DMR #2: Naked Lunch 1991
surprise! I'm actually doing a second one of these. I think that means I can officially call it a series? yayyy
As a recap, DRM stands for 'dubious media reviews'. When I came up with this, the intention was for it to be read as 'media reviews; dubious' - as in, the media is fine, it's the quality of my reviewing that should be highly suspect.
Unfortunately, today I'm reviewing David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, the film adaptation of William S. Burroughs' book of the same title. If these two names in combination have not already caused you to close this webpage in abject terror, I can only pray they will do so by the time you have finished reading. Heaven forbid anyone goes and watches this movie because of me.
Welcome to DRM #2. Just this once (we hope), you very much ought to interpret that as 'dubious media; reviewed'.
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Section the First: Trivia
As mentioned, Naked Lunch is a 1991 film written and directed by David Cronenberg.
This is my first experience with a Cronenberg film, but much to the dismay of my saner side I suspect it will not be my last, cause I did actually enjoy the shit out of it.
The film is based on the 1959 novel also titled The Naked Lunch, written by the infamous William S. Burroughs. I haven't read the book, and I live in mild fear of the day I inevitably do.
While I say the film is based on the book, I have been informed by those close to me that there's surprisingly little resemblence by the standards of an adaptation that was intended to be faithful.
For example, the movie only just barely manages to have any comprehensible plot, relying on the audience to simultaneously keep track of everything that has happened so far, while also vividly hallucinating all the things that need to have happened in-between for the film to have literally any sense of linear coherency.
On the other hand, the book allegedly requires you to exclusively do the latter, because trying to maintain any grip on your narrative sanity while reading it tends to result in feelings of nausea, inadequacy, abstract hopelessness, extreme vertigo, a terrible fear of writing implements, and the sensation of someone removing your corneas with a toothbrush.
The fact that I know at least two people who nevertheless read this book willingly and with some level of genuine enjoyment speaks both to the terrific writing skill(?) of William S. Burroughs, and also the average mental state of the company I keep.
Moving on.
On the surface, Naked Lunch is a film about a pest exterminator in the 50's who becomes addicted to his own bug spray. Which is a thing that can maybe happen? I'm kinda too afraid to look into it.
What follows is the most jarring collection of events I've ever seen in a movie. Almost none of these events seem to have any association with the original premise until you dissociate just far enough to understand Burroughs' particular brand of narrative genius, something I will unfortunately have to leave the reader to experience for themself as I do not believe I share that man's vision.
It's about 115 minutes long, and features a cast of actors who I consistently felt like I almost recognised but couldn't quite place... and also Ian Holm, presumably just to fuck with me in particular.
I... really don't know what other trivia I can offer at this stage. You can go read the wikipedia page, I guess; alas that I don't have the fortitude to risk stumbling across the synopsis again just yet.
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Part the Second: Vibes
Watching Naked Lunch feels very much like watching a train crash... but with the same crash overlayed at 1/4 transparency, in reverse. Imagine this is then sped up by about 1.25x, and then again layered with another instance of itself in both directions, this time at 0.75x speed, with the faster instance looping as necessary. Watch this until the slower crash has occured 4 times, to represent the utterly incomprehensible but roughly 4-act layout of the film.
I can't explain it in any other way. This film is pointless in both premise and plot, and yet incredibly riveting. I needed to know how it would conclude, despite already knowing the ending in my heart (due to the way the same tragedy seems to occur over and over, both predictable and yet absurdly unexpected).
You feel as though you have just gotten a grip on the characters, setting, and metaphors being presented to you in a scene when all of the above is whisked away and replaced with something about 20 degrees different, leaving you subconsciously reeling for comprehension while your conscious mind slowly enters a slight fugue state.
At one point during the film I believe the setting shifted halfway across the globe, from 1950's New York to a fictional(?) region of North Africa, with the requisite overt shift in architecture, average skin tone, ambient noise, and assorted other accoutraments used by the film industry to indicate geographical positioning.
However, this transition was done both so smoothly and with so little warning or foreshadowing that I didn't realise it had happened for almost another 20 minutes, at which point I felt like I'd been politely punched in the nose by someone holding a fistful of sand.
At some point during the movie, one of my film-experiencing companions made a comment about how every residence of the main character shown on screen had almost exactly the same layout. I didn't notice this beforehand, and in fact continued to be entirely incapable of spotting it even after the point was made, mostly because I was too fixated on the oddly erotic typewriter bug that was commonly present in these sets.
However, I will take them at their word and assume this was a choice made by the film, probably for some very specific and metaphorically-important reason. For a while I wondered if it was meant to imply that the entire movie was actually happening in a single room, with the supposed location changes being a product of the protagonist's fevered and drug-addled mind. Then I decided this couldn't possibly be the case, because we were definitely in North Africa now. Probably.
Until some characters who we left in the USA over an hour ago abruptly appeared on the beach in the next scene, and completely shattered my tenuous understanding of continuity once again.
The train crash loops. The wreckage fills the camera frame, at once progressing too quickly and slowly to be real. The crash unoccurs, resolving itself back into a train, something the mind can understand. But also, the crash hasn't happened yet. It was always a train. It's travelling forwards along the line. It's travelling forwards along the line, backwards. The crash is about to occur. The crash hasn't occured yet. The crash happened at the start. The wreckage fills the camera frame. The wreckage fills your brain. It's too slow. You ache for it to occur. It's too fast. You ache for it to stop occuring. It's a train. It's a wrecked train. It's wreckage, about to become a train.
Do you understand yet?
If a typewriter falls off a table and screams because it is being eaten by a beetle, but nobody is around to see the keys clatter silently to the floor, is the typewriter really a beetle? Or are the centipedes lying to you about the whole thing? Perhaps you are the typewriter, and the floor, and the beetle.
Are you screaming yet?
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Part the Final: The Best Part
Oh god oh fuck. Why'd I add this section.
The best part of Naked Lunch? Probably the fact that I've seen it, and thus I am morally justified if I never watch it ever again. (Un)fortunately I have seen it, and thus I now have the insatiable craving to expose others to it, if only to alleviate this sensation that I now understand the world in a slightly different way than everyone else.
I turned to someone near the start of the movie and said, "I think the worst thing this movie will do to me is turn me into a typewriter autist, actually."
She told me I was deeply mistaken. I wasn't. I had no idea how horrifically correct I was going to be.
I suspect if I ever see a Clark-Nova typewriter in an op shop or antique store, my body will viscerally shear itself in half, leaving my entrails lying obscenely along the street as one half of me attempts to grab the thing with clawed and desperate hands, while the other experiences the sort of repulsion usually reserved for mutilated corpses and babies in trashcans.
Also, there's a thing called a Mugwump. I never want to think about the Mugwump ever again.
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Part The Conclusion: The Conclusion
How the hell do I finish this review.
Despite all my ramblings and fearmongerings, Naked Lunch actually isn't a bad movie. In fact, I'd argue that it's a quite good movie by many metrics.
The acting is quite superb, something that was commented on by various people at points of the movie. Most of the sets are well crafted, with only a couple points where my film nerd friends pointed out an obvious painted backdrop or such similar thing, and I believe those are highly forgivable.
I don't recall every really thinking about the camera work, which is by default a better circumstance than being aware of the camera for the wrong reasons. At one point early in the film I was rather annoyed by the way the audio seemed to be out of sync with the picture, but then something happened halfway through that made me wonder if that was in fact a deliberate choice rather than an error in the media. I still don't know, which is wonderful.
There's just not much that I can really criticize, as far as film technique goes. Mr Cronenberg seems to know what he's doing.
Which makes the utter incomprehensibility of the movie so much fucking funnier, in my opinion. You just know it could have been an immaculate story... if it had literally any desire to be so. It sure as hell doesn't, and I respect the shit out of it.
Don't watch Naked Lunch.
It won't be good for you. It won't be good for those close to you, whether they are coworkers or dearly beloved family. It won't be good for your possible descendants, when they inevitably inherit the neural echoes this movie will leave in your genetic memory. At best, you'll survive the experience.
But, y'know. If you don't care about all that... go watch Naked Lunch.
Cram as many people as you can into the room. Hold each other close as the movie begins, and dig your fingers into their skin and hair as it devolves into insanity and disgust. Let yourself be inevitably bonded to them by the experience. It's not that bad, really.
Go see the fucking parrots, Kiki.
You mightn't live to regret it.