Began to watch the outstanding film of the British director Mike Lee “Naked” (Naked) / Naked, 1993 (awards at Cannes for Best Director and Best Actor), after half an hour of viewing turned off, because the characters caused just rejection, there was no mood to watch. But then I decided to look. The main character - a very strange young man Johnny (David Thewlis) escapes in a stolen car from Manchester to London, as the girl he fucked on the street in a rather cruel manner, promised to incite those who will pay him for it, and declares to his ex-girlfriend, who was stupid to send him a postcard with his address, although they broke up. There he continues to behave in the same rude manner - both in terms of vocabulary and behavior, and immediately copulates with a stoned girl Sophie, who lives in a rented apartment with his ex, who then finds them together in an almost insane state. The next day he goes to the city, starting his journey from one contact to another with different people. At the same time, we can finally become convinced of his mentally unstable state by listening to his constant reasoning on a variety of topics, which give him some intelligence and even the presence of some education, which, however, do not prevent him from getting further and further off the rails, although sometimes something human can flash slightly. I must say that the people with whom he communicates, not far from him in this regard. I cannot say that I enjoyed watching all of them, but I think that such people meet in life, sympathize with those who have had to deal with them, although this is still a certain social stratum, into which for a moment the most perfect bastard from a higher class, the owner of the house, is rubbed. The director, of course, is free to choose what and how to make a movie, he does not hesitate in choosing the means, showing us his characters in such an unsightly way with all his inherent causticity, it is possible that it was designed for the reaction that the film caused me. What I can agree with is that Tulis played wonderfully.
There are people like a naked nerve. The French call them “lively refreshed.” It sounds awful, but it's a pretty common expression.
What do these “naked” people do? Skin extension. Better a shell. Well, or shackle yourself in the iron armor of cynicism, as our hero did.
We're in '90s England. Surprisingly, it resembles Russia of the 90s, the same sense of insecurity and troubled times.
Johnny, a cynic, boorish and rude man with a strange charisma, wanders around London, philosophizing and getting into various troubles. That's all, actually. Almost all characters are marginal. Not a single exemplary hero. No beauty or beauty. Just people, just people, weak, confused, lonely naked people. Naked is about them, not about a woman walking around in what her mother gave birth in front of the window.
Actors act as if they are not playing. It's like we've been given a look at someone else's life. David Thewlis can't believe he's any different. For the role of Johnny he received the prize of the Cannes festival.
Uncompromising, ruthless, nonconformist, smacked with black humor... this film will not appeal to everyone, probably not even a few. But if it does, I got hooked. He reminded me of my nineties, deep youth, where we were, equally unsettled, incomprehensible where we live, incomprehensible how ... not knowing in advance where we will spend the night today, but not because there is no home, but because you do not yet know where your home is.
Where am I?
Who am I?
Why am I here?
Where am I going?
Well, in the last shots - where is humanity wandering along this Milky Way?
I do not think that this film was conceived as a social drama, but rather a grunge ballad about the fragility of the human way, about the loneliness of the human way, about the restlessness of the soul, about its imperfection.
Although no, if this movie were a song, it would still be Sting's Fragile.
Again and again, it will rain.
Like tears from distant stars, like tears from distant stars.
Again and again, the rain will remind us.
How fragile we are, how fragile we are.
How fragile we are.
How fragile we are...
If you want to understand the essence of post-modernism, watch Naked. It completely exhausts the essence of this term.
The central character is a clown of the postmodern era, to the extreme ironic, cynical, suffering from a mental disorder, while educated and well-read - everything according to the laws of the genre. He laughs at the whole world and has nothing sacred—how is he not a hero of our time? And the personality destroyed by the disease creates a halo of mystery, which makes it also charismatic and attractive for women. The only thing that is clear about Johnny is that he came to London to escape persecution from the relatives of the girl he raped.
The other characters are as incomprehensible as the main character. The motives of their actions are not disclosed, their past, as well as the future, remain unknown to the viewer. After watching, the characters remain as strangers to us as a person after a short conversation. Here we felt the character, made a presentation, but so did not really recognize him. We meet reality, as it were in the context, and to know what was before and will be after, what are the causes and goals of all that is happening, we do not need, and this would destroy the entire impression.
It is not only the time, but also the space of the film. In general, for some reason, it seems that Johnny did not go far from the house of the girls, as if everything that happened to him can be seen just by going around the corner of the next house.
In this film, all the secondary characters are crazy or psychopathic, some more, some less. Surprisingly, what happens to more “crazy” people seems to be the most rational. Redneck psychopath lost his girlfriend in the city, he is looking for her and the moment of their meeting pleases with a vivid expression of emotions, quite expected. Or a sadistic rapist posing as a housewife: a narcissistic rich man with a damaged psyche and unhealthy inclinations pursues the goal of satisfying his need for physical and moral abuse of women.
As for more or less normal people, their activity in its senselessness reaches the point of absurdity. One guards the “space”, the other pastes posters at night and after half an hour he seals them himself (who will decide to cancel the concert at three in the morning?).
All characters are united by a desperate desire for love, warmth. Someone seeks to get it in a perverse way, someone naively believes that he received, the other does nothing at all, only stands aside. All these broken people cling to each other, exposing their pain to random passers-by.
Cynicism, cruelty, the theme of sex, a red thread running through the film, poisonous irony, claims to a deep philosophical background, absurdity and grotesque situations and characters are present in the film with excess. This is the purest incarnation of postmodernity, a product of its era.
Why I write a neutral review despite a positive review: I think it’s too much. Maybe in 1993, such a movie was fresh, but now, in 2018, such characters, dialogue, behavior became a cliche. These models are found in many modern books, films, TV series and because of repeated use has become banal and vulgar cliché. This slightly poisoned the impression of the film, but putting a score below 8 hands does not rise, a great film. Thank you, Mike Lee.
Frost from the morning wind, or from waste. A new day every time a rape in the doorway is unexpected and painful, never bringing pleasure, but it will remind of itself for a long time with abrasions and pain in the ribs. Life is like the escape of every occasion. And where do these hands grow through which all your perspectives flow? Sartre says that if you are bored alone, you are in bad company. Nietzsche says the fittest survive. Jesus says bear with you and you will be counted. Johnny is silent.
If life were a VHS tape, you could roll it in different directions, skipping at a fast pace of failure and pausing on victories. If life were a puzzle, it would be possible to rip out unnecessary pieces and fold again and again, the will of the artist in view is his basic right. If life were a bottle of vodka, you could drink it in a volley and have no regrets. There's hardly a hangover in hell. It would be easy. And fast.
But life is those moments of rape at the next dawn, toothache that puts a taboo on a smile, empty credit cards in powder marks, protruding ribs in bruises and perfume with the smell of your own sweat and vomiting. What do you say, Johnny? Do you look like a dead man because it's fashionable or have you rotted inside long ago? Johnny, how do you report your own life to the police? Johnny, do you think if you deny everything, you can get rid of yourself one day? Johnny is silent.
The world does not exist autonomously, because existence is a connection of two objects, one of which reflects the other through itself. There will be no rules, no dogmas, no laws, no truths, no fundamental values. Zero will reflect everything with zero. In the beginning there was a word and the word it was to "abolish." Denial is an escape, it is a return. Falling into the abyss of antisocial cliches - you choose your path, or the path chooses you without the possibility of resistance. Gram under the skin, 40 degrees in the throat. Love me, honey, if you need to love someone so much.
“Naked” is either a “lunch” pop-up machine, or a reminder that we are completely naked not so often. But does that make moments of exposure great? Unless you're really naked and clean in the morgue. And you're not afraid of anything.
They're scared. Me and each other, that we will run out of money, dosages, cigarettes, words. They are afraid of dismissals, the brilliance of knives, pain, death, life, obligations and every new day. And everyone who is used to living in their own small world, fragile as bones without calcium, who washed out amphetamine, is afraid of every new tiny change and interspersion from the outside. To refuse is not to create new problems. Mommy's not coming to help you anymore. The gods don't hear your call signs. Just take a sip and go.
New morning cuts the glued eyelids with a scalpel of the first rays. The spine goes into the floorboards. Dry mouth and exhausted breath. You're still alive. Skirmished by snakes under a ragged coat, a broken jaw will barely open for a puff. Do not look for anything, so as not to accidentally find. Don't reflect on anyone. If there is no goal, any endpoint is victory. Don't love me, honey, I'm long dead.
Where freedom is a noose around the neck, where today and tomorrow are like one endless moment, where love is a drop of sperm on the garbage cans, and the Virgin Mary is a waitress in a tavern. Where your word is so foreign to everyone that it has long been buried under your tongue, and your thoughts are quotes from stolen books, the meaning of which is only to fill the convulsions of these eternal clocks, which will never end. Where only a knife can become a butterfly in the stomach. But he'll fail, too. There they remain, restless and shackled in solitude, crucified in these eternal hours, not remembering the dates and days of the week. They remain not to live, but to last, occupying themselves with anything in anticipation of death.
Love this infinity of unnecessary minutes, honey, because falling into the abyss is also flying.
A real masterpiece, Mike Lee is an excellent screenwriter, dialogues are excellent, completely about left-wing things, but the characters are thrown by them at breakneck speed, just Tarantino and Sorkin in one bottle, this is a classic example of British domestic drama, a story about loneliness, inconsistency with social standards, about sexism, almost every man in the film brings pain to some woman, these men feel contempt for them, while the viewer is already beginning to hate these men themselves, this is the whole paradox, perhaps the best role of David Tewleys, with a great dialogue, thanks to the above, the hero, who has a lot of the above, although he was considered and the cyfield.
10 out of 10
Mike Lee's deep atmospheric nighttime drama fascinates at first sight, but keeps the viewer at a distance.
The picture has so many feelings, so many sudden movements, so much change of rhythms and ragged animal human essence that it looks very unusual to be so far from the feelings of the observer himself. By the way, it is instincts that look naked here, since this question is brought to the cornerstone of the mystery. Any hero here submits to them and receives the resulting injuries from his existence. Besides existence, they experience nothing.
The entire narrative of the tape is based on the contradictions of one character, both attractive and repulsive, living on those very instincts, seems to understand life from cover to cover, but burning page for page. He loves life and at the same time hates it, he reaches out to people and tramples them in the mud, tries to open their eyes, but hits directly at the heart.
He is lonely among unfamiliar cities and people, he is habitually abominable to everything, and that makes him pretty. The key reason for this is, of course, his sincerity and straightforwardness - a person's desire to receive the truth is stronger than the desire to be deceived, so any cruelty causes him to trust the viewer. As disgusting as the hero is, he was honest, and it bribes throughout the film, even though he is a typical scumbag of his time, with thoughts but no activity.
In comparison with him is an analogue, an antihero, equally empty in essence, enjoying his own presence, but worried only for his instincts, not considering another world and repulsing the viewer.
The naked demonstration of the lower classes is portrayed by Mike Lee deliberately exaggerated, with emotional overplays and excessive artistic situations. There is too much grotesque for truth and too much truth for one story. Theatrical production of the world of the lost part of London is associated with hell, in which the characters not only survive, but also try to live, however, exclusively existing. They get there without goals and do not see the way up.
I think Mike Lee was absolutely right in his ideals, which are translated by the staged tape. In the film there is no history and its structural materialism, the director prescribes the behavior of the characters and their way of thinking. By placing them in an authentic setting, the scenes add up on their own, and meaningless movements become justified in the film but not justified in their roots. Hence the spectator’s feeling, you see the coming tragedy, you understand the foundations of decline, but you do not relate yourself to them. Just as you can not relate yourself to the characters – they are in many ways a copy, but a copy opened, internally clean, to be externally stained.
Strange but sincere movie. Charmingly nasty to be true. Like night lamps, artificial light in total natural darkness.
The first minutes of getting acquainted with "Naked" lead to the conviction that the air of the cinematic world of Mike Lee is poisoned. Here the norm is modestly huddled at the edge of the universe, the measured life of ordinary people is put out of brackets, and the position of pathology is strong, in fact unshakable.
"Naked" - sketches from the life of a crazy Englishman. Most of the screen time, the main character is engaged in looking for communication with slightly strange people. From the outside, it looks like a social experiment out of the control of the researcher. Watching eccentrics is a special form of pleasure. It is unceremonious to torture them with chatter, without hiding your curiosity for false courtesy, pleasure dirty, forbidden and, perhaps, dangerous in nature. And it's not that you can be hit on your long tongue, no, just imbued with their life is harmful - like sitting next to a heavy smoker. You can, for example, impose your acquaintance on a modest downtrodden girl. Walking with her, asking to go inside. A bizarre form of communication will have a hypnotic effect on the girl. You're in the apartment, you're going to shower because you haven't washed for a week, and she's offering you beans. Slowly, she begins to think, “How the hell could this have happened?” What's it all about? The strange guest is periodically rude, looks down somehow, but seems not going to do anything wrong. And there are inexplicable tears, hysterics! The girl is unhappy, feels sorry for herself, loses her sense of comfort. He drives the vagrant away, and he falls with curses, even though he leaves. This is a film about losing your sense of reality. Norm is something that is so volatile, unstable. Like, a minute ago you were confident in your understanding of the essence of things, but then the templates break, emotions block the radio and you act on autopilot.
Johnny walks on thin ice. Questions, endless stupid questions, reluctance and inability to conduct a normal dialogue are nothing but conscious flirting with the introduction of oneself into a state of insanity. Crazy is there, but it takes your hand and you lose control. A simulated seizure could end in a real seizure. One careless step and from the world of border states you risk falling into the abyss of madness. Broad vision and wit are not a guarantee of the desire for self-improvement. The loss of faith in humanity merges with the loss of self-confidence. Do the right thing, adhere to generally accepted norms, restrain your animal impulses. Why do you need all this? To fit in with a slender line of normal people? These questions the protagonist must have asked himself long before the beginning of the series of events that are covered in the film. If there comes a day in a person’s life when he loses the conviction that self-destruction is absurd, what consequences can this lead to? Hey, Doc, the prognosis isn't comforting, is it?
Hey, everybody, Mike Lee. Today I’m going to tell you about my next masterpiece. In short, my main character is such a typical sociophobic misanthrope, stopped in development at the level of a 17-year-old. He walks through a dark, evil city, which is full of bandits, drug addicts and other garbage that fell to the bottom of life. And he walks like this and pompously talks about being, drugs, people and so on. And in general, he spits on religion, on the world, on everyone he meets. In general, he considers himself Jesus in his Palestine (England), only with the difference that he does not help people, but tells them obvious truths, thereby satisfying his infinitely great sense of self-importance.
And he's such a lonely wanderer and mother's philosopher. He's a hero of his time who exposes social vices, he's so cool because he doesn't care and he just takes the truth to his face, because he's already known life, living as a homeless man among the homeless.
And he wanders around the city, because he knows nothing but to wander around the city and push pseudo-philosophical thoughts. But he's a tough guy.
Well, I inserted a dramatic line there, well, to fill the void of the film, the girls there added a little love, but my main character still breaks the heart and insults everyone, because he is the coolest in this film.
In short, I advise everyone to watch if you are sixteen years old and you want to be the same cool misanthrope and flaunt all your knowledge.
How do you feel about profanity? I'm afraid. Well, because mate (Russian, especially) is an unusually powerful means of psychological influence, and weapons should be handled carefully. It has long been noted that a certain combination of sounds uttered when accidentally struck with a hammer on the finger, has an instant and powerful therapeutic effect. So is the cure in some cases. And drugs only help when you take doses. An overdose can kill you.
I don’t know what Mike Lee’s Naked sounds like in the original, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it, even if I wanted to. English from the voice, and even so quick-firing, so exquisitely combining a rough mat with existential twists, with esotericism, with global insights, with glimpses of aching tenderness and again intricate rudeness of warfare - no, I could not appreciate this. But the Russian two-voiced (ah, don’t offer, we are spoiled for dubbing), so – the Russian version of the film gives an opportunity to appreciate and join.
Honestly, it's amazing. They blurt out their tirades at machine gun speed without stopping, it seems, even to gain air and the dialogue is absolutely stunning. Here is a slight flirtation with an instant prick of insult, immediately leveled by caress. Here is a conversation about the quatrains of Nostradamus and the frailty of everything in the world. And all mat, girls.
This is an attempt to relate one's own value system to the value system of a random acquaintance demonstrating the presence of brains. But help another casual acquaintance (this time with certainty we can say the presence of one gyrus, which does not even need to be straightened surgically) in the search for a lost girl. And all with a sophisticated mat.
How does he do that? Why such a bastard: ugly, not rich, not famous - why is it so interesting to watch? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What is the secret of its attractiveness for women of different social, age, intellectual groups? Well, maybe in the virtuoso possession of the word? Or is it sex? Oh yes, there is also some inhuman sexuality. With elements of rudeness, leading to the memory of the bad memory of the marquis.
That sounds like words to me. Women love with their ears. And with this film, it became clear why Mike Lee is considered an unsurpassed master of dialogue.
“I still write only of princes, counts, ministers, senators and their children, and I fear that there will be no other persons in my history. Maybe it is not good and does not like the public; maybe it is more interesting and instructive story of peasants, merchants, seminarians, but with all my desire to have as many readers as possible, I can not please this taste, for many reasons.
Secondly, because the life of merchants, coachmen, seminarians, convicts and peasants seems to me monotonous and boring, and all the actions of these people seem to me to result, for the most part, from the same springs: envy of happier estates, greed and material passions. (...)
Fourthly, because the life of these people is not beautiful.
Fifthly, because I could never understand what the budochnik was thinking, standing at the booth, what the shopkeeper was thinking and feeling, calling for help and ties. I can no more understand this than I can understand what a cow thinks when it is milked, and what a horse thinks when it is carrying a barrel.
Before I met Naked, I didn’t realize how much truth there was and how little snobbery there was in the classic’s words. And I want to thank director Mike Lee for opening my eyes. But only for that. In the rest, his creation, as if praised by its critics, and no matter how many awards it won, sadness-yearning-and-snatch-eye, as they say, how I see it.
The first hour of the film, the main character named Jony runs aimlessly from place to place, copulates in a hurry, gloomyly looks around and for no reason digs into the familiar and unfamiliar. Okay! This is Arthouse, the plot is not the main thing here, the main thing is the atmosphere, the experiences of the heroes, the artistic value, finally! We'll see what happens next! I reassured myself. And then more.
Talented English actor David Thewlis, playing Jony, in his own charming, direct crook, there is so nothing to play that in the place of Thewlis, you can easily imagine a neighbor Seryogu, drinking everything that burns and having everything that moves. He and Joni are basically colleagues. Jony specializes in fast-paced "fucking" with unfamiliar females and pseudo-intellectual "weight" of anyone who is ready to warm their ears. And his “fucking” is never sex on the verge of rape, which is dreamed of by women of all ages and financial positions, and for which the author tries to give it to us, judging by how he savors the details of the events taking place. And the cheap philosophy of Joni, will seem interesting except that the army of fans of pop psychology and conspiracy theories. In general, Jony is such a Tolstoy seminarian from the baker family and what happens to him on the screen is a secondary boredom. From which it seems to draw to sleep and Joni himself.
To follow the main character and his entourage from well-belted ladies in their thirties, aggressive drunkards and their anti-Santiran companions, complexed guards, who think themselves the crown of spirituality and other selected English rabble from regulars pubs and football gallery. Looking at them is like picking a stick in a dung heap, again hello to Lev Nikolaevich.
The heroes of Gorky’s “At the Bottom” had plans and desires, a position and an opinion, the heroes of Michael Lee have an endless apathy of the Biryulev drug den without a hint of self-reflection.
As a viewer, I have no sympathy, no disgust, no desire to understand either the author or the characters, because there is nothing to understand, and there is no escape from the feeling that just looking at the sky would be more interesting than watching this ode to marginality.
The only thing that remains is to talk about the non-trivial, cold, titanistic visual solution of the picture, about the camera, which seems to live with the hero, about the locations that, it seems, did not undergo any pre-production preparation at all and therefore especially naturally plunge the viewer to the bottom of the underground made in England.
4 out of 10
Johnny, a man of heart, a man of freedom. He burst into the hearts of people, leaving there his image and retreating away; wandering, knowing himself and the world. Mike Lee can rightly be called a master of black comedy; everything is intertwined here: real relationships, pain, stupidity, joy; a movie that is not afraid to show the ugliness of human nature. And all this is filled with cynicism and notes of melancholy to the beautiful music of Andrew Dixon.
The film stands out for me because there is absolutely no acting work here. I was amazed at the way the actors gave out such amazing emotions; the feelings poured over the edge. Particular praise is due to David Thewlis, who created an inimitable image of a vagrant who does not want to be scolded; I only wanted to accept and understand him; surrounded by people as dirty as himself.
If you like travel movies, cognition movies, a movie that shows the whole essence of an ordinary person without decorations, then the film is definitely for you.
9 out of 10
I am destined to be a wanderer,
And in search of love to wander,
The same love, the real one.
Which brings happiness...
Interest in this movie came as soon as I heard about it. The description was somewhat reminiscent of Jarmusch's "Vacation Without End." The main characters of both films, Ollie and Johnny, lead the same lifestyle - "roll the field." Travel from one place to another, meet different people, they are “tourists whose vacation lasts endlessly”. They accept their freedom and are proud of it. But if Ollie, meeting people, just talking to them without hurting their inner world, then Johnny deliberately tries to do it. He shows them all the insignificance of their lives, exposing it, with a couple of sentences lifting a huge boulder on their shoulders, like the one that dragged to the top of Mount Sisyphus. He tries to awaken in them a sense of freedom, but unfortunately no one he meets has the courage to face his primordial loneliness. Someone ties herself to a person like Sophie. Someone to work and everyday life like Johnny's old friend. Someone humiliates other people’s dignity by fighting inner loneliness, as Jeremy does (he talks to one of the girls about suicide). Someone shackles himself with happy memories, such as a night watchman, a girl in a building opposite him, and a girl from a cafe. Someone is just too stupid to think about anything at all, like that constantly aching guy.
Everyone remains naked after meeting Johnny, he is somewhere inside, in his rich and huge inner world.
The atmosphere of the film, unlike the aforementioned "Vacation Without End", is very heavy. The whole world is static and lifeless. And the heroes are also not full of vital energy, are in apathetic state. Only people like Johnny can bring this world to life, challenge it. “Bat your head against the wall,” even if it is obvious that you will not get to any knowledge because you already know everything. You know that you are lonely, but that loneliness is not a punishment. The highest gift that man possesses is unlimited freedom. Here the title of one of the books of A. Camus “Exile and Kingdom” will be appropriate. Johnny tried to stir up the whole film, to breathe life into these people, to show them that there is a whole world before them, a realm that they do not use, but unfortunately he failed to do it.
The finale of the film is a masterpiece that is ready to review it endlessly. Lame Johnny, jumping on one leg, as if performing a dance, and on his face a slightly noticeable smile - he enjoys life for real.
David Thewlis blended perfectly with the character, his game is fascinating.
Mike Lee made a brilliant film, which has an abundance of philosophical thoughts and ideas, bright, memorable characters. It touches to the heart, touching its most remote corners. This picture, in my opinion, deserves to enter the classics of world cinema.
10 out of 10
The film is both real and completely philosophical. Every action in it carries an idea. The actions of the main character are sometimes not clear, he lives according to the course of events.
At first crouching and provoking oncoming characters in his path, Johnny seems to be waiting for everyone’s reaction. Throughout the film, he is tense and this tension is transmitted to the viewer.
This vicious cycle of life will never end. Someone will take it, warm it, and someone will beat it. Johnny is a hermit, he will never have a family, many friends, office work. He is the personification of human despair, sadness and pain. Outwardly, he gets off with sharp remarks, clever phrases and jokes.
But inside he is completely naked, like all of us.
When love asks for Johnny, he runs away from it, limping. The only way out is to run away from everything.
It doesn’t matter how many past and future lives you have, because they are all under the yoke of pain and longing, infirmity and death.
When I was going to see this movie, all I knew was that it was going to be a rough movie. Is this the first time we've seen something evil? Let's see that too.
The film was shocking. From the very first frames we are shown what the vector of development of the plot. It's about dirt and complexity. One of the main characters is worth it.
From the start, Johnny has mixed feelings. It's my fault, I screwed up. He escapes to another city where he finds his ex-girlfriend. And that's where the whole damn thing starts.
I didn’t know why, but I didn’t feel contempt for the main character. And that was probably not the goal. Johnny is unsympathetic, rude, pessimistic. I know I'd shut him up on the fourth word.
He clings to people as if looking for something in them. If you remember, only one person in the entire film himself entered into a dialogue with Johnny - a security guard who let a frozen tramp warm up.
Everything in this story is wild, fast, sharp. I mean, no, the narrative itself in the film is smooth, Johnny himself is very phlegmatic until he gets nervous... But the world that revolves around the main character is some kind of mad damner. Here he came to an ex-girlfriend, he left their house, he came across a strange Scottish couple. Sometimes it seems to me that he wants to stop and wait, but everything is in such a whirlwind that he is no longer able to stop.
The plot does not have a vector, it is like a fragment from someone’s life. History, as it seems to me, has neither beginning nor end, and this is a very good feature of this film.
I’ve talked about it a few times, but the character I think is the strongest part of the movie. It's understandable -- it's the center of the picture. A man in a worn coat. He steals books, sleeps with different girls and predicts the end of the world. He's tired and spitting poison. Johnny doesn't elicit sympathy, he elicits sympathy. After all, not a stupid person, even very much, but he continues to break the fate of others, remains cruel, angry and insanely tired. He is carrying a weight of some pain... And, most interestingly, the film says almost nothing about the fate of Johnny, about his motivation. I mean, why would he do that? Why would he leave a girl he obviously has something for? Why would he be so cruel? Why would he want to annoy people and hate people? The other characters' motivations are revealed, and only Johnny doesn't explain them. A great accident, or is he really taking revenge on the world for something? And that’s the most interesting part of the movie — we’re given to figure out exactly what happened to him. The film does not give any events, because for each viewer there are limits of complexity. Johnny's limit was long gone. Someone knows how to philosophically look at the problem, and someone’s pain threshold is underestimated. Something happened to Johnny. That's right. What is it? What are you most afraid of? What will break you?
That's what happened to him.
Each character has a past and no hint of a bright future. They’re all going somewhere “nowhere.” In the end, Johnny goes nowhere.
In the end I want to say - the film is rough and dirty, without bills and gloss. Everything is honest, open and naked. Very interesting thoughts about the end of the world and the structure of the world - Johnny during the film says very clever and interesting things. I advise many people to look at it, because the picture is well worked out from all sides. The cast is hurried, especially want to highlight David Thewlis, Leslie Sharp and Peter White. Cinematography does not make you spit, the camera shakes only at the beginning of the film, but there it is appropriate – conveys the sense of presence. The picture is basically good. I really like the soundtrack - the main composition in the film is disturbing and melancholic. It is also useful to look at the naked truth of naked people.
In the film Naked, directed by Mike Lee, David Thewlis plays his starring role, for which he won a silver award at the Cannes Festival. His character is Johnny, a lost identity. Living in the age of the dawn of postmodernism, observing the vulgarity of human existence, his soul screams: People are always bored, they are told the structure of the universe, and they are bored, explain the structure of the human body, they are bored. And all life consists in finding new entertainment, brilliant and bright, and the more they shimmer, the better. All life is an escape from boredom.” However, realizing this, he cooks in all the dirt. He is not able to understand that there is only one way out of such an unattractive picture of the world and that is love.
We can see many such heroes in the history of cinema. The main characters of Fellini in the films “Sweet Life”, “8 1 / 2”, played by Marcello Mastroianni, also observing the vulgarity of the world, are lost in her. The loss of real values is especially acute in the postwar years. Man has lost faith in God, but he has not yet gained faith in himself. It is this trend that is depicted in Felinney's films. Mike Lee continues the subject, but with a big difference.
The British Black looks a lot more aesthetic than ours, thanks in large part to Mike Lee. Who weaves subtle humor into the narrative, sometimes even mocking his characters. Compared with Balabanov’s works, such as “Cargo 200”, in which there is no place for humor and banter, “Naked” by Mike Lee, can indeed be called a comedy.
Very often the film is translated as “Naked”, meaning “the naked truth”, but I do not quite agree with this translation. After all, we see in the film naked souls who are immensely empty and devoid of human warmth. We see in the naked souls of heroes the absence of love. Johnny is a man of sharp mind. Every man he meets has his soul laid bare. They will be revealed to him, and he will be closed to everyone. The hero of David Thewlis is unknown to us, we know almost nothing about him.
Going through theories about the structure of the world, the structure of man, talking about God, the apocalypse, he distances himself from everything human. He doesn’t need a home, food, or family. He wants to become a “bundle of pure thought” that he tells the guard that it is in this substance that man must evolve. In fact, it is this clot. Cold, alien to everything human.
Thus, he is deprived of the feeling of love. Love is the main human property that makes a person a person. The mirror of a creature like Johnny is Jeremy, arrogant, rich, fashionable. When the two heroes meet, Johnny is at the very bottom of his existence, crawling in, battered and humiliated by his friend Louise. Unconscious as if in existential illumination, he calls Jeremy a brother. They are twin brothers, double heroes. You can also say that Jeremy is a reflection of Johnny's soul.
Johnny himself is going down and down throughout the film. He is an extra person, and in his character are guessed the features of Raskolnikov. He is obsessed with ideas, which, however, do not break, the world around him, as if confirms all his reasoning. Johnny is a hero of our time, he, like Pechorin, carries in his image the main sins of modern man.
Every character in the film is devoid of love. Louise, when she was dating Johnny, the guard was abandoned by his wife, the waitress lives a reclusive, lonely life, the dancing lady in the window, just as lonely, she lives with memories of her youth. There is not a single positive character in this film who would like to sympathize with or share life with him. On the contrary, each character tears apart new vices of the human heart. Stunning, deep dialogue is mixed with mat and poetic metaphors, almost equally. And a large number of sexual scenes absolutely do not cause a sense of aesthetic pleasure and eroticism.
With all this, the film can not be called shocking, there is no intentional scandal in it. There is only a sharp, tobacco-soaked, deep truth of life that exists in parallel with the lives of people going to work and to the movies, sleeping under their own roof on soft beds.
In general, each hero has his own reasons to plunge into this cycle of oppressive life. But we don’t know Johnny’s cause, as if he didn’t have a heart.
This is Mike Lee's London. We will not see a typical capital of England, we will enter a different atmosphere of the city, not seen before. London is a reflection of the souls of the people who live in it. The city, in this film, is a separate hero. Gray tones, dirty streets, skulls on the walls of houses are a reflection of the mood reigning in the souls of people. There is no love in this city, he is alone. Almost throughout the film there is not a single ray of sunshine, the only thing that shines in the film is the broken signs of shops and bars. Manchester, in the memories of Johnny and Louise is a city of former happiness, they sing a song about this city, and with tears remember the past.
The music also reflects the general mood, composer Andrew Dixon wrote a depressing soundtrack, which with each chord catches up with anguish.
The whole film is filled with pain, pain in music, in phrases, in Johnny’s eyes. The pain of those who know that life is not fair and that life is worse than it is written about. The pain of people deprived not only of love, but also the feeling of love in themselves.
The modern world is without love. People are becoming more indifferent, and care only about their well-being. Movies like "Nude" are especially relevant these days. And Lars von Trier, the Danish director, talks about this trend in his trilogy of depression. After all, at the end of the film “Melancholia” there is an apocalypse, which in “Naked” predicts Johnny. And the words in Naked: “Mankind is a broken egg and it stinks” are intertwined with Justine’s opinion in Melancholia. “Forget about love” reads the slogan on the poster of the film “Nymphomaniac”. Indeed, love in the world is becoming less and less, this is noticed by directors of various countries, and as if in a curved mirror they show the audience themselves.
Similarly, Italian director Paolo Sorrentino worries about the issue. In the film “The Consequences of Love”, where Tony Servillo and Olivia Magnani starred in the lead roles, the director says what love leads to in our time, they try to ruin any forces. We understand that Johnny can never really love.
10 out of 10
British Raskolnikov conducts a philosophical educational program of marginal population.
A man made a movie about men's problems, and for some time it sounds as positive as it looks in the frame. Hello, self-determination issues. Hello, torment of idle creativity.'I can't work in a dusty office, I, your mother, a brilliant philosopher'.
After reading all the reviews of the film, I was surprised that almost no one touched on the subject of sexual violence. But it subtly reveals the main script thread: the main character is catastrophically pathetic and all his interactions with the outside world are reduced to an attempt ' to hook up' for the consciousness of the interlocutor. In the case of women, it's physical abuse.' Did you like me? Are you in love? Do you remember me (even if it is because of cruelty) among the host of your casual lovers? '
And the admiration of his own ' raised me' hyperbolically activated by the example of a cruel rich man who does not meet the proper resistance from self-sufficient women (excluding the scene with Louise and the knife:) it is violence that unites these two characters. And if Johnny through 'little physical victories' each time feels significant, then Sebastian just long ago and deeply perverted. And like any maniac, he is afraid to die and leave no trace of his violence in this world.
It's a pity Johnny, how diligently he sarcasms in conversations. How hard it clings even to random passers-by. As deliberately demonstrates disgust for reality, so that no one imagines how much he needs people, communication, comfort and warmth. And what if someone suspects him of such weakness, because all the masks of casual fun and uncouth romanticism will fall off, and who will he remain then? A bummed philosopher?
If we return to the material of the film, then there is definitely nothing to complain about. This is a complete coincidence of acting, fine directing, exciting music and realistic script content. We all believe in Joni's battered leg and Sophie's tremor. It is hard to believe, perhaps, in the deliberate cruelty of Sebastian and the critical neurosis of Sandra. But, bearing in mind that there are practically no emotionless characters in the picture, let us forgive them for their easy playfulness.
Good movie, good quality. Thanks to Michael Lee.
To date, in British cinema, there are two directors who can be safely called living classics - Ken Loach and Mike Lee. They both share similar stories about contemporary British society. But it still feels like Mike Lee is a much tougher and more pessimistic author. In his films, as a rule, there is no hope for any bright future. The most significant in this regard can be considered his film “Nude” in 1993.
Mike Lee, as he has repeatedly said, is a big fan of Jean-Luc Godard’s work and especially of the film In Last Breath. And "Naked" by and large, nothing more than a freelance remake of Godard's debut film. The main character is a homeless tramp named Johnny steals a car and comes to London to his old friend. And throughout the film, he wanders through the night, cold London, simultaneously venting his hatred and contempt at everyone who comes his way.
The main difference between “Naked” and Godard’s film is that everything here is absolutely real. Mike Lee is at the forefront of the social conditions of people’s lives. The main characters, like the Gorky play, are at the very bottom of British society. Tramps, drug addicts, alcoholics who just float downstream to the imminent and imminent end. And people on a higher social and material level literally wipe their feet over them, like the owner of an apartment that is rented by two friends. Knowing that they have nothing to pay, he rapes one of them (who is an unemployed drug addict) in a variety of ways, knowing full well that he will not do anything for it.
As in the Godarov film, the heroes do not miss the opportunity to once again philosophize about the meanings of existence, faith, God and the cosmos. Johnny doesn’t seem to be stupid. He is erudite, read and has a lot to talk about, but he, like Michelle Puocar, is the main character in the film. He does not want to stop in his rapid self-destruction.
In my opinion, one of the most poignant moments in this movie is when Johnny comes home to a waitress he meets. She feeds him, washes him, but after the usual and seemingly random question... Whether you have a boyfriend or something, a girl gets hysterical and literally pushes him away. In this moment, all the tragedy and hopelessness of people like Johnny. Just a decent girl who dreams of meeting a real man and building her happiness in this life. Instead, she comes across such-and-such alcoholics with no king in their head. And at this moment you realize that there are no heroes of any romance or exceptionalism and such philosophizing bullies in our country can be found in almost every courtyard.
The most recent frames also refer to the great Godrov picture. The camera accompanies the limp and beaten protagonist, just as Jean-Paul Belmondo saw off the hero in the last minutes of his life. And the only difference is that Johnny, despite everything, remains alive, but this fact does not make the viewer happier at heart.
It's not for everyone. Because everyone. And honestly.
The director at the same time gives the viewer the opportunity to abstract and look at what is happening through the prism of vulgar objectivity. This viewer, of course, will not see the wounded human soul in the eyes of the hero Theulis and, in general, will not understand what more than two hours of life were spent on. This viewer will praise the music, celebrate the acting and express his thoughts for life on the example of the picture (what is needed, how and why). By the way, the image of this wise and practical viewer is represented in the picture by the same guard.
The rest do not hide the accumulated pain. The veils are broken, the soul is naked. Pain in phrases. In music. In my eyes. The pain of those who know that there is no G-d, that a better life will not begin after death, and that this life is much worse than it is written about. Life is not fair. The world is indifferent to individual fates. But for the individual, the universe ends where his life ends. We inspire a philosophical attitude to this fact, but like Johnny, we are only trying to deceive ourselves. And when the strength to pretend is no more, the film begins.
It begins with escape and ends with escape. But if in the beginning Johnny leaves by car, then in the end he barely limps away from love, which (as he probably knows from the books) is self-deception about the immortality of the soul.
I've watched the movie many times. I have never caught a single actor in falsehood. I watch this picture when I want to watch and hear the truth for a couple of hours. Nobody's lying here.
Jeremy is afraid of death and Johnny is afraid of life.
Who is still naked, from the original name is not quite clear. Naked physical flashes here and there, but somehow without much heat. But moral exhibitionism clearly gave itself free rein. Like girls from the pages of the unforgettable Hustler, social complexes appealingly attract hunters to the decadent-marginal “strawberry”.
Poorly dressed and smelling, Johnny moves from one colorful character to another. All its activities are reduced to raising a dust cloud over dried soil. Good or bad, but something. A lot of people will say it's bad. It is bad to be an outcast and a parasite, to mistreat women, to smoke poorly without interruption, and to consider oneself the notorious Viscount. Soaking up books all the time, looking for and not finding dialogue, waiting for the end of the world, calling it the beginning, is also bad. What is good is not shown in this film.
Women love the protagonist. They don't understand half of what he says. The rest would probably not have been better understood. So a scumbag and an egoist who pretends to be an exiled philosopher is not the worst option. In addition, the destiny of the crown of creation is loneliness and the expectation of big and clean, small and dirty, or at least some. That's according to the painting. They sit there and wait, then suffer and endure, then hope and cry. But they don't think much out loud. Only Johnny thinks, so Thewlis plays him. And Tulis, as you know, is able to think so that all ages do not blink, so that tears and laughter, so that the Moscow Art Theatre torment and despair.
Do Scots dream of plaid skirts? is a philosophical question. The guard of an empty office building, who spends his nights waiting for the future, is a great excuse to discuss the Bible and the doom of humanity. The destructive way of life is either an end in itself or an inevitable reality. Bazarov is dead. He took his romantic ideals with him. There are only cynical abominations and yuppie psychopaths taking everything from Pepsi. The film hits the bottom, shaking the middle and top. But beats in his own particular manner, with scratching music, sharp transitions between scenes, a kaleidoscope kind of like a novel and melancholy sort of like a main line. Strangeness and talk keep the tumbler of the boredom generator off. English, dialogue, sarcastic, absurd, realistic. There is almost always something clever or funny being said. Results?
No one will demand the deaf tantrum of cold London will remain unclaimed. It's a plus, it's a minus. "Who did you want to surprise?" A ranting degenerate looks for ears, finds fists. Social security, the pension fund, we already knew about you. So what's the point? “I will look at my eyes in a foggy distance.” I have no idea. There is the ubiquitous post-industrial punk protest. The hero hates work and prefers reading, verbiage and vagrancy. There is a demonstration of reality. These people are real now and always. There is idleness and loneliness, thoughts and humor. The other characters don’t care until the last two words. They swarm the background on the periphery, weighing down the social undertones of poverty and the meaninglessness of their existence.
So it turns out that the maids of honor are dancing in the next hall, ambassadors from enemy states on the road are stuck in the mud, and the mob is ploughing virgin soil. Only the king thinks that he is naked. And all the crooked mirrors on the walls. They're nailed with rusty nails right through the amalgam. So that the ray-shaped cracks would turn the laughter room into a torture chamber. And no doors. A homeless demagogue demands a carriage, but times are not the same. There are no beads left, only pigs. You have to hobble on the beaten two, to breathe easier and think more fun. From the backwoods, from caring girlfriends, from that. Bad, good, something. The rolling field disappeared behind the title horizon. Maybe you can't live like that. But he lives, he thinks.
The story of Johnny, a nihilist from the corner, starts, as they say, from place to quarry. Johnny aggressively fucks one after the other two girls, and brings this procedure to either rape or orgasm. However, such an intense beginning does not at all reveal the name of the film, which tells not about the physical, but rather the spiritual openness and emotional defenselessness of naked, read - vulnerable, heroes.
As soon as sexual relations turn into affection, Johnny immediately runs away from another girlfriend, and in a direction completely unknown to him. Thus, the modern urban Ulysses, without a definite purpose and a king in his head, will always wander from one refuge to another. He is either an urban madman, or a spontaneous guru, prophesying the imminent end of the world and living today. However, he can rightfully claim the status of the antihero of our time.
This “non-rebel without a reason”, riddled with quotes from Nietzsche and apocalyptic prophecies that no one needs for nothing, easily finds a way to the hearts of lonely women, but always prefers the role of a homeless man to the restlessness of a squatter and an outsider.
The British black woman, unlike, for example, ours, has become an aesthetic phenomenon, not least thanks to Mike Lee, who almost once gave up a kind-hearted humor, fed, as a rule, by an undisguised sympathy for the characters. Hard, sarcastic and grotesque drama about London marginals (this is an important clarification, because in Paris, for example, such heroes are simply impossible to imagine) is deeply rooted in the social tradition of British cinema.
Mike Lee is almost outright mocking the social values of the British and beyond. If this can be called “critical realism”, it is strongly biased, since the absurdist reflection and philosophy of survival of the heroes are brought to blatant satire. Perhaps that is why the most caustic picture of Mike Lee, with a hero reminiscent of Michel Poicard from “On the Last Breath”, Alex from “Clockwork Orange”, still remains perhaps the best in the already enviable track record of the British master.
Literary cinema worked. Johnny is Don Quixote of modern times, a wandering knight, or rather, a philosopher of today’s England (and although now, the time presented in the film is difficult to call modern, after all, 20 years have passed), who runs, most likely, from himself, but, as you know, this is not possible. Johnny is an archetype that contains all models of society. And society, in Lee’s view, is the characters encountered on the path of the main character. In the end, we have a symbiont assembled from all the bad things that exist. That’s why the description reads: “the absolute antihero of our time.” Johnny is not only Don Quixote, but also Pechorin, it is also Oblomov, and demonic Stavrogin.
One could say that the movie is about a vicious society, which nothing will save, and even Johnny could serve as the protagonist, but he is only the quintessence of everything that happens around him. A movie about broken hearts. Each hero has a reason why they got into this “circuit”, but who is Johnny and what is his reason – we do not know, as if he does not have, and never had a heart, so he is forced to walk and destroy, spoil the life of others, from which the need to flee all the time, not lingering in one place.
In the film we will not see typical for our representation of England, we get into the “different” surroundings of London: in the slums, shabby apartments, dirty alleys – and nothing else seems to exist. It is in this world that the characters of the film revolve, they are deprived of any creative beginning, therefore the city is presented to us neglected, as if the end of the world occurred in it, about which Johnny spoke, and the people in it are only the remnants of the past dying civilization.