Naked ***** (1993, David Thewlis, Lesley Sharp, Katrin Cartlidge) – Classic Movie Review 1871

Writer/director Mike Leigh’s 1993 eye-opener is one of his most powerful, controversial and uncompromising films, angering feminists big time. They booed and heckled him, trying to stop him speaking when he presented his movie at the National Film Theatre, only finally shutting up when he was able to shout that he’d have to leave if he couldn’t be allowed to speak and answer their questions. This came after its triumph at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993 when Leigh was voted Best Director and its star David Thewlis Best Actor. Thewlis also won London Critics Circle, New York Film Critics Circle and London Evening Standard awards.

Director Leigh’s savage Nineties British state-of-the-nation address is played out against the dingy bedsits and trash-strewn streets of inner-city London. Thewlis plays Johnny, an aggressive and bitter, unemployed nasty piece of work who flees Manchester and heads south to avoid a beating from the family of a girl he has raped.

In London he visit an ex-girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp), spends some time homeless, and has degrading sexual encounters, notably with the compliant Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge). During his nightmarish odyssey, Johnny confronts all the flotsam and fall-out of 90s Britain – lonely night watchmen, misogynistic yuppies and demented derelicts – all the while raging and ranting at strangers.

This mesmerising and devastating film serves as an epitaph on a nation that Leigh obviously feels has little hope of redemption. But, though unremittingly bleak and negative in tone, it stays constantly fascinating thanks to its flashes of acidic, subversive wit and Thewlis’s remarkable high-powered performance.

Whereas some of the movie’s characters are too archetypal to convince as flesh and blood creations, Thewlis’s half-smart, self-loathing Johnny is a unique Nineties British anti-hero to rank alongside Jimmy Porter and Tom Jones – a doomed and desperate icon for the century’s dying years. It’s hard to spend time with him as he’s such a vile and abusive character. And some find it hard to spend time with this negative and raging movie, either, rejecting it as unbearable to stomach.

Two decades later, it turns out we British survived as a nation and so did Leigh as one of our most unique voices, though he might have mellowed as bit over the years, directing the Gilbert and Sullivan biopic Topsy-Turvy in 1999, and producing his biggest hit in 2014 with another historical biopic, this time of the artist Mr Turner. Thewlis carries on being a busy actor, though arguably he hasn’t done anything quite as extraordinary as this. And Johnny? Well he never became as famous as Jimmy Porter or Tom Jones, though Naked has maintained its reputation as a challenging and controversial cult favourite.

http://derekwinnert.com/vera-drake-imelda-staunton-jim-broadbent-heather-craney-classic-movie-review-1872/

http://derekwinnert.com/mr-turner-2014-timothy-spall-paul-jesson-dorothy-atkinson-marion-bailey-movie-review/

http://derekwinnert.com/topsy-turvy-classic-film-review-719/

http://derekwinnert.com/secrets-lies-classic-film-review-721/

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1871

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/