Why I love David Thewlis’ performance in Naked | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why I love David Thewlis’ per­for­mance in Naked

01 Jul 2018

Words by William Carroll

Man in a dark room, looking concerned.
Man in a dark room, looking concerned.
The British actor casts a gaunt, mor­bid, uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly human fig­ure in Mike Leigh’s noc­tur­nal Lon­don odyssey.

Mike Leigh’s 1993 black com­e­dy Naked remains one of the British filmmaker’s most pop­u­lar and endur­ing works, cap­tur­ing in its two-hour mid­night odyssey through the grimy urban sprawl of Lon­don a raw and vital voice. The film’s real suc­cess, though, is large­ly pred­i­cat­ed on the cen­tral per­for­mance of David Thewlis, whose turn as the para­noid, depraved, noc­tur­nal deviant John­ny is one of the finest of the decade.

Leigh’s screen­play is a rapid-fire, pro­fane mis­cel­lany of bib­li­cal allu­sion, old wives tales, and British slang that Thewlis spits and gut­ters through like a man pos­sessed. Johnny’s dia­tribes against the doomed’ glob­al pop­u­la­tion often bor­der on the man­ic, and his nihilis­tic world­view becomes the axis around which Leigh’s bleak and bru­tal ode to the British work­ing-class spins indefinitely.

I can’t believe you’re here?”
I’m not here.”

Inter­ac­tions like this, between John­ny and his old girl­friend, Louise, define Leigh’s pro­tag­o­nist as a con­tra­dic­tion, a strange and sin­is­ter fig­ure who resents life and yet tol­er­ates it through a diet of cig­a­rettes and cheap booze. Yet for some­one who puts so lit­tle stock in the val­ue of life, John­ny is end­less­ly curi­ous and inquisi­to­r­i­al. The major­i­ty of his lines in Leigh’s screen­play are ques­tions – either to him­self, to the apa­thet­ic city through which he wan­ders, or to the var­i­ous strangers he meets along the way. Yet he seems ambiva­lent to find­ing any answers and instead derives a mor­bid plea­sure from prob­ing the flesh and mar­row of human exis­tence with his barbed, mor­dant wit.

Shadowy figure in dark coat walks down a city street past parked cars and older buildings.

But it’s not just Thewlis’ mas­tery of Leigh’s script that marks his per­for­mance as rev­e­la­to­ry. The phys­i­cal­i­ty he brings to John­ny, from his arro­gant and car­toon­ish gait to the way he often looks up, child-like, at oth­ers through his greasy fringe, is respon­si­ble for his last­ing impres­sion long after the cred­its roll. He casts a gaunt and hag­gard fig­ure, an urban ghoul who haunts depart­ment store foy­ers or the flu­o­res­cent stair­wells of tube sta­tions after dark. His coarse, patchy facial hair and his dirty, soot-black ulster jack­et mark the unmis­tak­able look of the vagrant, but his gal­lows humour and eru­dite knowl­edge mark him out from the rest of the city’s des­ti­tute. He is, in a word, a nobody. As anony­mous as a wisp of smoke over Battersea.

It’s the chameleon-like adapt­abil­i­ty of Thewlis, though, that gives John­ny his ani­mat­ed bril­liance. Undaunt­ed by any­one or any­thing, he talks to night porters, drug addicts, and wait­ress­es indis­crim­i­nate­ly, shar­ing with them all his apho­ris­tic out­look on a life he con­sid­ers futile and, frankly, a waste of everyone’s time. John­ny has sur­vived up to the point where we meet him, sex­u­al­ly assault­ing a woman in a dark Man­ches­ter alley­way, because he finds a sick plea­sure in elon­gat­ing his own tor­ment­ed exis­tence. Thewlis’ moody and bit­ter por­tray­al of John­ny marks a char­ac­ter to whom life con­sti­tutes putting one arbi­trary foot in front of the oth­er, and see­ing where you end up.

Above all else, though, what is most strik­ing about Thewlis’ all-con­sum­ing per­for­mance is the para­dox of empa­thy ver­sus dis­gust we are left wran­gling with at the film’s close. Here is a man who has raped women, who steals, who lies, who would kill his own kin to save him­self. We watch him manip­u­late and assault his way into trou­ble, and then talk him­self right back out of it. We should feel noth­ing but dis­gust for John­ny, noth­ing but con­tempt. And we do. But there is anoth­er feel­ing stirred up by Thewlis’ raw performance.

For all of Johnny’s faults, he is uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly human. And humans feel empa­thy for oth­ers, some­times against our bet­ter judge­ment. As John­ny limps off through the harsh dawn of a Lon­don coun­cil estate in the film’s final moments, stolen mon­ey in his coat pock­et, we are left won­der­ing if such a man could ever be wor­thy of our sym­pa­thy. Could he ever be redeemed? It is tes­ta­ment to Thewlis that such ques­tions are raised at all when John­ny could seem so black-and-white in the hands of a less­er actor.

It’s not just John­ny with whom we are left feel­ing deeply con­flict­ed at the end of the film, but our­selves too. We’re not fuckin’ impor­tant. We’re just a crap idea,” John­ny says to a secu­ri­ty guard mid­way through the film. After bear­ing wit­ness to Johnny’s foul excur­sion into London’s under­bel­ly, it’s hard to argue with him.

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