Naked Lunch (1991)

Director: David Cronenberg
Starring: Peter Weller, Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, Roy Scheider

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I'm not sure how many people have seen MTV's short animated series from about ten years ago called The Maxx, based off Image Comic's book of the same name, but watching Naked Lunch very much reminded me of this series. You've got the hallucinations. You've got a mumbling, unperturbed protagonist. You've got Interzone in Naked Lunch, The Outback in The Maxx. While The Maxx was a bum that believed himself a superhero because he was afraid to look at himself unmasked, Bill Lee creates a system of rules or laws...agencies maybe that operate not parallel to our world as The Outback does. The Interzone operates within this reality creating arbitrary rules and objectives for Lee that he follows without any rational thought. Like the famous line from the book says, though: "Exterminate all rational thought." This kind of setting, the insects, the paranoia all point to what Kafka writes about in "The Metamorphosis", The Trial, etc. and Kafka is actually explicitly referenced early in the film. Whereas Kafka wrote about the alienation that one feels after the Industrial Age, Naked Lunch is about...the same? Junk? Depression? All of these? It's difficult to pinpoint what is real, if anything, in the film, or even if it matters at all. I'm not entirely sure what I've come away with after seeing the film much less what I was intended to walk away with. Hell if I know, but I do know that Peter Weller was absolutely dynamite. At the very least, he's worth watching if you can make yourself sit through the entire thing. I suggest you do.

July 3
computer, late evening

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