Naked Lunch starts in New York City in 1953 where Bill Lee (Peter Weller) works as a bug exterminator, however he is having some difficulty as someone is taking his bug powder that he uses to kill them. Bill finds out that his wife Joan (Judy Davis) is taking it & injecting herself with it, then strangely Bill is contacted by a large bug type creature that informs Bill he has to kill his wife Joan because she is an enemy agent. Bill flees New York City & ends up in Morocco with his insect type writer that he writes his reports on, from this point on things get even weirder for Bill & us...
This Canadian, British & Japanese co-production was written & directed by David Cronenberg based on the controversial novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs, I am a fan of David Cronenberg & his work in general but I have to say that I think Naked Lunch is his least enjoyable film as far as I am concerned. Cronenberg's films are usually very visual & have deep meaning & are just great but Naked Lunch is a total mess that I personally didn't get & am not sure who it was meant to appeal to. Don't get me wrong films don't have to mean anything, they don't have to have deep life changing messages or be thought provoking but Naked Lunch is an almost unfathomable film. The basic plot as far as I can make out is that some bug exterminator starts getting high on his bug powder & then writes some bizarre book he titles Naked Lunch while having lots of bizarre hallucinations & starts to suffer from severe paranoia & concocts a strange world of his own in which he becomes some sort of spy or agent or something. For me a film has to be enjoyable & entertaining, if it isn't then what the hell is the point in watching it? Naked Lunch was neither enjoyable or entertaining to me so while some may love it & find all sorts of obscure meanings & parallels I thought it was just a meaningless mess with no direction or narrative & at almost two hours long it felt like it went on forever. While watching Naked Lunch I just kept thinking 'what the hell is going on' & once it had finished I was left thinking 'what the hell have I just spent two hours of my life watching', basically I was less than satisfied & left totally cold.
The film is stylish & visually impressive as one would expect from Cronenberg, I can't help but feel that it's no coincidence that the orifice's that the bugs speak out of look like a talking anus. There's nothing in the way of horror or gore really, there are a few bug like creatures & a couple of sex scenes but this is surprisingly tame considering the source material & the director.
The film has polished production values & looks nice enough, Naked Lunch was going to be shot in Tangier in Morocco but because of the war that broke out in Iraq it ended up being shot completely in Toronto in Ontario in Canada. Apparently Peter Weller turned down the lead role in Robocop 3 (1993) to star in this, Ian Holm, Julian Sands & Roy Scheider round off a good cast.
Naked Lunch is a film that I didn't like at all, there just didn't seem to be any point or message or reason for it's existence. As a big Cronenberg fan I can say this is my least favourite of his films that I have seen, over long & meaningless pretty much sums Naked Lunch up for me.
This Canadian, British & Japanese co-production was written & directed by David Cronenberg based on the controversial novel of the same name by William S. Burroughs, I am a fan of David Cronenberg & his work in general but I have to say that I think Naked Lunch is his least enjoyable film as far as I am concerned. Cronenberg's films are usually very visual & have deep meaning & are just great but Naked Lunch is a total mess that I personally didn't get & am not sure who it was meant to appeal to. Don't get me wrong films don't have to mean anything, they don't have to have deep life changing messages or be thought provoking but Naked Lunch is an almost unfathomable film. The basic plot as far as I can make out is that some bug exterminator starts getting high on his bug powder & then writes some bizarre book he titles Naked Lunch while having lots of bizarre hallucinations & starts to suffer from severe paranoia & concocts a strange world of his own in which he becomes some sort of spy or agent or something. For me a film has to be enjoyable & entertaining, if it isn't then what the hell is the point in watching it? Naked Lunch was neither enjoyable or entertaining to me so while some may love it & find all sorts of obscure meanings & parallels I thought it was just a meaningless mess with no direction or narrative & at almost two hours long it felt like it went on forever. While watching Naked Lunch I just kept thinking 'what the hell is going on' & once it had finished I was left thinking 'what the hell have I just spent two hours of my life watching', basically I was less than satisfied & left totally cold.
The film is stylish & visually impressive as one would expect from Cronenberg, I can't help but feel that it's no coincidence that the orifice's that the bugs speak out of look like a talking anus. There's nothing in the way of horror or gore really, there are a few bug like creatures & a couple of sex scenes but this is surprisingly tame considering the source material & the director.
The film has polished production values & looks nice enough, Naked Lunch was going to be shot in Tangier in Morocco but because of the war that broke out in Iraq it ended up being shot completely in Toronto in Ontario in Canada. Apparently Peter Weller turned down the lead role in Robocop 3 (1993) to star in this, Ian Holm, Julian Sands & Roy Scheider round off a good cast.
Naked Lunch is a film that I didn't like at all, there just didn't seem to be any point or message or reason for it's existence. As a big Cronenberg fan I can say this is my least favourite of his films that I have seen, over long & meaningless pretty much sums Naked Lunch up for me.