Review of Naked Lunch (1991) by Dewey 4 — 17 Mar 2010

Naked Lunch, a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork. I've loved this movie since I was 12 years old. It was many years later that I read the original source material, William S.

Burroughs' Naked Lunch and Queer novels. Never have a seen an adaptation, not only based on 1 book, but 2, put together so creatively on the screen before. Well, not until a small part The Atrocity Exhibition was adapted into Crash.

Naked Lunch is definitely David Cronenberg's most bizarre work next to eXistenZ, and I've always held a very special place in my heart for the bizarre. A very literary film, I've always found in Naked Lunch that there is so much power in words.

And fantasy, total and utter drug-induced fantasy. I always refused to believe that any of the astonishing sequences in Naked Lunch were merely hallucinations of the main character, and I would be very upset to delve into more research and discover that this is true.

Isn't watching Pan's Labyrinth more fun when you pretend the girl's imaginary world is actually real? Even without coming out of a film like this which much understanding, it's having the experience that counts to me.

In the strange way that I've always been, I fail to find the perspective required and expend my energies in a whirlwind of experience that remains devoid of real understanding. I think life is just more interesting that way.

When I was a junkie just like the character in the film, played by Peter Weller, I think that was the only time I could sit down and read a book like Naked Lunch or The Atrocity Exhibition and understand clearly what I was reading, perhaps deluded with some kind of sense of mega-consciousness.

And after watching Naked Lunch after so many years, so many of the insane drug-induced sequences of the film reminded me of my own experiences as a junkie in an EXTREMELY disturbing way. I had also found things so shockingly terrifying strangely beautiful.

Naked Lunch is hard to describe in terms of plot. It takes place in the '50s, and mixes elements of secret agents with addictive bug powder and Gigantic Aquatic Brazilian Centipedes. David Cronenberg succeeds once again in creating imagery so surreal and original it's definitely nothing you've ever seen before (and like I said previously, right up there next to eXistenZ).

The film also focuses mainly on the life of writers, and writing. The writers' typewriters even have names. Which is fitting because they turn into gigantic cockroaches who speak through their anuses, and love having powdered drugs rubbed on their ass lips as they give instruction.

Homosexuality is also a major theme in the film. The line "homosexuality is the best allaround cover story an agent ever had" from the anus of a typewriter is an ironic comment of many gay men's double lives.

2 scenes of heterosexual sex are shown in the film (one includes a threesome with a mutating typewriter), and they are rather tame compared to the gay sex sequence involving Julian Sands turning into a giant centipede and violently raping an effeminate Arabic homosexual in a gigantic birdcage.

William S. Burroughs claims his homosexuality was cured with the writing of Naked Lunch. Many more interesting aspects of the film are actually adapted straight from Burroughs' real life, including the accidental shooting of his common-law wife Joan Vollmer in a drunken game of "William Tell" at a party in Mexico.

You know, where you shoot the apple off of someone's head. Peter Weller's character succeeds in doing this twice to both character incarnations that Judy Davis plays in the film. Even the character's friends in the film, Hank and Martin, are based on Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg (who helped Burroughs write the novel).

The best creature "hallucinated" in the film are the human-sized Mugwumps, who produce an addictive substance from the phallic "udders" protruding from their heads, which you can suckle on.

The closest thing I would say that they look like is a dinosaur. You will later see them hung and bound in the factory scene where the substance they secrete is being harvested. I can guarantee that Naked Lunch will be the most interesting movie you've ever seen, as long as you first can "exterminate all rational thought.

" And on a final note: it's stated in the film that any re-editing of your writing is censorship, and writing can even be dangerous. Thank god I'm not a writer.