Naked

The decay of England’s economy and social structure in the wake of Margaret Thatcher’s slash ‘n’ burn administration has become a virtual obsession with British filmmakers. Peter Greenaway took the raw appetite of the nouveau riche to its logical conclusion in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover. Ken Loach’s Riff Raff offered a working class that was so thoroughly disenfranchised that petty theft and arson had become the common bloke’s most rational alternative to unemployment.

Violent alienation and complete social breakdown are the order of the day, and in Mike Leigh’s bitter new satire, Naked, the day grinds into a cold night of spiritual annihilation. Leigh is best known for such comedies as High Hopes and Life Is Sweet, rough-hewn works of improvised humor that presented a fresh and naturalistic view of lower-class English life. But Naked is closer to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange – except that the latter’s nightmare fantasy has become Naked’s harsh reality. Naked has the crazy, but matter-of-fact, feel of just another day in the apocalypse.

Much of Naked is devoted to the wanderings of Johnny (David Thewlis), a highly unemployable young man who comes across as half-devil and half-prophet. He may also be thoroughly insane. Johnny’s intensely angry at society, and he directs that anger at any woman near him, while carrying on in a nonstop ramble that’s a hellish brew of philosophical posturing, biblical posing and crude sexual brutality.

A bungled date-rape sends Johnny running from the law, in a stolen car, from Manchester to London, where he plans to sponge off of his ex-girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp), for a while. Louise is convenient, but it’s Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), Louise’s druggie roommate, who Johnny finds most interesting. She offers the tantalizing combination of sex and a fresh audience for his continual harangues.

But just as Johnny seems in the process of scoring a new conquest, competition arrives in the form of Jeremy/Sebastian (Greg Cruttwell), a demonic figure who’s perfectly at home in the crumbling modern order. While Johnny cruises the streets in search of the anti-Christ (whose coming is foretold in supermarket pricing bar-codes), Jeremy/Sebastian is busy with ruthless business deals and even more ruthless bouts of S&M.

Naked is harsh, brutal and vicious. It’s also a frighteningly accurate view of the pure chaos of the post-industrial wasteland that’s engulfing the modern world. Naked is an honestly disturbing film whose soul burns with rage while its face wears an icy, sarcastic sneer.