Skip to main content

Mike Leigh's 'Naked' (1993): A Masterclass in Film Directing and Acting

The Harry Potter Film most endeared to me is 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' and I grew fond of it because of it's two headlining Villainous​ (aka anti-Hero) characters: Professor Lupin and Sirius Black. I have watched it four times if I correctly remember the count. And just like the film and these two characters, I also grew fond and respectful of acting prowess of Gary Oldman and David Thewlis.



I had Googled them then and came to know that Gary Oldman had already became an acting giant by then and his primary motivation for doing that film was money. Since then, he has become an eternal favorite to me. But, but I was simultaneously taken aback by Professor Lupin's acts in the film and David's performance and his powerful voice which was as magnificent as his fellow compatriot, the Mighty Alan Rickman's (Severus Snape), were just too good to ignore. Till then, his most high profile and Breakthrough role was that of a motormouth Manchester homeless person in Mike Leigh's Naked. It made him an internationally recognized star and he was feted at Cannes for it. Now I had to watch this film but It almost took me four years to finally come around it.



Naked undoubtedly is a film extraordinaire. Mike Leigh's outputs have always been meaningful but with Naked, he went the extra mile. Margaret Thatcher had portrayed a beautiful picture of England in front of the world but like they say about every rich city and country, such places also house the most desolate of people and David's Johnny (hope I get the character's name correct) is one such person. The whole film is a marvel of 'acting improvisation' and at it's centre is David Thewlis. For not one single frame, you can take your eyes away from him. He is handsome, intellectual, smart and an opportunist. And homeless and penny less too. He comes to London to meet his former girlfriend and intends to restart his life with her back in Manchester where they originally belong to. But when he gets his chance, he denies it and such has been the tragicomic life of Johnny. It's a character driven film and each of it's characters are well rounded-off. Naked is a film that makes for a difficult watch but once you are done with it, you would know your rewards. It justifies it's reputation and David's acting prowess undoubtedly!!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Love and Friendship

Friendship is an aspect of life that’s not controlled by its beholders. Ideal friendships, well they are the things of past now. Many a times we have seen our parents or their parents talking about their old great friends and how amusingly they tell us about their bonding, the moments they spent together and we see a ‘priceless’ twinkle in their eyes…..that’s something which is missing from modern friendships. There are terms & phrases like ‘yaar tu to apna bhai hai’, ‘yaar tu to ghar ka aadmi hai’ which even today invoke something very beautiful inside our hearts but we all know that the feelings underneath them are ‘hollow’, they are just mere words, ‘emotionless’ and ‘impassive’. Well who am I to comment on such an indefinable ‘qualitative’ perspective? I’m one of you, those wretched creatures that are still in need of true, great friendships. Well I certainly can’t say that I haven’t got friends. I’ve got friends, plenty of them in fact, and some of them are real great. I s...

Racing Extinction (2015) : A Commentary

It's really hard to switch on to a different language from the one you have constantly been tinkering with. I grew so accustomed to writing in Hindi in last few days that it started dawning on me that I might never be good again with my English. So this is a tester, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday, one of my movie group friends, an American by nationality, questioned my fondness of documentaries. I specifically wrote in one of my columns that documentaries demand your unwavering attention and once you gave 'that' to them, you are rewarded much more handsomely than a proper, narrative, fictitious film. My reasoning for believing so is that a documentary is an experience of a creative process. It doesn't get made to 'entertain' you. They are there to reveal something to you. They teach you something. You get overwhelmed by them. 'Racing Extinction (2015)' was one such documentary. I watched it in last couple of days. I couldn't complete it in one ...

What Virat Kohli Could Learn from Sourav Ganguly's Career

This IPL season might be dubbed as 'Kohli's IPL' in years to come. He is unarguably the best exponent of white-ball batsmanship going around. However, for someone like me who places a great emphasis on longest form of Cricket i.e. Test Cricket, until and unless he proves himself in seeming and swinging conditions of England and New Zealand (I believe in him and thus shall wish him luck), I shall still rank him behind Kane Williamson and Joe Root. Just to make sure I'm impartial to this debate, I put my favorite cricketer of all time i.e. Sourav Ganguly behind Sachin, Sehwag, Laxman and Dravid when it comes to rank him in FAB FIVE of Indian Batsmanship because he simply wasn't as good as them in test cricket. Many call him a very good test cricketer and maintaining an average of 40 in test cricket from the very beginning till the very end signifies their reasoning but still, he fell short of 45/50 that makes a batsman statistical behemoth in purest form of Cricket. ...