Coming off the critical success of "Dead Ringers" (1988), David Cronenberg found himself in an enviable position. At a creative peak, the director was finally able to tackle head-on the most famous work of literature by a writer who had been a major influence since the very beginning of his career.

Cronenberg said that a literal film adaptation of William S, Burroughs's 1959 novel "Naked Lunch" would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and be banned across the globe. In his early attempts at writing, Cronenberg had fought to find his own voice among the heavy influences of Burroughs and his other literary touchstone, Vladimir Nabokov. Now, he essentially had to do the opposite. Having reached a new level of confidence in his own work, he had to develop a fusion of his own sensibility with that of Burroughs. The resulting film is an amalgam of Cronenberg and Burroughs, not only "Naked Lunch," but other novels and elements of the writer's life as well.

In 1953 in New York City, junkie Bill Lee (Peter Weller) works as an exterminator, or at least he tries to; his wife Joan (Judy Davis) has taken to pilfering his bug powder, shooting it up in search of a new buzz (prompting Davis's now-classic line, "It's a very literary high. It's a Kafka high. It makes you feel like a bug."). Lee is also a writer, although as he tells his close friends, the Ginsberg and Kerouac surrogates Martin (Michael Zelniker) and Hank (Nicholas Campbell), he is ready to give up the game as too dangerous.

Taken in by police for interrogation regarding his missing bug powder, he is confronted by the largest bug he has ever seen: a giant cockroach-like creature that speaks to Lee though a very human-like asshole in its back. The bug tells Lee that Joan is a secret agent, not to be trusted, and may not be human at all. Lee is ordered to kill Joan. "And it must be done real tasty."

Lee is directed by a fellow exterminator to see Dr. Benway (Roy Schneider) under the pretense of kicking his and his wife's bug powder addiction, though he may also be looking to score some additional powder. Benway gives him a new drug to cut the bug powder with, the black meat of the aquatic Brazilian centipede. Later, after injecting himself with some of the black meat, Lee suggests to Joan that they do their "William Tell routine." In a scene taken from Burroughs's own life, she places a glass on her head, and in his attempt to shoot it off, Lee kills his wife. Unable to deal with the consequences of what he has done (and at the urging of yet another creature, the vaguely reptilian mugwump), Lee flees New York for the Tangiers-like Interzone. Once there, he must contend with not only his own spiraling drug use, but incessant paranoia regarding those he meets, including drug dealer Hans (Cronenberg regular Robert A. Silverman), Paul and Jane Bowles-inspired Tom and Joan Frost (Ian Holm and Davis again), and the hovering presence of an unseen Dr. Benway.

Near the beginning of the film, Bill Lee says, "Exterminate all rational thought." Viewers might do well to follow his advice. Cronenberg's most brilliant decision in his witty script is to present Lee's hallucinations as physical. A typewriter may change from a mechanical object, to a typewriter-bug hybrid, to a bag of pharmaceuticals, and back again, but because the events are experienced by the audience along with Lee (only on a couple of occasions is he not present in the scene), the metaphorical associations remain clear. The film does not operate on a level of what is real and what is not. Even though at its heart a drama about the creative process, the film presents the various creatures and events as not pure hallucination, allowing it to work on a fantastic level as well. Lee is the audience surrogate of sorts since we experience the events of the film with him. He may at first register slight disbelief at what is in front of him (these reactions provide a fair amount of the film's humor), but he is quick to accept what he sees, and so are we.

Still, every indication is given that Lee never even leaves New York. (Burroughs himself did run off to Tangiers for a while after shooting his wife.) The character of Kiki is first encountered in a New York bar, then again in Interzone; Lee comments that the Frosts' apartment strongly resembles a restaurant he knows in New York; when Martin and Hank visit to check up on Lee, his Interzone apartment looks much like his New York place.

Because Lee's experiences are all presented subjectively, "Naked Lunch" can become an almost oppressive journey for the viewer. At times, the film does feel (necessarily) like a bad trip. By the time Dr. Benway makes a return appearance at the end of the film, some viewers may feel as if their brains have come close to collapsing. The means of his reappearance certainly makes for one of the most transgressive moments in the Cronenberg canon.

The cast members are all keyed into the proceedings and understand their roles well. Weller certainly has the toughest job, and his performance is exceptional. His performance and appearance manage to evoke Burroughs without falling into simple impersonation. He conveys both the film's sadness and humor very well. His recitation of the "talking asshole" routine in the film rivals Burroughs's own.

After her work in 1991's other great tortured writer film ("Barton Fink"), Judy Davis has a great time as Joan Lee, finding the humor in her junkie role while refusing to ham it up. Her Joan Frost provides her with the other end of the spectrum: calm, reserved, neatly dressed, though she does let herself go when combining black centipede meat and an Arabic typewriter.

Ian Holm provides great intelligence for Tom Frost, a writer who has been around the block, but who manages to keep his creativity in check in a way Bill Lee cannot.

Roy Schnieder has relatively little screen time, but gives Benway a level of sinister calculation behind his friendly façade.
As usual for a Cronenberg production, technical aspects from his regular collaborators are top notch. Carol Spier's production design is rich and full exotic detail. When Iraq War I forced the production to scrap location work in Tangiers, everything had to be built from scratch, and Spier's work is amazing. Peter Suschitsky's photography ranks with his best for the director, working wonders with shadows that truly do enhance the characters rather than simply color them. Howard Shore's score, performed by the London Philharmonic and supplemented by Ornette Coleman, fuses jazz, Middle Eastern sounds, and his own familiar minor key orchestral work into a cohesive whole.

Criterion's DVD is unsurprisingly an outstanding presentation of not only the film itself but also of its attendant extras. The movie itself is presented on disc one in a 1.78 ratio in a director-supervised transfer; the film looks practically three-dimensional, providing a wonderful sense of physical depth to the film. Sound is the original two-channel stereo track, clean, clear, and untampered-with, except for the usual clean-up process.

Disc one also features a commentary track featuring Cronenberg and Weller (recorded separately and edited together). This is Cronenberg's fifth track (after "Dead Ringers," "eXistenZ," "Spider," and the laserdisc of "Crash"), and he does his usual excellent job, discussing influences (such as the Saul Bass-inspired opening credits), what he tried to achieve creatively, his relationship with Burroughs, and technical aspects of the production. He is not shy to mention that he finds the special effects lacking in a key sequence late in the film, and also points out his own sort-of cameo. Weller gets much less time on the track, but speaks fondly of his collaborators and also of the fact that filming "Naked Lunch" helped him through a very difficult time in his life.

Disc two contains the remainder of the supplements. Chris Rodley's "South Bank Show" documentary "Naked Making Lunch" provides a thorough (for its 48 minute running time) account of how Burroughs's book eventually found its way to film some thirty years after publication. Cronenberg, Burroughs, producer Jeremy Thomas, and most of the major cast are interviewed. Particularly intriguing of all are storyboards from an abandoned attempt by Anthony Balch and Brion Gysin to film the novel in the sixties.

An extensive gallery of special effects designs is provided, as are promotional photos of the cast and the production. The film's superb theatrical trailer is included, as well as two shorter TV spots. A few minutes of on-set b-roll footage is included, as is the six-minute electronic press kit featurette. Excerpts from a 1995 audio book of Burroughs reading his book and a photo gallery from the collection of Allen Ginsberg round out the disc.

The nicely designed booklet reprints Janet Maslin's New York Times review and essays by Gary Indiana, Chris Rodley, and Burroughs that originally appeared in. "Everything is Permitted: the Making of 'Naked Lunch,'" a book certainly worth picking up for fans of Cronenberg's film.

About Jason Minnix

Talk movies at the The Water Cooler