Naked

Jonny is a real shit.  He seduces, abandons, sometimes even rapes.  That's the first image we have of him in 1993's NAKED, as perfect a look at depravity as I can recall from that decade.  Maybe ever.  A woman is forcefully thrust against an alley wall in Jonny's hometown of Manchester.  He steals her car and ditches it in London, a place perhaps he'll fit into better.  A fish to water.

His ex girlfriend, Louise, is there.  But he meets her roommate Sophie first.  They get drunk and high.  He amuses her with his intellect.  She's simple and primal.  Jonny likes that for awhile, but soon he is prowling the streets, meeting an assortment of despairing and lonely folks.  He assaults them all with his never ending pontifications.  He's well read, quoting Homer and the Holy Bible numerous times.  His appearance and odor would suggest otherwise.  What happened to this guy? Do we dare ever feel sorry for the bloke?

Writer/director Mike Leigh doesn't give Jonny, so brilliantly portrayed by David Thewlis, any real cause for our empathy.  Or a real backstory, for that matter so we imagine our own.  Not that difficult.  A few semesters in college and an ocean of booze.  A miserable home life.  No role models of either sex.  A ferocious, misdirected intelligence fueled by failure and likely a clear look at Thatcher politics.  A socialist's heart pushed every day closer to anarchy.  A nihilist in the making, or already made.  The hopelessness of his life mirrored in whores, security guards, waitresses, or young lovers who don't think past the next quid.  None of them really have anything.  Certainly not patience for such a bastard.  Is it because they realize his assessments are perhaps on the mark at times?

That mirroring is none clearer than in Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge), a tragic individual who is sexually violated not only by Jonny (though, perhaps unsurprisingly, she's awfully forgiving) but also a malicious prick called Sebastian (Greg Cruttwell).  The latter is her landlord, a sexual predator viewed earlier in NAKED on his own ugly odyssey across town.  A possible doppelganger for Jonny, but of the affluent, well coiffed variety.  Their eventual meeting quite makes this case.

NAKED is masterpiece of characterization, and Leigh makes London one of them.  Day and night are equally unforgiving.  His film is relentless and exceedingly unpleasant, but also laugh out loud funny at times.  This grim essay has an electricity that in other hands would've evaporated in the cesspool of despair.  The film gives viewers a strong dose of Man's rotten core, but Leigh creates a philosophical dance, if you will.  Strangely enough, I could easily see this as a musical.

P.S. - Jonny's meeting with Brian (Peter Wight), the security guard, is one of the finest pieces of film I've witnessed.  The unbroken silhouette shot is some kind of genius.