Joe (1970, John G. Avildsen) (Patreon)

67/100

Lengthy roundabout intro time again! 

Mike Leigh's Naked is among the relatively few films that I'd call a masterpiece without feeling hyperbolic, but I've always wrestled with one aspect: the character (played by Greg Cruttwell) who variously goes by Jeremy Smart and Sebastian Hawk. He's unremittingly nasty and cruel, without a single apparent redeeming quality, and several of his scenes that involve sexual violence are quite difficult to sit through. But he doesn't really have any narrative function, and it's fairly easy to imagine the film working fine without him. My theory has always been that he's there to embody what Johnny, the protagonist (played by David Thewlis in one of the five or so greatest screen performances I've ever seen), would look like to us stripped of his formidable intelligence and scathing wit. He's really not much less terrible a person than Jeremy/Sebastian, but I, at least, find myself making allowances for his atrocious behavior. And I think we're meant to recognize that these two men are fundamentally more similar than they are different.

To be honest, I've never 100% convinced myself that Naked actually intends for us to equate the characters in that way. But there's zero doubt in my mind that Joe does. To the extent that this film has a protagonist—I'll address its arrestingly unconventional structure below—that honor falls not to Peter Boyle's title character, but to Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick), a rich, respectable ad exec whose appearance and temperament and hostility toward hippies scream Republican. Bill's in no way laudable, but neither does he superficially seem like cause for concern, at first; even when he kills someone early on, thereby setting the plot (such as it is) in motion, that's essentially an accident inspired by temporary blinding rage. He's clearly part of the right-wing establishment. And Joe's bracing project is to posit that Bill Compton is just a few sharp nudges (and a fuckload of dollars) away from being Joe Curran, who's openly, virulently racist; who's convinced that the country's good old-fashioned values are being eroded by immigrants and communists and other undesirables; and who's prepared to use the alarming cache of weapons he's amassed. Complicating this dynamic in unsettling ways is the class divide between them, which sometimes makes Joe the more sympathetic figure simply by virtue of obliviously enduring Bill and his wife Joan's condescension. By the end, though, it's clearly a distinction without a difference, as Bill, after some initial horrified hesitation, crosses the ultimate line with a gusto that makes it difficult to separate self-interest from animus.

Now, I find the pitch-black irony of what Bill inadvertently does in Joe's final seconds both cute/cheap and (worse) counterproductive—it's an extra fillip that I for one didn't need, and almost kinda implies by its inclusion that what precedes it could be shrugged off. And there are parts of the film that I just didn't buy as they occurred, or think Avildsen and/or screenwriter Norman Wexler handled clumsily. Part of the problem might be Patrick, a journeyman actor who's not remotely on Boyle's level, never transcending "serviceable" in this role and dipping well below it whenever his performance demands raw emotion (which he tends to signify rather than inhabit). But I was also thrown off by such basic stuff as when Joan learns of the crime that gets Bill quasi-blackmailed by Joe—a moment that the film not only skips past but fails to clarify, such that I was still unsure whether she knew when the two of them arrive at Joe and Mary Lou's house for dinner (and even when Joe obliquely refers to it in his basement den—should I be experiencing tension on Bill's behalf or not?). Not insignificant reservations, but they're mostly outweighed by Joe's overall audacity and Boyle's compellingly repugnant working Joe. Plus, I love a film that keeps me off-balance for a good long while before resolving into a recognizable form, and the baton-pass here is quite remarkable: If you didn't know better, you'd naturally assume that, title notwithstanding, Joe is about the young drug addict Melissa (Susan Sarandon's very first onscreen role—no previous TV spots, even), who's firmly front and center for something like 20 minutes, after appearing throughout the opening credits, and has sizable problems of her own. And then when Bill takes over the narrative, Joe initially comes across like a grotesquely colorful annoyance in the bar, holding obnoxious court but made subordinate to the phone call that Bill's trying to place. Imagine seeing this film in 1970, when Boyle was still almost entirely unknown. Must have been akin to watching it repeatedly get hijacked by someone more loathsome still. I can't not admire that.