I've been waiting for this.
Naked Lunch is one of
David Cronenberg's absolute best, meeting perfectly in the middle between his classic early horrors and his more ambitiously mainstreams later work: the best of both worlds. And Criterion's blu-ray has served me well. But this film has been crying out for a while now to get a taste of the 4k world, and hopefully some fresh special features. Arrow heard. I pre-ordered their limited edition the day they announced it, so now let's see what they were able to do.
I generally prefer Cronenberg's original works to his adaptations,
but that's another way this film manages to be the best of two worlds.
Naked Lunch is a fascinating exercise, as it adapts little of
William Burroughs'
book (although, yes, "the talking asshole" is present), taking large swaths of content from Burroughs' other writings,
his personal life and Cronenberg's own imagination, resulting in a
wholly original work that keeps the spirit of the original work but also
does its own thing.
Peter Weller (
Buckaroo Banzai,
Robocop)
is surprisingly effective as Burroughs' alter ego, Bill Lee, and he
manages to keep the amazing supporting cast from running away with the
show. There's
Judy Davis,
Ian Holm,
Julian Sands, Cronenberg all-star
Robert Silverman and
Roy Scheider
as Burroughs' recurring villain Dr. Benway. The sets are exotic and
the special effects are as seductively real as they are grotesque.
Howard Shore composes a dark, almost sinister score offset with period jazz performed by
Ornette Coleman.
You had to import
Naked Lunch
on DVD until 2003, when Criterion gave it its US debut as a 2-disc
special edition. Ten years later, they released the blu-ray edition,
with all the same content fit onto a single, dual layer BD disc.
Another ten years now and it's the UHD era. The baton has been passed
to Arrow, who've restored the film in conjunction with Turbine (who are
releasing their own UHD concurrently in Germany) in 4k from the original
camera negative with a whole new batch of special features in a fancy,
limited release (with a standard edition sure to follow).
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1) 2003 Criterion DVD; 2) 2013 Criterion BD; 3) 2023 Arrow UHD.
|
Criterion's
master, which seems to be the same in 2003 and 2013, is
taken from the 35mm interpositive and framed at 1.78:1. Arrow's looks
surprisingly close to the Criterions considering it's 20 years later, in
higher resolution and taken from a better source. Don't get me wrong,
it's an upgrade; just not the eye opening revelation I was expecting,
which I believe says more about the quality work Criterion did the first
time around than any kind of knock on Arrow's. Arrow have matted the
film to 1.85:1, also drawing in additional slivers on the left- and right-hand edges (notice we get a bit more of the "A" in "BENWAY" in the window of the first set of shots), and the screenshots naturally appear darker here as
their edition has Dolby Vision/ HDR10. The UHD's higher resolution
certainly preserves rounded edges that turn into pixelated blocks on
Criterion's BD when you zoom in, and the colors look more naturalistic
and draw you further into Cronenberg's mysterious tones - the reds are
particularly strong. I was a little surprised by the softness of the
grain, but otherwise, it's a consistently moody and attractive image.
All
three editions feature the original stereo mix, in DTS-HD on the
blu-ray and LPCM on the UHD. Arrow has also added a 5.1 mix in DTS-HD
to their disc. And all three include optional English subtitles.
Both
Criterion releases contain exactly the same special features, which are
rather excellent. First, there's a terrific audio commentary by
Cronenberg and Weller, recorded separately but edited together. This
works out well, each filling in each other's dead space and
complimenting what the other is talking about. Cronenberg naturally has
more to say and gets more airtime, but supplementing that with Weller's
own thoughts fills the length of the picture perfectly. There's also a
vintage television documentary called
Naked Making Lunch that
manages to get more in-depth than your average DVD supplement is able
to, covering a lot of Burroughs as well as the filmmaking. The original
EPK featurette is here, too, as well as a couple minutes of bonus
on-set B-roll footage. There's over an hour of Burroughs reading from
his book, a whopping ten stills galleries (broken down by subject), the
trailer and two TV spots. There's also a 32-page booklet with essays by
three critics and one by Burroughs himself.
Arrow
basically throws all of that away (perhaps Criterion are planning their
own UHD... at any rate they rarely tend to license to Arrow) and starts
from scratch.
Before Criterion brought
Naked Lunch
to the US, I used to have a Japanese DVD, which had an audio commentary
by Cronenberg himself. It was rather good, though it was prone to gaps
of dead air. But then, two thirds of the way through or so, he goes
silent for a long time. Like really long, until he's not saying
anything else until the end of the film. He basically stops talking at the 1hr 8 min mark, comes back for a few
sentences literally 20 minutes later, until he's never heard from
again. I have a very faded memory of
someone who worked on that DVD jumping onto a DVD forum (maybe mhvf or
dvdmaniacs) and explaining that one of the tapes they recorded
Cronenberg on got lost or damaged, so there was more commentary, but
it's lost to the world.
Well, tuning into this Arrow UHD, I
believe I've been reunited with that commentary. It's good with bouts
of silence, and then it arbitrarily ends with a long way still to go.
Somebody at Arrow really could've done us the courtesy of adding a
little beep or clue that the commentary is over, and not just in another
one of Cronenberg's lengthy silences, so we're not left sitting there
watching the movie in dumb, abject silence, waiting for content that's
never coming back. But, still, the first half of the commentary is
good, with Cronenberg explaining his thoughts and experiences adapting
Burroughs, so it's better to have it than nothing, but it isn't a patch
on Criterion's commentary, which is 100% the go-to
Naked Lunch
commentary.
Anyway, it's not an option because we say goodbye to the Criterion
commentary, as well as Burroughs reading from his novel, the featurette,
the B-roll, the TV spots and the many galleries. But in addition to
the old commentary, Arrow has come up with a lot more to take their
place. For starters, there's another audio commentary, this time by two
experts, which is a little informal for my tastes, but they do bring in
some good information about Burroughs' writings, and what is/ isn't the
same in the film. And there are excellent, all new on-camera
interviews with producer
Jeremy Thomas, Peter Weller (who's very invested in Burroughs and talks for over an hour!), DP
Peter Suschitzky, effects artist
Chris Walas
and Howard Shore. There's a critical visual essay (which has some fun
insights into the connections between this and the nearly
Cronenberg-directed
Total Recall), an interview with an expert on
Burroughs' life and a fascinating talk with a musical expert who
analyzes Shore's score... though he starts by rather confidently and I
daresay incorrectly analyzing the film itself. Like that
Room 237
documentary taught us, there are always people with alternate
interpretations of our favorite movies, I suppose. But once he gets
into the score, which is the bulk of the talk, he's incredibly
knowledgeable; I learned a lot.
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| 1) 2013 Criterion BD; 2) 2023 Arrow UHD. |
Arrow also has the trailer, a couple of their own stills galleries and yes,
Naked Making Lunch
is back. But they didn't just port it over, they restored it in HD and
put back the opening that Criterion's version turns out to have been
missing. The booklet's 'About the Transfer' page doesn't get into the
special features, but this is clearly a fresh scan, which corrects
Criterion's interlacing and really cleans up the picture. The aspect
ratio is 1.33:1 on both, but Arrow's pulls out to reveal more picture
(i.e. we can now see David's microphone on the left). Both versions
still have lossy audio and no subs, but it's a serious improvement in
terms of PQ. And on the Arrow, its director even gets to do an audio
commentary.
And besides all that, as you can see pictured higher
up the page, Arrow's limited edition is packed out with swag. It comes
in a hard box (and, if you ordered direct from Arrow, there's a variant
"Original Artwork" slipcase) with reversible artwork in the amary case.
And there's a double-sided poster, an 80-page full-color bound booklet,
six postcards, replicas of two business cards and a boarding pass.
Plus there's Arrow's usual film card for an upcoming release - mine was
1963's
Horror, a.k.a.
The Blancheville Monster, which will apparently be coming out later this year.
So, Arrow's is obviously now the definitive edition. You might want
to hang onto your Criterion for the exclusive features, but, as
superior as their commentary is, and nice to have the other odds and
ends, by the time you've worked your way through all the Arrow extras, I
don't think you're really missing out on any
anecdotes or insights. All of these
extras repeat the same stuff a lot. Criterion's commentary is a more
pleasing listen, but at the end of the day, Arrow gives us all we need
and more.
