Movie of the Week: The anarchy of Mike Leigh’s ‘Naked’ amid Britain in chaos
Time’s up. Liz Truss and her shambolic Conservative government have sunk into a thick quagmire of their own making that has been churning like a soup of inescapable incompetence ever since the 2016 Brexit result. Her stunted tenure as Prime Minister makes Truss the shortest-reigning British leader of all time, yet, despite her brief tenure at the top of the Tory tree, she has managed to herald in political anarchy amid an avalanche of national issues.
It’s all created something of an apocalyptic feel across the UK, with the government in a crisis as fragile as a tinderbox, ready to spark alight with just the smallest amount of criticism. It’s led politics to a bit of a roadblock, where Labour are chomping at the bit for a go in power whilst the Tories are holding on like the TV remote in the stubborn grips of a small child.
It’s left us at a bit of an impasse, too, as we’ve really exhausted many of the great political satires of British cinema, including Kevin Billington’s The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer and Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop. So, with Britain in turmoil, we’ve turned to Mike Leigh’s classic apocalyptic 1993 drama, Naked.
Taking the audience on an intimate exploration of the morals and purposes of living, dying, relationships, family, class and pretentiousness in a society that is becoming ever-more isolated, Leigh’s 1993 film is among his darkest works. A prophetic film with a damning opinion of contemporary and future Britain, the story is fueled by the barking energy of Johnny (David Thewlis), a homeless character who makes a hasty departure from Manchester to the thrills of the capital city.
Visiting his Mancunian friend in Dalston, Johnny arrives unannounced and proceeds to throw his weight around and impose his conspiracy theories about the state of the world and the degradation of society. He proceeds to stomp the streets of London with little purpose other than to enlist the company of others so that he can spout his observational philosophy. Less cynical, and more perceptively critical, the protagonist exposes the dark heart of an emerging technological revolution by opening the eyes of those around him to obvious shortcomings.
As if the ghost of the century’s future, Johnny stalks the streets of London, interacting with everyone he can as he laments the modern world. “That’s the trouble with everybody – you’re all so bored…now you want cheap thrills and, like, plenty of them, and it doesn’t matter how tawdry or vacuous they are as long as they’re new” he cries, placing himself as the ‘other’ in his own conversation, assessing his disciples.
At the dawn of ‘Cool Britannia’, a time of false optimism and celebration for an emerging distinct British culture in the mid-1990s, Naked broke the artifice and suggested such growth was a mere illusion.
Strange how prophetic Mike Leigh’s late 20th-century vision truly was, foreseeing the downfall of cultural ideals as the country transitioned into a new technological era of personal cell phones and vacuous social media. Further still, one wonders what Johnny would make of the fragmented isolation of the contemporary country following its breakup from the European Union and the subsequent self-sabotage of the Conservative party in turmoil.
We can’t help but think that despite Naked coming out over 25 years ago, Johnny’s apocalyptic musings remain as crucial and relevant as ever, with contemporary Britain facing a firm political wake-up call.
