Mike completed the film "Naked" in 1993, and won the Best Picture and Best Director awards at the Cannes International Film Festival that year. Actor David Huillis won the Best Actor Award. This is a film that is still heavy today. The actor Johnny seems to be the urban version of "The Catcher in the Rye", but he is not the 16-year-old Calder. He is no longer innocent, but he is also a The role of an anti-hero. Mike has created a disgusting and depressing character, and what he wants to express is hatred and boredom. It's just that Johnny, who has been thinking there again, is cynical and at the same time doing evil things. "Naked" seems to go farther than Salinger. Entering the living space of a post-industrial metropolis, the characters are more complicated. People can no longer use a sentence or two to explain Johnny: there is no good or bad in him, just a sack. A solid character. Different women appeared around him. In such an absurd society, Mike portrayed the role of Louise. She and Johnny had a love experience for a year. Later, she left Johnny and came to London from Manchester. The story is from It started when Johnny came to London to find Louise; in the end, Johnny was beaten up by a gangster on the road, limped, and left the city helplessly and decisively.
The film still can’t tell any stories, but the women around Johnny make you feel where you met them at first glance; when they act, you will follow their every move. Feel.
The performances of the actors leave a deep impression on people, because what they show is not a performance in the ordinary sense, they are living like that. When Johnny treated Sophie, the cruel and rascal rudeness made people afraid to see, but then, when he looked at Louise, his sincere and pure eyesight made you almost unable to believe it. It's the same actor. This is really impossible to perform, it is a person's inner experience and personality revealing. I don't know what kind of drama the director let the actor experience and appear in, time and time again, he just walked out of life like that. Similarly, when Louise met the perverted Hawks in the kitchen, she flicked a sharp meat cleaver. In an instant, you saw such a powerful woman standing there, filled with comfort and admiration.
Mike has too much sympathy and understanding for women's living conditions, but when he exposes the reality to people Naked, he sometimes irritates the audience. More often, we are willing to live behind the reality hidden by beautiful curtains. When "Naked" was released in London, someone said angrily: "5 pounds, 5 rapes." (The film ticket cost 5 pounds at the time) However, the violence in the film is really not what Mike will ultimately express, he even said. Most of it is to express the state of people living at the bottom of the city—their desires, helplessness, and the pain of struggling.
Mike’s realism seems to be his own. It not only has the tension and foundation of English literature and drama, but is also rooted in reality. He is still different from Italian neorealism. In terms of the drama of the event itself, he rejects it. Design out of nothing and deliberately sensational treatment, strive to restore the most primitive face of life; but all this is not a faithful reproduction of life, he intercepts the fragments and moments of life without leaving a trace, giving actors a lot of creative space.
Mike's film language, like his handling of characters, is not luxurious at all, but very particular.
