December 12, 2009
I do long reviews, I'll admit to that. Why am I saying this now? Because despite how short the review will seem in comparison to others I've done, the intro may be one of the longer ones. I need to set the scene, to describe how wonderful the movie is to me.
The year is 2005. Au...( read more)stralia normally gets most films later than the States or UK, usually by a month or so. We still hadn't gotten The Machinist and Batman Begins is about two weeks away. I had been greatly impressed by Christian Bale's role in American Psycho, and the movie itself, and the news that he was Batman was pleasing. But I still wanted to see a little more, to get myself psyched for the man who would don the mantle of the Caped Crusader. Once I found out we would finally be getting The Machinist, I marked the day in my calender. Of course, it was only playing in limited cinemas so I had to take a train and a bus to get to the shopping centre with the cinema playing it. Only five people paid to see The Machinist that day. I went home a little exhausted. Was it worth it? You'd better believe it.
Before going any further into the movie itself, I want to get this out of the way: yes, it is amazing just how skinny Christian Bale looks in this movie. And his commitment is just one of many reasons he's one of my all time favourite actors. The look is off-putting because it's meant to be. But that's one of my single biggest gripes about just one movie. Well, not so much the movie itself but people's reactions. All they focus on is how skinny Bale is. People, it's called The Machinist not Lose Weight Now, Ask Christian Bale How. While I generally don't argue with professional critics due to how eloquently they can explain their opinions, The Machinist is the one film I think most of them should re-review because they became so fixated on the weight he lost, I don't think they discussed much else.
Anyway, with all that out of the way, here's the story: Christian Bale plays Trevor Reznik (small point, that is one of my favourite fictional names now), an insomniac machinist. He has been unable to sleep for at least a year and his weight loss and erratic behaviour causes his co-workers to avoid him like the plague. Trevor's only real friend is a prostitute named Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh, stellar performance here) but he also enjoys the company of waitress Maria (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón). His primary concern, besides his insomnia, is the appearance of Ivan (John Sharian), a mysterious man appearing at his job who always seems to vanish just as something goes down.
I've made note in my Memento review how much I love mindscrew films, and this film certainly does not disappoint on that front. By the time the finale comes around, it does all make sense but you have to be paying close attention. Only downside to a mindscrew film is it makes reviewing hard due to not wanting to spoil the proceedings (not to mention it needs an elaborate explanation, the kind of thing Wikipedia is good at).
The imagery is wonderful. It's dark and gritty but not in the way recent video games are. Here the dark and often confusing nature is used to possibly point out the way Trevor has withdrawn into his own little world which appears to be very bleak and meaningless (slight spoiler but look at the closing scenes and how full of light and life they are. Especially the final scene where Trevor gets the very thing he's looking for)
Bale has the ability to take what seems like a typecast role (in this case, the distant loner who's not quite "normal") and make it fresh each time (Edward Norton does a similar thing, which is why I respect him highly too). Trevor would almost be like the man Billy Joel sings about in his song The River Of Dreams if it weren't for the sinister overtones of this movie (and the whole not-sleeping thing. But then, I did say almost). Both are searching for something, taken out of their soul. Hell, Trevor himself might be looking for the River Of Dreams since his lack of sleep is messing with his mind.
Honestly, one of the best joys in life is getting out of the house, taking a train ride, finding a cinema and choosing a smaller film to immerse yourself in. The Machinist helped solidify my belief in Bale. Fingers crossed that The Lovely Bones will prove to be a journey worth taking too, even if it is slightly more well known than The Machinist.
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