CINEMA: Stanley Peskin
IN Mike Leigh’s Naked, a 27-year-old man comes from=20 Manchester to London. Claiming to be fascinated with all=20 things peripatetic, Johnny (Daniel Thewlis) is unable to=20 find any meaning in or make any commitment to people, life,=20 or any religious belief.
In a series of encounters with friends and strangers he=20 meets as he rambles aimlessly through the chartered London=20 streets, he not only expresses his own disaffection but,=20 with one exception, explodes the convictions of everyone he=20 encounters. The exception is Louise (Lesley Sharp), an old=20 girlfriend from Manchester, with whom he shares the only=20 tender scene (which ultimately leads nowhere) in the film.
As he meditates on life, time and death, Johnny speaks=20 about a world that is incomprehensible to him. His tone is=20 unremittingly sardonic and disaffected, always taunting and=20 hurtful. Like one of the characters he describes, he has a=20 “partiality for the negative”. He believes “the end of the=20 world is nigh, the game is up”.
Convinced that the very existence of God allows evil to=20 flourish, he is equally convinced that “evolution isn’t=20 over — man isn’t the fucking end-all and be-all”. To one=20 of his lovers, Sofie (Katrin Cartidge), he says, “Hope I=20 haven’t given you Aids, but the world is overcrowded, isn’t=20 it?” Asked if he has ever seen a dead body, he replies=20 “Only my own”. These are random examples of a=20 disillusionment that pervades the whole film.
For Johnny, who is intelligent and articulate (his chief=20 sources of information are the Bible and Nostradamus), the=20 Cartesian notion “I think, therefore I am” is overturned by=20 the proposition “I fuck, therefore I am”. His position is=20 also embodied in Jeremy (Greg Crutwell), an alter ego=20 figure. Whereas Johnny is poor, Jeremy is wealthy, and both=20 are unable to love. Although Leigh’s sympathies would seem=20 to lie with Johnny and the working class, he makes it clear=20 that for Johnny, as for Jeremy, love-making is always a=20 form of rape, impersonal and unsatisfying. I doubt Leigh=20 gives much credence to the definition of a relationship=20 offered by Sofie as one in which after the man has “bonked=20 me, he talks to me”.
London itself is stripped by Leigh and cinematographer Dick=20 Pope of any glamour or excitement. The film shows no=20 recognisable locations; the city is seedy, a place of=20 alleyways, dingy cafes, Therapy Theatre, and anonymous=20 crowds. At one point in the film Johnny hops along a=20 painted white line down the centre of a street: it is plain=20 that there is no direction or destination in his life.
If the prevailing mood of Leigh’s film is raw and unsparing=20 and if it looks like a documentary, it is nevertheless=20 artfully put together and there are some very funny moments=20 and inventive use of language. Apart from Johnny’s abrasive=20 wit, there are sections which have some of the grim humour=20 of the best Monty Python sketches and a character called=20 Sandra (Claire Skinner), who is unable to speak a whole=20 sentence. We discover that she has been visiting Zimbabwe;=20 this may be the cause of her incoherent babblings.=20
More important, she is contained in a film which questions=20 the significance of the Word or any words and which is=20 apocalyptic in manner and tone. Johnny might seek but he=20 cannot find refuge on his way to the grave.