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Cronenberg's strange, over the top comedy is based on the William S. Burroughs book, and right off the bat during the title sequence we can see the director has really taken great care to set this up as a pure mood piece. The titles are revealed by multi colored art deco shapes and lines of pale greens and magentas.
Peter Weller's performance is the funniest thing about the film. He is so cool and deadpan that it's as if his eyes take an extra 5 seconds to catch up with his words.
The plot is absurd. A bug exterminator becomes hooked on his own powder, shoots his wife by accident, and goes into the Interzone, an imaginary world where roaches, centipedes and aristocratic writers assign him to certain "reports" about things we don't quite understand.
Many of the themes in this film seem to be about homosexuality. Possibly the writer's own denial? I got many laughs at the recurring insinuations and the way Weller handles them, eventually coming clean in a brief description of his alter ego dancer mada'am. Other aspects seem to linger on sickness, possibly the AIDS virus, and yet again a recurring character is a hemmeroidal butt hole for a mouth as part of an agent typewriter. This movie is absolutely insane!
I'll never need to watch this again. The plot is totally nuts, and the length of the film stays way, way past its welcome. Though it is funny and perverse, I can't say it's a "great" film because it really isn't. If weird is your flavor well then I suppose this movie is a masterpiece, and there are plenty of interpretations and underlying things to try and dredg up into discussion, but even with a very literary spine, I felt like this was just one bad acid trip with some chuckles.
Naked Lunch (1991)
Director: David Cronenberg
Director: David Cronenberg
Cronenberg's strange, over the top comedy is based on the William S. Burroughs book, and right off the bat during the title sequence we can see the director has really taken great care to set this up as a pure mood piece. The titles are revealed by multi colored art deco shapes and lines of pale greens and magentas.
Peter Weller's performance is the funniest thing about the film. He is so cool and deadpan that it's as if his eyes take an extra 5 seconds to catch up with his words.
The plot is absurd. A bug exterminator becomes hooked on his own powder, shoots his wife by accident, and goes into the Interzone, an imaginary world where roaches, centipedes and aristocratic writers assign him to certain "reports" about things we don't quite understand.
Many of the themes in this film seem to be about homosexuality. Possibly the writer's own denial? I got many laughs at the recurring insinuations and the way Weller handles them, eventually coming clean in a brief description of his alter ego dancer mada'am. Other aspects seem to linger on sickness, possibly the AIDS virus, and yet again a recurring character is a hemmeroidal butt hole for a mouth as part of an agent typewriter. This movie is absolutely insane!
I'll never need to watch this again. The plot is totally nuts, and the length of the film stays way, way past its welcome. Though it is funny and perverse, I can't say it's a "great" film because it really isn't. If weird is your flavor well then I suppose this movie is a masterpiece, and there are plenty of interpretations and underlying things to try and dredg up into discussion, but even with a very literary spine, I felt like this was just one bad acid trip with some chuckles.