When Naked Lunch was released in 1991, I remember being struck by a barrage of imagery that kept testing the audience’s perception of whether or not the hero of the film was hallucinating, going mad, or being drawn into a bizarre world. The extremely weird scenes stayed with me over the years. They stuck in my head with such force that I was under the illusion that I could remember the entire film, an illusion shattered when I watched it again before writing this review. One scene in particular struck out at me. Back in 1991, I found the coffeehouse scene with men plucking away on their portable typewriters slightly humorous, but it wasn’t a visually startling scene. When I saw it again, I was hit by its “cinematic prophecy.” Once again, a vision of the future has become the mainstay. On my last trip to Starbucks, every table was filled with one or more laptops and people typing madly away. It may not have been a perfect representation of an Interzone coffeehouse, but it came oddly close. How great is it that one scene can reinvigorate a film? Since ‘91, I’ve thought Naked Lunch was a great film. This just reconfirms it.
