Naked Lunch (1991)

It's 1953 NYC. Bill Lee (Peter Weller) is a former drug addict who has gone straight as an exterminator. He discovers his wife Joan (Judy Davis) is stealing his insecticide to get high. Bill is arrested by narcotic cops. They show him a talking bug who tells him that his wife is an agent of the Interzone Incorporated and she's not even human. He kills the bug and escape. He's directed to Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider) to get off the bug powder. He accidentally shoots Joan and kills her but she doesn't bleed. He falls further and further into a drug-induced surreal world. He imagines going to Interzone to start writing reports.This is a movie beyond strange. This is not a movie for following the plot. This is a series of disturbing visuals to feel. It is weirdness without compromise. Peter Weller's stone-faced acting probably is the most daring choice. A drug movie usually has the protagonist going completely manic. I can definitely understand critics who find this movie unwatchable. It is one of the most unique visions ever.

"Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to." A product of the Beat Poetry generation, writer and drug addict William S. Burroughs' 1959 Naked Lunch novel's title takes it's name as described best by the author: "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork". The book was notably banned in many places and deemed unfilmable until Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg (Videodrome, The Fly) took the project into his own hands in 1991, adapting from Burroughs' other works as well to tell the story of this surreally strange science-fiction drama. Combining Howard Shore, known for his thunderous choir and full orchestra scores and Ornette Coleman's dizzy saxophone of free jazz together for the film's astounding score was certainly an audacious choice, as the notes sporadically swell and sway, seeming to add a hazy atmosphere to the drug-fueled ambiance of the picture. Peter Suschitzky's queasy green-and-gray-tinged cinematography only adds to the collision of varying sensibilities of a sickly uneasiness as well throughout. Did Cronenberg succeed at filming the unfilmable? Let's take a look. Peter Weller plays Bill Lee (a pseudonym of Burroughs and the name under which he published his first autobiographical novel Junky), a man of whom wants to write but exterminates insects to pay the bills. Bill sometimes hangs out with his nebbish writer friends, (of which Burroughs' modeled after fellow beat poet friends Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg) Hank (Nicholas Campbell) and Martin (Michael Zelniker), of whom are both sleeping with Joan under Lee's very nose. Lee's wife, Joan, (Judy Davis), becomes addicted to Bill's bug powder dust, as she describes a shoot-up to feel like a "literary high"; a reference to Franz Kafka's 1915 short story 'The Metamorphosis'. He soon joins her in a world of unorthodox hallucinogens, involving meeting the kindly but sinister Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider), walking away with his first dose of the black meat he gives to Bill: a narcotic made from the flesh of the giant aquatic Brazilian centipede. When a party trick game known between Bill and Joan called the William Tell routine involving a liquor glass and a gun go awry, accidentally killing Joan, Bill flees to the Tangiers-like Interzone (Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in the city Tangiers). Here in this Mediterranean location, he encounters talking insectoid typewriters, double agents, offbeat aesthetes, Mugwumps spouting and oozing from phallic appendages and plots within plots.Cronenberg's collaboration with the banned work of Burroughs between the realms of fiction and non-fiction allows the film itself to concern that nether region between the real and unreal as well, where the inspired and imaginative impetus for the creative process are not driven by drug-fueled hallucinations but are the product of it instead. With a fragmented touch of film noir realism, random routines and creepy-crawlies galore,'Naked Lunch' is a bizarre plunge into a narcotic delusion echoing that of a bitter cry from the bellows of the Earth. When combining both worlds regarding the exterminated species of the entomologic kingdom along with a few hits of insect powder, the thin line of what is tangible fades into a twisted oblivion, giving us a picture not for everyone but remains a good hit that still manages to shock and stun even today thanks to it's daring director, even with all of the bugs and the drugs.

An exterminator becomes addicted to the substance that he uses to kill bugs, and accidentally ends up murdering his own wife. This leads to him becoming involved in a secret government plot in a port town in North Africa, seemingly orchestrated by giant bugs.William S. Burroughs is one of those three influential writers known collectively as the Beat Generation (the other two being Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac), and this film – and the book its adapted from – is one of the reasons why. Partly autobiographical, partly the absurdity of Burroughs imagination, 'Naked Lunch' is an excellent film.As you watch the film, it's difficult not to be taken aback by its sheer zaniness and surreal nature; however, it's fascinating to find out that, under those layers of fantasy, Burroughs is recounting stories from his own life. Drug addiction; the accidental murder of his wife; the need to escape from the glare of city life – these were all things that Burroughs endured himself and subsequently penned down. But in pure Burroughs fashion, the author adds some mutant bugs and a crazy plot to spice it up.And then you add Cronenberg to the equation, who himself is famed for his outrageous and sometimes ridiculous films. Cronenberg manages to bring Burroughs' vision to life in a very strong way, keeping the film moving at a frenetic pace and never really letting the viewer feel like they finally have a grasp of what is going on. At each turn, the film takes a new, unexpected twist, and we're all the better for it.But the best thing about the film is Paul Weller. Between typewriter-shaped cockroaches and insane hallucinogenic experiences, Weller somehow instils a level of gravitas. Maybe it's his everyman good looks, or his ability to seemingly move through every scene with a quiet presence, but Weller (as lead character Bill) makes you believe in the world. Through everything that he does, you stay on his side, and that gives this strange film it's emotional core.This is not Cronenberg's best film, I think, but 'Naked Lunch' definitely ranks up there as one of the better ones. The absurdity of it all had the potential to be off-putting; but bring together the intimacy of Burroughs' writing, the imaginative Cronenberg direction, and Weller's grounded performance, and you have a brilliantly made movie. Watch it.

"Naked Lunch", by its very nature, is likely to strongly divide audiences. It's the logical enough merging of two distinctive visions, that of the very influential "beat" author William S. Burroughs and the highly individualistic filmmaker David Cronenberg. Right from the start you know it won't adhere to anything resembling traditional narrative. Instead, it goes straight for the bizarre, the mind blowing, the metaphorical, and the shocking. It exists in a true dream world where anything is possible. Instead of being a truly faithful adaptation of a novel that is described as many as being "unfilmable" anyway, it weaves in elements from Burroughs's own life with memorable results.It takes place in a Northern Africa community known as the Interzone, where an exterminator and aspiring writer named William Lee (Peter Weller) has fled following his accidental shooting of his wife Joan (Judy Davis). The story involves such details as drug addiction - Bill and Joan are hooked on the very substance that he uses to kill insects - and a secret plot being hatched by talking bugs that grow progressively larger. Bills' encounters with the assorted oddball human characters are no less surreal.Burroughs and Cronenberg fans should be delighted with this films' striking depictions of unreality. The creature effects, courtesy of Chris Walas and company (Walas and Cronenberg had previously collaborated on "The Fly") are incredible; the grotesqueries on display - for one thing, the bugs talk out of their sphincters - are the kind of thing that Cronenberg has always excelled at creating.The jazzy score by Ornette Coleman and Howard Shore is intoxicating, as are the production design by Carol Spier and the cinematography by Peter Suschitzky. The cast all deliver fearless and riveting performances; the heavy hitters include Ian Holm, Julian Sands, and Roy Scheider, and Davis pulls double duty by playing the companion of Holms' character as well. They all play this so well that they just completely pull you in. Weller offers a deliciously deadpan performance as the philosophical Bill.As far as films that delve into the writing process go, "Naked Lunch" may be one of the most out there in existence, but it does provide a certain amount of rewards for adventuresome film lovers.Eight out of 10.