Naked

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.