MIKE LEIGH'S MASTERPIECE: NAKED
In a dark alley of Manchester, we witness the tail end of a sexual assault, after which the aggressor—Johnny—is seen fleeing the scene of the crime and stealing a car. He drives into the murky night, his destination unknown.
Johnny emerges at his ex-girlfriend Louise’s doorstep in Dalston, an area of London, where he plans to lay low while the heat dies down.
He then meets Sophie, Louise's roommate who has returned home, who invites him in. When Louise returns from work to the flat, she finds the pair high on drugs, seemingly hitting off.
Louise is hurt by this scene, but seems used to Johnny's cruel behavior, who reads aloud the postcard she sent to him, mocking her.
Johnny, intelligent, well-read, and often hilarious, uses these powers of oration and insult to tear down his victims, gaslighting them to believe his sins are actually strengths.
He preaches doom and gloom, end times, and shreds any ambition that isn't spiritually rooted.
This persona of his is a cover for some unforeseen trauma that has festered into complete bitterness. And Leigh does an excellent job juxtaposing Johnny's nihilistic decay to Louise's honest, stoic, subservience to the inexorable laws of society.
As this first act plays out, we also are introduced to another character, Jeremy, the rich landlord of the flat, who like Johnny, is misogynistic and abusive.
Jeremy is a blueprint to Patrick Bateman, rich, successful, fastidious, and cruel.
What really sets Naked apart from other films is the powerful dialogue, which makes it one of the most quotable movies of all time.
(Upon Johnny's reunion with Louise)
Sophie: "You look like shit."
Johnny: (looking around her apartment) "I'm just trying to blend in with the surroundings."
Louise's roommate, Sophie, quickly becomes enamored by Johnny, and shows little restraint from pursuing him under the same roof as Louise.
Sophie is callous to Louise in this regard, but also completely vulnerable and, like all the characters in the film, desperate for human "connection" in the cold and grey industrialized world they are all trudging through.
*(Sadly, the actor who played Sophie, Katrin Cartlidge, died in 2002 at the far too early age of 41. A sad event that robbed the film world of a truly unique and talented woman)*
Johnny eventually leaves the flat and returns to Manchester, where he smokes, rants, and engages with different people in the city, who all seem lonely or dejected in some way.
He meets a security guard who advises Johnny not to "waste his life", but who himself has spent his life guarding empty space, with the grim hopes of someday buying a dismal cottage on a barren Irish shore.
We also meet a Sisyphean bloke who is plastering the city with an endless cycle of adverts, a Scottish man with Tourette's who has misplaced his one true love, "Maggie", whose name he is screaming in the street in hopes she will return, (ironically, even this Romeo harbors the same abusive tendencies towards women as the other men in the film).
Naked as a whole is an examination of a "survival" in a dystopian society filled with people that have lost all connectivity with one another, where base-urges, temptation, and primality reign supreme.
The film makes a point that Jeremy, a prosperous member of society, is no different than bedraggled Johnny, and that the world is a banal, monotonous place with frequent occurrence of savagery.
Leigh captures a 90's dystopian moodiness in Naked that creates a sense of growing dread.
The brilliant music score by Andrew Dickinson seems to swell along with Johnny's convictions, as if the music symbolizes Johnny's mind: frenetic and fragmented.
At the end of the film, there is no sense of great resolution or evolution of any of the characters. There are no clear victors or losers, only survivors, predators and prey alike.
What makes this movie seem like such a fever dream is that we never know who Johnny truly is, or where his hostilities originate. His past, is every bit as shrouded as his future.
We learn little, but are left with heavy existential questions and powerful emotions. It's what makes this one of the most impressive indie films of all time.
