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Burroughs’s hallucinatory, once-thought-unfilmable novel Naked Lunch, directed by David Cronenberg, a part-time exterminator and full-time drug addict named Bill Lee (Peter Weller) plunges into the nightmarish Interzone, a netherworld of sinister cabals and giant talking bugs. Cronenberg’s technical film-making skills had come a long way since his low-budget early work, but the luridly colourful neo-noir stylings of Naked Lunch were still a surprise. review with screenshot 8 in Svet's review, and for the opposite see screenshot 4 in this review versus screenshot 5 in Svet's review). There’s also a booklet with new writing from Sargeant and Vanessa Morgan, plus archive writing from Chris Rodley and Cronenberg himself; enough to feed anyone’s addiction to facts about this strange, unique film.
But even without this, it’s one of Sands’s most enjoyable roles, so louche and eccentric that Cloquet’s eye-popping secret identity actually makes a certain kind of sense. A couple of his visions, and particularly the ones where he communicates with Clark Nova, are some of the wackiest sequences ever filmed.There’s plenty in Naked Lunch to trigger the spin-cycle on weak stomachs, not to mention one of the most disturbing images I’ve ever seen in a film that has haunted me since I first saw it (it involves a centipede). Cronenberg is very soft spoken and and assured about his craft, speaking at length to motivations, creative and pragmatic decisions.
The film also won Best Director and Best Screenplay Awards (David Cronenberg) at the National Society of Film Critics Awards. Then again, Naked Lunch is so pointedly William Lee’s story that to place too much emphasis on any other character would be detrimental. The recording was produced in 1995 for an audiobook and features music by Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, and Eyvind Kang. What mattered is that a novel primarily famous for being supposedly obscene and unreadable was given a lavish film adaptation. I was unfamiliar with Burrough's body of work, so this commentary was very helpful to me in understanding the source material.
Cronenberg used other works by Burroughs in addition to Naked Lunch to create the story for this film. Cronenberg’s adaptation of Burroughs’ novel, Naked Lunch, was criminally undervalued by the studio resulting in a box-office bomb when it was released, however, it has garnered a cult following because of its unusual subject matter, weird structure, incoherence, score, performances and overall inscrutability.
For more about Naked Lunch 4K and the Naked Lunch 4K Blu-ray release, see Naked Lunch 4K Blu-ray Review published by Jeffrey Kauffman on April 11, 2023 where this Blu-ray release scored 5. This just goes to show that Cronenberg, who also wrote the script, was indeed the one and only director who could have effectively filmed Burroughs' ramblings. We reviewed the Region free UK Ultra HD Blu-ray release of Naked Lunch on a Panasonic TX-65HZ1000B Ultra HD 4K TV with a Panasonic DP-UB450 Dolby Vision HDR10+ 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player. Criterion's upcoming Blu-ray release allows one to experience the film at home in the best possible way. It’s a cold film, even by Cronenberg’s standards, and its length – nearly two hours, very unusual for this director – can drag a little.Digitally there are no compression issues, and the original source is clean and bright, with a light filmic grain that give life to the image which is simply wonderful.
Europe's busiest forums, with independent news and expert reviews, for TVs, Home Cinema, Hi-Fi, Movies, Gaming, Tech and more.Their only comment was to tell me their favourite quote from the book, which, when I checked, turned out to be on the first page. Arguably David Cronenberg's best film, Naked Lunch is a bold and audacious mind-bender with a style to die for.