Review of Naked Lunch (1991) by Tommaso C — 27 Oct 2009

I have not read "Naked Lunch" but I know enough about it to feel confident in saying that David Cronenberg, one of my favorite directors, was not the right man to adapt it. Despite an intriguing premise, fantastic acting, a great score and an uncompromising approach it is an underwhelming experience, a brave and often effective but ultimately failed experiment.

There is a mortifying tendency to disparrage unconventional cinema as "fucked up", and to lump all "fucked up" films together in the same group, as if there is no appreciable difference between the films of Richard Kelly, Kenneth Anger and Alejandro Jodorowsky. As a bankable "fucked up" director, then, Cronenberg was the natural choice for a "fucked up" undertaking such as this. What prophets and pundits failed to realize is that the very tendencies and artistic flourishes that make his films "fucked up" would doom this marriage, perfect only in the most supercicial of levels, from the start.

Croneberg's entire body of work is based around the concept of body horror. His cold, clinical approach reveals a man who is terrified of the unpredictability of the flesh: it grows, decays, oozes, seeps, transforms, mutates and evolves without rhyme or reason. His films seem to argue that we are intellectual beings trapped in impractical, fleshly bodies over which we have increasingly less control and which will eventually revolt against us in the ultimate of betrayals: death. He approaches art much like a scientist would: he is observant and nonjudgemental. It is this very quality, along with the sharp, clinical feel that his films have as consequence, that makes them so frightening.

"Naked Lunch" is a film that takes place entirely in the mind. Our lead, an author experiencing writer's block, wanders through the "Interzone", a nest of spies, femme fatales and very bad men somewhere in the middle east. It becomes clear as the film goes on that he has brought himself to this (mental) state in order to come to terms with his own guilt at having accidentally killed his wife, his anger at her unfaithfulness, his crippling yet satisfying addictions and his latent homosexuality. This is material that cries to be set loose, to run wild, to move of its own volition into what crevices it finds. Cronenberg, however, is both unwilling and unable. He anchors it down to a classic structure and reduces the "Interzone" to a drunken and drug addled delusion. As an artist he must have logic, rhyme must follow reason and in this particular case where neither is called for his typically brilliant approach winds up gutting the film, robbing it of its potential beauty and power.

It is not surprising that the strongest set pieces in the film involve the flesh and body transformation. It is somewhat more surprising to find that Cronenberg's dispassionate manner works extremely well with the more noirish aspects that characterize the film's earlier sequences. Peter Weller, best known as Robocop, delivers a strong and complex performance. As detatched as Cronenberg is to the material our lead is to what is happening to his own body, and even his mind, often taking the role of passive observer through his own trials and tribulations. The supporting actors do the best they can under the circumstances, often being very effective, but the film's insistence on tying itself down takes many oppostunities away from them.