You are now entering Interzone, William S Burroughs' phantasmagorical land of junk, paranoia and crawly things. Best travel advice: "Exterminate all rational thought". In David Cronenberg's superbly shot, unnerving warp on the Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch, the novelist himself becomes a main character (played in an implacable monotone by Peter Weller), with elements from Burroughs' life--including the shooting of his wife during a "William Tell" game, and bohemian friends Kerouac and Ginsberg--added to frame the book's wild visions. This is, ironically, a somewhat... rational approach to an unfilmable book (and it makes a hair-curling double bill with Barton Fink, another look at writerly madness, with both films sharing Judy Davis). Cronenberg is a natural for oozing mugwumps and typewriters that turn into giant bugs, of course. But in the end, this is really his own vision of the artistic process, rather than Burroughs' hallucinatory descent into hell. --Robert Horton, Amazon.com [show more]
The best way into this bizarre Burroughs adaptation is not to think of it as a proper Burroughs adaptation at all. Rather than simply adapting "Naked Lunch" -- which anybody who's read it knows is impossible anyway -- Cronenberg elected to interweave elements from the book with a loose biography of Burroughs himself as well as some distinctly Cronenbergian original ideas. The result is a strange and hallucinatory adventure that stays true to the spirit, if not the letter, of Burroughs' work. Typewriters grow bug appendages and talk, drunken parlor games turn fatal, and everywhere the world seems to be melting and turning inexplicable. This is a world that Cronenberg and Burroughs can happily share, and the results of their meeting are as uncomfortable and thought-provoking as you'd expect. This Optimum DVD presents a fine, if barebones, transfer of this unique film.
The book that 'will drive every body mad' is now the film that will drive everybody mad. Cronenberg captures the drug induced paranoia and psychosis of W.S Burroughs' autobiographical account. Weller is excellent as the taciturn William Lee, junky and exterminator. The film itself strays from the written text incorporating accounts of Burroughs' life like the "William Tell" incident and the death of Joan Burroughs. This film, like the anti-novel itself, merges dreams with junk-fuelled reality plunging existence into an irremediable psychosis; accompanied throughout by the inspired jazz soundtrack of Ornette Coleman. A Cronenberg classic! Nightmarish and exhilerating.
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