Naked

Well, the suits at New Line finally got around to getting this one out on DVD, with what looks like some prodding from the Criterion Collection. I thought it was the greatest thing since farkleberry pie when it first came out in 1993, but I have to admit that my enthusiasm had cooled somewhat when I watched it last week. I still think it's a good movie, and David Thewliss' performance as Johnny strikes me as extraordinary as I first thought, but I'm just not convinced that the whole thing hangs together quite as well as I first believed. The character of Sebastian seems to me a bit of a cardboard cut out, and even the very solid performance by Claire Skinner at the end seems sort of tacked on. Still, the dialogue throughout much of the picture is as sharp as ever, including the mesmerizing exchange between Johnny and Brian, the night watchman. For some reason I took this pretty personally when I first watched it twelve years ago, and even now I find myself perusing the Church fathers to figure out exactly which Christian heresy Johnny is championing at the end:

JOHNNY
Shall I tell you what I believe?
BRIAN
You don’t believe in anything.
JOHNNY
Oh I do, Brian.
BRIAN
Yeah? What do you believe?
JOHNNY
Do you think the amoeba ever dreamed it would evolve into the frog? Of course it didn’t. And when that first frog shimmied out of the water and employed its vocal cords to attract a mate or to retire a predator, do you think that frog ever imagined that that incipient croak would ever evolve into all the languages of the world, into all the literature of the world? Of course it fucking didn’t. And just as that froggie could never possibly have conceived of Shakespeare, so we can never possible imagine our destiny.
BRIAN
I know what my destiny is.
JOHNNY
Yeah, but what you’re experiencing, as far as I can gather with all these manifestations of, ah, regression and precognition and transmigratory astral fucking chatterings is just the equivalent of that first, primeval grunt. Because evolution isn’t over. Man isn’t the be-all and fucking end-all…
BRIAN
You don’t believe in God.
JOHNNY
Of course I believe in God. You see the thing is, Brian, that God is a hateful God. Must be, because if that God is good, why is there evil in the world? Why is there pain, and hate, and greed, and war? It doesn’t make sense. But if God is a nasty bastard, then you can say, why is there good in the world? Why is there is there love, and hope, and joy? Well, let’s face it: good exists in order to be fucked up by evil. The very existence of good enables evil to flourish. Therefore, God is bad. It doesn’t matter how many past or future existences you have, because they’re all going to be riddled with grief, and anguish, and sickness, and death. You see Brian, God doesn’t love you. God despises you. So there’s no hope, and mankind is just a component of the device by which the devil creates itself. You with me? You see, what I’m saying, basically, is you can’t make an omlette without cracking a few eggs, and humanity is just a cracked egg. And the omlette … stinks.

Shocking, to be sure, but it fits in perfectly with much of the nihilism that lurks within so much of the world we live and work in every day. Not to mention the terrifying ferocity of Thewliss's performance.