5/25/2005: Views: Naked Lunch
Naked Lunch 1991, dir. David Cronenberg
"Exterminate all rational thought"
William S. Burroughs' banned and frenetic book was said to be unfilmable, but David Cronenberg thrives with such challenges. What may seem on first glance like a series of unrelated bizarre and fantastic events and the ravings of drug-hazed insanity are really put together quite coherently, and we end up with a touching portrait of a tormented genius.
What we have in Naked Lunch is an autobiography of sorts, and a record of the novel's creation. It merges layers of Burroughs' reality and his psychosis seamlessly, and we marvel at how well he keeps it together, appearing lucid and "normal" while hallucinating outrageous scenarios and situations.
Many of the facts of Burroughs' life during the time he wrote Naked Lunch are presented here: working as an exterminator, his accidental fatal shooting of his wife (to which he credited his becoming a writer), his time spent in Tangier, and his ever-increasing drug addictions and paranoia.
Jack Kerouc and Allen Ginsberg are here too, appearing undisguised other than their characters' pseudonyms, which they all used for each other in their writings. It was Kerouac & Ginsberg who gathered the bits of what would become Naked Lunch when visiting Burroughs in Tangier, and encouraged him to publish it, and it's said that Kerouac came up with the title.
Peter Weller is uncanny as Bill Lee (Burroughs) in the film, always dapper and well-dressed even as his mind is crumbling before us. The entire cast is excellent, as you'd expect from such actors as Judy Davis, Ian Holm, Julian Sands, and Roy Scheider.
Cronenberg's always-disturbing special effects are here as well, this time in the form of talking overlord insects that morph from ordinary things, particularly typewriters, symbolizing the love/hate relationship with the written word that plagued Burroughs. The creature effects are simultaneously fascinating, disgusting, and hilarious. They are an integral part of the story, the thread that weaves it all together and makes a plot out of what is often called a "plotless novel".
The DVD is available from the Criterion Collection in a two-disc edition.. I only saw Disc 1 and the movie itself; Disc 2 has several "Making Of" featurettes, photos, and excerpts of Burroughs reading from the novel.
William S. Burroughs' grandfather invented the Burroughs adding machine, and the subsequent Burroughs Corporation merged with Sperry to form Unisys. I'd always heard Burroughs had been disowned and disinherited by his well-connected family: that may be an urban legend, but it's a fitting and romantic one in this case. He's credited with inventing the phrase "heavy metal" and he influenced countless writers and artists from the Beats to Bowie, Lou Reed and Blondie to the Beatles and Nirvana.
His greatest legacy though, may be his reflections and translations of the workings of a drugged mind: the "war on drugs" folks might do better to study the work of self-professed "junky" Burroughs than to keep pouring tax money into enforcing drug laws if they really want to understand the big picture and find a solution.
