The Machinist
It plays games, it hoodwinks you, it takes you through the whirlpool of thoughts dark and happy… It can easily cast a MIRAGE of a happy imagination and then when you want to wade like a free bird through it, it just evaporates, leaving nothing but a trail of dust, muck and dirt!!
Brad Anderson, Director (Vertigo, Fight Club, Memento and The Tenant fame) creates an almost inhuman scenario that frightens scares and yet teaches you to look at the unfolding drama with a sympathetic heart. He has successfully created a thriller that whips your senses to the grim realities of what your mind can do to you when faced with an inner trauma that is driving you to despair and resentment of hunger to an almost emaciated condition as well as absolutely sleepless nights!!
Christian Bale, accomplished actor, known for his fabulous roles in Batman Begins, Empire of the Sun, Little Women, American Psycho and more recently Rescue Dawn and The Dark Knight was also very well known for his adaptation of his physical self in weight shedding techniques. Here he has lost 40 pounds (nearly 28 kgs) from a 90 kg frame to look like a virtual skeleton where you can actually count his ribs!!
The Premise
It’s all about a man Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) who works in a factory as a machinist. Off late he has been losing weight because of loss of appetite. He appears to be normal in his work. But his entire world turns upside down when he sees a face in the welding department of the factory. He even shares smokes with him. Then he goes berserk when he comes to know that the factory does not have any man working there at all. Then a friend of his, Ivan suddenly looses his good arm while starting a lathe machine and the whole work force turns on him as the culprit who deliberated the incident.
The picture turns a dark shade of grey when we realise that Trevors life has suddenly turned into a dazed cycle of paranoid delusion. Sudden appearances of post it’s on his refrigerator door with Hangman puzzles renders even more insomniac tendencies in him. His only friends are the waitress at an anonymous café at the airport and a girl called Stevie. He is so pathetically thin that she even says that, “If you were any thinner, you would cease to exist!”
His factory manager in one of his anger moods even calls him ‘toasted shit’!!
Where did this all begin??
Why is the night a sleepless nightmare and the day nightmarish drone?? His mind is on an overdrive. He has no clue about the things that are happening to him. Why has the Hangman started throwing his riddles at him?? Why is the car that he used to drive reported stolen??
Its completely gory the way Trevor has been shown shedding his weight over the trauma that his mind is putting him through. Anderson’s camera work is so sickeningly gory that when he curves around the spine of Trevor and runs the lens smoothly down the chest and rib cage you feel pathetic and horrified!! But then you think could a mind that’s playing this man towards paranoia also be playing a game of hide and seek where the game being simple is increasing its intensity a notch higher everytime.
Its not easy for Trevor as we see him being driven towards the levels of desperation that make him take a step towards his doom even when he suspects his old friend Ivan, whose hand is now covered with a toe like adage, Ivan tries to lunge at him accusingly which is exactly the opposite of how he had dealt with Trevor earlier!!
We do not know the dark despair that Trevor undergoes everyday but can feel his pain and his eagerness to find the light at the end of it all!! Is it light or is it his battle with his inner twisted self that he seeks to find a sleep, a sleep that would finally take him away from his cracked insides and lead him to a well deserved rest…???
Christian Bale has really shed his inhibitions and his weight to get under the skin of Trevor and his turmoil’s. I would go a step further and say that he has actually done a skeletal replica of Trevors character and has lend a huge credibility to the word INSOMIAC and PARANOIA!!
His frenzy, his anger and even his frustration are studied, subdued and have a ferocity of a man possessed!! All the requisites of a man whose mind has done a turnaround to the worst.
His support cast of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stevie has lend a credibility to the friend of Trevor and has given us the human mind that Trevor seeks to find solace in and maybe even find the real reason why he has turned whacko.
Brad Anderson has a simple yet a very dramatic ending in store for you. It goes beyond your realm of human understanding. Why??? … Because its simple, it talks of the atrocities of the mind and above all it’s the admission of a guilt that the man had tried to run away from. Escape… Its nice when you are innocent, is it necessary when you are guilty???
My sincere advice, this film has a bit of nudity where Bale, Trevor does things beyond human. They are grotesque, bending further the boundaries of sanity but NECESSARY. The colour of the film is far from happy… Its Dark grey and mixed with dull blues hues. Daylight is without humor but is certainly clouded by adversities….
You will echo the mind all the time, particularly when you think you are vulnerable. When you are not, you will seek the vulnerability because you thought it gave you invincibility and courage to run, to hide and feel liberated!!
It’s a brilliant film, made in 2004. Watch it with the period in mind. But get it now…