Naked (1993)

Mike Leigh is one of the directors I've been following through the years with keen interest. Generally, his films have had both the force to move me and to tell me something important. Naked, however, is not his strongest production. Throughout the film, I had the feeling that the bleakness of the story does not add up to anything - as a viewer, my eyes are rubbed into a cynical world with just a hint of resolution, but what resolution, at what price? The main character, a truly unsympathetic man, rapes his girlfriend and travels down to London, where he goes to see his ex, who lives with other people in a house. He's not the perfect guest. Stuff happens. He ends up on the street. He talkes to security guard. He delivers 'deep' prattle about meaninglessness, the universe and that kind of stuff. He is mysteriously taken in by every woman he sees. EVERY woman in the film falls for this asshole. I am puzzled: what does Leight want to say about these women who are treated badly, but who falls for the guy nonetheless? And what would resolution be in this case? We see no hint of change, really. Things are what they are, but people realize that they have to live with each other. Perhaps. To state my worries openly: is this yet another film in which an entire society - in this case post-thatcherian UK - is embodied by an angry young man, whose anger is made intelligible because it symbolizes a fucked-up class society? Why do so many directors, especially those with a sympathetic leftist background, fall prey to this very stereotypical image of masculine anger as justified and always something that should be understood within a larger perspective - whereas women remain figures that are mere victims or mere punch-bags? (One reviewer puts it this way, and I find it symptomatic: "Johnny's unkempt irascibility seems to have been selected by nature as an expedient defense mechanism." M-hm-m. Nature, right? (I had to look up the meaning of 'irascible'.) The reviewer goes on to write: "And the remainder of the characters are essentially well-wrought foils that tease out Johnny's dizzying mercurialness." Though I agree with this, I would argue this to be the film's major flaw: we are locked into Johnny's universe, and this makes it hard to catch sight of who he really is. To articulate my problem in yet another way: Johnny becomes a hero, an intellectual truth-teller who walks through hell, is hell, and the film tells us: there is no comfort, this is what life is! It's what we have become! But once again: what kind of universe is Leigh building, what does he want us to see, to feel, to think? // That said, the brooking, dark images, grim gray-blue light, of an almost post-apocalyptic London are not easily forgotten. Here, Leigh works brilliantly as he plods through hell and misery - or takes a moment to let Johnny converse with a very, very angry and confused Scot.