Leigh Shows the Bitter Truth

"Naked" Directed by Mike Leigh at Loews Nickelodeon

Following in the same lines of his other films, "Life is Sweet," "Nuts in May" and "Abigail's Party," Mike Leigh his created a minor masterpiece with his rich-black comedy of the working class in London, "Naked." The beauty of Leigh's newest film is lodged firmly in the brilliantly caustic characters he has created.

The film revolves around the driven Johnny, played magnificently by David Thewlis, who unexpectedly arrives in London to surprise his ex-girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp) and proceeds to upset everyone he meets. Johnny epitomizes the lost, melancholy yet erudite state of existential angst as it stands in modern society. He "exercise" his frustrations through rough, violent sex with the random people he finds, including Louis's dark-headed, punk roomate, Sophie. Of course, Sophie and Johnny get together within the first few minutes of the film, even before Louise gets home from work, Sophie ,without any sort of guidance in her vapid, drugfilled life, finds a beacon in Johnny and his deft tongue, both in and out of bed. Johnny sees her as another living being, only existing because some amoeba was able to evolve into a frog that crawled out of the water and eventually became a primate which can now speak all of his urges, including sexual. Needless to say, he doesn't care about her feelings, he saw the act as an exercise of the libibo that must be followed but means nothing beyond the biological. This is not to say Johnny is cold and malicious. O the contrary he is capable of sincere empathy and love. He happens, along with the rest of the characters of the film, save Louise and a few others, to exercise his wierdly deviant sexual urges.

Johnny's snappy and bitter dialogue combined with his penchant to answer a questions with another question, makes the pace of the film move very fast. His psycho-babble seems off-putting at first his lucid, outrageously original ideas surface from all of the verbage. This technique, combined with the Johnny's vagabond lifestyle, allows Leigh to put Johnny in unexpected yet realistic situations. For instance, a security guard wants Johnny to quit loitering in front of the empty building he protects. When the guard opens the door, Johnny embarks on a diatribe about how the security guard is goig to ask him to leave. When the guard remains astutely silent, Johnny continues until the man closes the door and returns to his desk. In a few moments the guard opens the door, looks up and down the street and leads Johnny in. What emerges from this random meeting is one of the most informative, brave and confrontational conversations ever seen on film. The security guard spends all his time reading and is the first and only character who understands Johnny's innuendoes and leaps of logic. Johnny eventually leaves to lure the Woman in the Window who the guard watches dancing in her apartment window every night. This woman wakes Johnny from his cynical stupor, if only momentarily, for the first time in the film. He decides not to lure her to bed, taking mercy on the guard and the woman.

Johnny 's fury of ideas mingles with his explosive emotions to make him one of the most unpredictable characters seen in many years. Surprisingly, the viewer rarely wonders, "where is this film going?" The viewer understands the film follows Johnny 's aimless wanderings, but like, Johnny , the viewer sees the distinct change in the end, or so one thinks. By the end of the film, after the climactic moment of the abduction of Sophie by the pretentious, pompous, sex-crazed "landlord " Sebastian and the following attempts to kick him out of the house, Johnny returns from his many days of wandering, beaten to a pulp. His outward emotions change, almost as visibly as his eye blackens. But by the end, he opts not for love but for wandering. This type of movie could undercut all of the statements of modernity Leigh has spent two hours making. Johnny must continue his solitary, vagabond ways with only his sharp wit and active libibo. Like a modern-day Huck Fin, Johnny sees the skeleton that forms the basis of the human psyche, he also sees the skeletons in everyone's closet. With this knowledge and his determination, we hope he finds the meaning that he wants so much before his apocalyptic predictions actually materialize.