperor’s army.

“What is it about your own people that you hate so much?” his commanding officer demands of him. The quote really struck me, for the answer is exactly what I hate about my own people more than a century later. The senseless, nonchalant violence. The feeling of removal from, if not outright superiority to, other cultures. The lack of respect and larger understanding. War undertaken for profit and strategic gain. There was no honor in this. There is no honor in what we’re doing in the Middle East today. It happens again and again.

I think this is far and away Tom Cruise’s finest performance, leading an impressive ensemble. The bonds formed by those who are unafraid of difference are compelling. And the war scenes are far from gratuitous; I think they send a greater message. War is only the context. This is a film about humanity.

Never let it be said I do not go to great lengths for the actors I love.

If you’ve read The Scarlet Letter, you’ll know how huge an atrocity this movie is. If you haven’t, even a summary on SparkNotes will make it pretty obvious. At first humorous, the opening credits’ admission that this is “freely adapted” from Hawthorne’s novel is by the end acutely painful. The plot, characters, motivations and themes bear absolutely no resemblance to the work it is based upon… it is not only reworked, not only dumbed down, not only given the Hollywood treatment; it is a malicious, self-sabotaging, willful attempt to destroy everything compelling about the story. But as Demi Moore infamously stated, that’s okay, because most people haven’t read the book anyway.

Dimmesdale here becomes an unsympathetic coward who does not learn or grow or change as a result of his decisions, except to inexplicably side with the ‘town elders,’ and then inexplicably turn hero. Hester’s principles and motivations are one-dimensional and she ultimately abandons them, professing to have learned a valuable life lesson, to live happily ever after. And Roger Prynne is made sympathetic by inventing an entire Indian subplot, utterly nonsensical… An endlessly complex novel about what our choices and desires drive us to do and how they can destroy us is here reduced to a simple love story, its heroes and villains black and white, its morals absolute. There is no grey, no questioning, no complexity — in short, nothing that makes the novel great.

It needs to be said: if I’m Gary Oldman, and Demi Moore is making those ’sexy’ faces at me and breathing huskily, I’m not going to help laughing at her. So I admire his composure and professionalism, despite or considering the fact he was drunk during the majority of his scenes and cannot remember making the movie. I guess Demi had a hand in getting him into recovery, and so I’m perfectly willing to accept she is a good person, but oh my dear lord is she a terrible actress. Miscast and overshadowed by a brilliant but wasted Oldman, who singlehandedly makes this movie worth sitting through, due in no small part to the fact that he’s adorable with long hair and shows a bit of skin.

…even if his nude scenes are a bit silly and the sex scene… just… shwa? Yeah, doing it on a bed of rice sounds really sexy to me. And um, if anyone can explain to me the purpose of juxtaposing it with Mituba pleasuring herself with a candle and a bird, I’d really appreciate it.

Only recommended for die-hard Gary Oldman fans. Die-hard fans of Nathaniel Hawthorne ought to run screaming.

Vivienne suffers from headaches, stomach pain and uncontrollable menstruation. Normally upbeat and playful, she experiences wild mood swings and paranoia, sometimes culminating in violent outbursts and overdoses on her medication. Her doctors believe there is a link between her pituitary gland and stomach, diagnosing a form of “moral insanity” which frequently afflicts “young women of special talent.” That is, women of extraordinary intelligence and creativity are supposed to be driven mad by it. They expect the symptoms will only grow worse as she ages and advise Tom to tell her “as little as possible: with a patient like this, it’s important not to burden her with details.”

The markings of tragedy (and my own feminist ire) should be obvious. Vivienne, unusually skilled with puzzles and evidently something of a writer herself (and Tom’s most trusted editor, for a time), is a free spirit who aches for something other than the stifling affluent life she’s always known. Aggressive during their courtship, Viv romanticizes poetry and poverty and wants to do everything she can for Tom, in exchange, I imagine, for his understanding and constant companionship. But, fixated on becoming a proper English gentleman, Tom takes a job at a bank, becomes a Christian, and his gentle concern turns into distant, willful ignorance. It is always clear that Tom and Viv love each other, but neither understands this problem that stands between them and increasingly they have no way to relate to one another.

What really makes this a very good film is Miranda Richardson’s performance as Viv. She’s absolutely enchanting in the first scenes before we realize her problems, and often chilling in her more deranged moments. She handles every shade of mood with unaffected skill, and I was completely drawn into the character’s world. A criminally underrated actress, she was rightfully honored with an Academy Award nomination for this performance.

*possible spoilers*

What was later recognized as hormonal imbalance, “cured” in her lifetime by menopause anyhow, was diagnosed as insanity. And the Victorian solution for misunderstood women is institutionalization. Vivienne was utterly at the mercy of her doctors, her husband and brother, who all knew she was brilliant but were afraid of her “deviance,” and unable to understand (or at least normalize or sedate) her, locked her away for the rest of her life. Given no alternative or information, and entirely devoted to her husband till her dying day, Vivienne eventually acquiesced entirely.

A rather unimportant complaint that annoyed the hell out of me: Joanna McCallum is so not Virginia Woolf here. And Virginia was totally not as rich as she seems to be here in 1919. I want to return to VW’s diaries and letters to see what she actually wrote about Vivienne, because I would hope that as another misunderstood female artist often scorned and dismissed as mad she would have a bit more sympathy for Viv than she appeared to. I’m sure her scathing pen couldn’t resist likening Viv to a ferret, but there has to be some feminist empathy somewhere, hasn’t there?

Interestingly, I think the one thing that was supposed to draw people to this movie is now outdated and almost banal. Is it just because I’m a gender studies minor, or is that infamous twist absolutely obvious from about the half-hour mark? Somehow I made it 12 years without seeing this film and without having the twist spoiled for me, but I knew what it was the moment the character it involves opened her mouth, and so did my brother. I’m not going to spoil it for anyone else, but by 2004 I think this is something the average viewer can spot a mile away, even if I fear the average viewer’s reaction might still be the same as Rea’s initial one.

So yes. The “twist” was a bit of a disappointment. But I’m saying, the promise of a blindsiding plot twist should not be the only reason people see and rave about this film. It is a brilliant work of art in every respect, and should not fade into obscurity or be dismissed for its shock value or lack thereof.

Initially the story of a group of IRA terrorists (Stephen Rea, Miranda Richardson, et al) who take a soldier hostage in the hope they can get some of their own forces released in exchange for his life, an unexpected turn of events propels the film in an entirely new direction. From the start we’re meant to understand that far from actions following logically from “their nature,” nothing and no one is what it seems.

(Unfinished review)