When I saw Jeremy Smart, or Sebastian Hawk, or a person whose name I didn’t know at the time suddenly appeared, I didn’t hesitate to put it He is regarded as a natural part of the protagonist Johnny and the actor David Thewlis. Not because of the similarity in behavior of the two people, but because of the declaration of "I will commit suicide when I am forty years old." When this sentence appeared on the screen, I couldn't help thinking of Harrell in Steppenwolf, remembering his vows to commit suicide on his fiftieth birthday, and all the comforts and joys he felt afterwards. tragic. At that moment, I decided that I could no longer continue this wrong path, so I bounced the disc out and used sleep to eliminate this unreliable short-term memory.
And now, I have a new short-term memory. I can't say that it must be reliable, but I believe it fits my conjecture that there is a mysterious but sure inner connection between Steppenwolf and Naked. I don't know how Mike Lee did all this, because his filming method has always emphasized improvisation by actors. But I might as well speculate: Maybe, Mike Lee just accurately grasped the characteristics of outsiders in the current era, and let the actors recognize this with the same accuracy. When these characters gather together, whether the story is traditional, dramatic, modern, or surreal, everything will eventually become Steppenwolf, because the outsiders in Steppenwolf are exactly the typical contemporary symptoms. In Nietzsche’s time, only Nietzsche had this disease. In Hesse’s era, there were thousands of people suffering from this disease. In Mike Lee’s era, maybe everyone suffered from this disease, but it was mild or severe. The difference with not knowing it. This is also causing Mike Lee to not adopt Hesse’s method of looking at one person from multiple angles, but to look at many people from one angle—no, there is no complete person here. The outsider in "Naked" is incomplete, and the ordinary citizens are also incomplete. Only when they are tied together by fate can they constitute a person, a perfect person who is both a petty citizen and an outsider.
For these reasons, I don't want to use stories to connect all of this, because "Naked" has no clear plot at all, and some are just conversations one after another. But note that this does not mean that the film has no structure. No matter how many strangers in London Johnny had various relationships with, he eventually returned to that hut. There is his lover there, there are people who are willing to love him, and there is an araucaria that does not exist. That cabin is just like the place where Harris lives in Steppenwolf. It has a healthy, honest, and simple taste, which is unique to people who live a regular life. Everything that happened to Johnny there was about the pain of being unable to escape from outsiders. In order to show this circular structure, I can only choose to start with the characters.
Undoubtedly, Johnny is the core of this movie. He is very similar to Steppenwolf, and he can clearly feel the conflict between human nature and wolf nature (the movie eventually destroys this image, just as Hesse did to Harles). But he is not a typical outsider, because his behavior in the end seems to be biased towards sympathy for the petty citizens. He always breaks into the lives of others unscrupulously, but in the end what he did seems to be appropriate, because he fully understands the problems of the petty citizens.
Facing Sophie, Johnny was very rough. But Sophie didn't feel hurt by this, but developed a more fanatical love for Johnny. Because Johnny fully understands Sophie's problem: living day after day, trapping himself with a high wall, there is no way out. Johnny used his power and wisdom to conquer the person who stopped thinking, and let her walk out of the siege, even if that might eventually lead to the breakdown of some relationships. Sure enough, Sophie finally left the hut. She can neither repeat her past life nor get Johnny's love, her only choice is to leave and find a new Johnny. Maybe it was a person, maybe not.
When facing a couple who fled from Scotland to London, Johnny showed patience again. There are a hundred ways to get two people together as quickly as possible, but Johnny chose the most troublesome one. He talked to little Scottish bullies and young women who were ignorant and ignorant, just to make the two people fully aware of the importance of each other. Because in London, they have nothing to rely on. When the man chased the woman and the two ran away, everything was sweet and flirtatious. Johnny stood in the desolate streets of London, like the king of the empire's destiny.
Unlike the two people above, building security Brian is his prey. When he saw this old man studying hard in the middle of the night, he immediately understood everything. He wants to destroy his faith and tell him that nothing is safe and unchanging. In the process, we also have a deeper understanding of Johnny: He must have been well-educated in the past, otherwise he will not be able to defeat the old man. In the end, he also destroyed the old man's faith and forced him to doubt his life. In the process, he saw another poor citizen, an old woman dancing alone in the middle of the night. He realized the beautiful and tragic connection between the two lonely citizens, and immediately thought of a new plan. He seduced her, abandoned her, ignored her, grabbed her hair and forced her to face her ugliness and aging: "You look like my mother." He is such a cruel person, but he guards her like an elf... …And then took away her books, some of yesterday’s sweet dreams. When he met-or grabbed-Brian again the next morning, his plan was completed.
Then what did he do? He caught up with a girl in a cafe, followed her to her house, chatted, borrowed the bathroom, read a book, grilled the stove, made her cry, and was kicked out...what a ridiculous thing! But it did happen. Why did this girl who lives alone accept Johnny, and why did he kick him out? Because Johnny is a polite rascal? Or is it because Johnny is too smart? In any case, Johnny caused a ripple in the girl's heart. I don't know why she shed tears, but she finally gave up accepting the stranger because she seemed to remember more important things. Likewise, I don't know how genuine Johnny's last curse was.
And then? Then he failed. He lost his satchel and was beaten up by the little hooligans who happened upon him. In front of the harsh, bloody rock posters, his words were pale and weak. In the face of violence, everything about him was pale and weak. He could only stagger back to the hut and admit his failure.
So far, the petty citizens and outsiders still maintain a certain sense of alienation.
Louise was the first person Johnny could not conquer. She lives a typical, petty citizen's nine-to-five life, but she has great pity for people like Johnny and Sophie. Only when facing Louise would Johnny appear so at a loss. From the conversation between the two, we can know that Louise and Johnny had been dating for a year. Considering Johnny's character and his critical attitude towards the lifestyle of the civic, it is hard to imagine that Louise was living in the manner of an civic before. I would rather believe that she was once an outsider, but in the end she chose to compromise with a simple, simple, and happy citizen life, because she could no longer bear the pure loneliness.
If the above facts are true, then it will be easier for us to understand the most difficult part of the movie: Jeremy Smart, or Sebastian Hawk. We don't have to regard him as a person, or even as a prominent character in the world of drama. He was just there, cooperating with Johnny like a shadow. Johnny makes women love, he makes women hate; Johnny is poor, he is rich; Johnny pretends to be a philosopher, he pretends to be a successful man; Johnny is rude and vicious, he is polite. Maybe he was Johnny in the past, but time differentiated two different outsiders. Johnny endured that loneliness, so he continued to maintain the contradictions of an outsider. And Jeremy Smart, or Sebastian Hawk, was swallowed by a soul in his chest and became a self-degrading outsider. But in the final analysis, he was Johnny's shadow. His suicide declaration was also Johnny's suicide declaration. Both of them are going to vanish, but the methods are different. In the movie, Johnny had only one conversation with his shadow, and the beginning of the sentence was: "I know, I know you told me." Yes, the shadow told Johnny, "I am your brother, you But as happy as I am, but want to walk the road that is doomed to failure."
By the way, there is also Sandra, the only pure petty citizen in the movie. In "Steppenwolf", the paradise of the well-off family that Harles said has never appeared in the movie. And when Sandra returned to the hut, everything began to become orderly, and heaven was reborn. She is the only person in the movie who criticizes Johnny for being stupid and hateful, and what she loves is exactly what Johnny yearns for but cannot bear: hot toast, hot milk, hot water, bed, a good dream, a regular life . Steppenwolf Harles likes Araucaria, but he will never try to live a comfortable and stable life for ordinary citizens. For Johnny, Sandra is the perfect petty citizen, and everything about her is Araucaria. So he can only choose to leave and find the next place to live.
But here is a little detail: the money Johnny took away was Jeremy Smart, or Sebastian Hawk, or his shadow, left by his brother. Why is this money kept? The movie did not explain this at all. But the fact will not change, that is, Johnny took the money. Only in this way can he continue his outsider life. And this is the contradiction of the outsider: everything he opposes and contempt is part of himself, so he can only choose to put himself first in criticism, which is undoubtedly a kind of self-destruction. Louise and I have no doubt that Johnny will find the next London to be his contemporary Steppenwolf, but I believe even more that he will unswervingly use a knife to cut off his candle of life little by little, and make it the noblest in life. Career. He will not commit suicide, but he is undoubtedly still a suicide.
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