Review of Naked Lunch (1991) by Chris V — 03 Nov 2008

The tagline forewarns the content: "exterminate all rational thought". I find this film more hilarious the more I think about it, because it is, in a way, a scathing critique of narrative: it has the structure of a narrative, all the requisite elements of characters and plot and climax and twists and whatnot, and yet it makes no sense. Watching Naked Lunch, I felt like I was watching a story, a narrative, a plot, whatever, but I had no idea what that particular story/narrative/plot was. And it's great because of that, because it deliberately exposes the artificiality of story as nothing more than structure and organization, the very real and important disconnect between reality and story and the way in which our ideas about stories shape our perception of reality.

It also has bugs that are typewriters and Ian Holm, which should by themselves be enough for a recommendation, I think.