The Machinist
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Movie Reviews of The Machinist
Movie Review: 4.5. Odd, moody thriller
Summary: 5 Stars
Now, 'The Machinist' is my kinda movie. Plot and character are important, but I find the thing that really draws me into films are the mood and the visual style. Before watching this, I supposed it was going to be a 'weird sh*t' movie, meaning a film with a lot of odd visuals and scenes and ideas simply proceeding one after another, but with farily little in terms of plot. I was correct. Yeah, it tries to tie it all together at the end, and more or less succeeds, but that isn't the point of the film. The explanation is acceptable, though certainly not remarkable, but the film doesn't play to the revelatory angle. The final explanation is needed to justify all the strange stuff going on before hand, not the other way around. And, this is the way it should be. No twist can redeem a lousy, boring movie.
This film is the story of Trevor Reznik an insomniac machine shop worker, who is clearly disturbed, as he's pretty much wasting away into nothingness, and displays some obsessive-compulsive tendencies. One day, he's distracted during the job by a coworker, the big, rough-looking Ivan, which causes a fellow worker, Miller, to lose his arm. While investigating the accident, Reznik's employer's deny that any Ivan works there, and Reznik's supposes there must be some sort of conspiracy. The rest of the film is simply his looking into what's really going on, and our peering into Reznik's troubled world and mind.
Visually, this film comes across as a mix of two David's: Fincher and Lynch.(`Mulholland Drive' , specifically. I'm not familiar with Lynch's work, as a whole) The colors are muted, and it's all shot in a calm and elegant, yet distant fashion. Lynchian surrealism comes up, via the bizarre, mysterious character Ivan, who is menacing but not altogether unfriendly, along with some of the visual aspects, particularly the otherworldly, staggeringly pristine airport diner which Trevor frequents, and a nightmarish and violent `house of horrors' sort of carnival ride he goes through. And there are just lotsa images that are strangely effective and obscure: Ivan's pantomiming a throat slitting while sparks fly about him in the factory pit, his bright, fiercely red car in the otherwise muted world, a strangely menacing fishing photo, a blood-oozing refrigerator, the mysterious post-it notes, and Reznik's hollow, desiccated body. The film just has so many strange, interesting things in it.
`The Machinist' is interesting in that it is shown from Reznik's perspective, yet we can't hope to identify with him entirely. The audience is bound to find out pretty quickly that Reznik is not a reliable source, and though we sees things as he does, we assume that he's pretty nuts and that there's no conspiracy, so that, in the end, the closing scenes of the film are far more revelatory to Trevor than they are to us. (And this is, indeed, deliberate, as director Anderson explains in the commentary.) So, it's just a sorta interesting perspective, as we spend a film watching a character unravel a mystery that we're pretty sure doesn't exist. (Well, he does find the real truth, eventually, but he's not really looking for it)
Performances are all excellent. Bale, obviously, dominates the screen as Reznik, and is the only person who really has that big of a role. I think he is perhaps ever so slightly over-hyped, simply because he lost so much weight for the film, but he really is great. He plays a withdrawn man, but doesn't make him completely flat, allowing him some humor and humanity, and he plays the few scenes where he's out of control very convincingly.
As much as I like this film, I think some people seem to be heaping excess praise onto it with regards to how it insinuates the evidence of what's really going on. The thing is, that's all there is to the film, when you get right down to it. It's just a bunch of hints, and a bunch of red herrings stuck together. It's made up of details, rather than filled with them. I don't think it's to tough to fill your film with hints as to it's true nature when that's all there is to it. The truly ingenious twists come when the entire film seems to be about something else, has a whole other plot, yet is still filled with clues that'll change the way you look at everything. I don't criticize the film for not working this way, it's not trying to, but lotsa people aren't bothering to make the distinction, which I think matters, if just a little bit.
God, it's just tough to say exactly what I mean about. I just like the mysterious and surreal. Real life is always so mundane, films should show us something more interesting. Screw realism, I want spectacle, something different. This `The Machinist' has.
Grade: A-
Movie Review: He did a bad, bad Thing...
Summary: 5 Stars
Prison.
Since Cain painted the fields with Abel's blood, the race of Man has favored exile for the criminal, a swift separation from the society against which he has transgressed. Cain and kin were dispatched to the East of Eden, and mankind has been adept at following their example in bringing the lash and levy against the cruel, the calculating, the wicked, the insolent, and the criminally stupid ever since.
We have exiled our felons deep beneath the Earth, to toil in the Stygian darkness of mines or languish in the bone-littered dungeons of dank and hungry oubliettes. We have built towering prisons to hold the unwanted on forlorn spits of rock in the sea: hark the names of the most notorious---Rikers, Alcatraz, Devil's Island, the Chateau D'If.
The Convict will suffer, yes, and pay his debt to Society, all in due course: but first we will confine and isolate him.
And for all the stone, and sweat, and blood, and steel, iron portcullises and electric mag-lock gates, the Hole and Death Row and the Green Mile, the ultimate prison is still born of our own design: the human mind.
Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) has one problem too many: he hasn't slept in a year. He's shucking off the pounds at a rate that would boggle Jenny Craig; he's drifting down to 120 and dropping, dropping, dropping.
And it gets worse: he can't trust his own thoughts, his senses, the things he glimpses, the horror he fancies he sees. He is pursued---but by whom? He remembers dragging a body, shoving it rudely down into a drainage ditch---but whose? And to what end? He claims that his shadowy watchers would come for him, if only they knew who he was.
But who is he?
And as if to underscore his wild fancies, a series of post-it notes now appear on his refrigerator door, scribbled with odd, cryptic little messages, and---more menacingly---a rapidly progressing game of Hangman.
Oh, and then there's Ivan, his ghoulish, portly, evilly jocular new co-worker on the machine line. Ivan, with two toes affixed to missing finger-joints ("...and the ladies love it!" he chortles, wiggling the outsized digits in Reznick's horrified face). Ivan, the new co-worker who no one else sees.
Is it any wonder he can't sleep?
Director Brad Anderson proved his skills at plumbing and twisting the intricate workings of the tortured human mind with "Sesson 9": "The Machinist" shows Anderson has only honed his craft with time. "Machinist" is in some ways a more ambitious effort, a bracing, brooding, menacing jaunt into dark territory Kafka would recognize and Dostoevsky would understand.
To divulge any more of "The Machinists" secrets would be criminal: 90% of the fun of this creeper lies in following close on the tormented Reznick's heels, and drinking the mystery into the pores.
The acting is superb: Bale turns out an astonishing performance that goes far beyond the physical sacrifice he made for "The Machinist". Bale displays a ghastly, measured restraint---he is wondrously attentive, rapturously alert, to all the little changes in his circumscribed existence. Bale serves up a mesmerizing picture of a warped, fragile, and doggedly curious soul determined to plumb the depths of the horrors taking place inside his skull and---more ominously---on the the factory floor.
John Sharian (the mysterious Ivan)is 360-degrees of hulking, drawling menace, insultingly, ominously, unctuously oily and affable at once: he dominates every scene like some depraved, hungry, joking ogre at dinner---and you can be sure the joke's on you. And the dinner, as well.
The still-gorgeous Jennifer Jason-Leigh (Stevie) and Italian beauty Aitana Sanchez-Gijon (Marie) round out a stellar cast as Reznick's precarious anchors of sanity in a world increasingly gone mad---precarious as one is a call-girl and the other a short-order waitress in a dingy, flickeringly-lit diner where even Time itself seems in peril. And Michael Ironside (Miller)growls and grunts and snarls in fine Ironside fashion, and proves he really should keep his hands away from sharp objects (first in "Starship Troopers", and now this? Mind the pointy things, Mike!).
The cinematography is well-lashed to the paranoid creepiness: the film sprawls out, and slithers around, its industrial slagscape, a twilight land of blues and greys, dingy factories spiked by smokestacks, dotted with dive bars that stink of stale cigarettes and regret. And interiors---the interior of a machinery-clogged and blood-hungry factory line, the interior of a dirty apartment, the interior of a diseased and terrified mind.
Prison.
JSG
Movie Review: Frightfully moving in the daunting peculiar sense
Summary: 5 Stars
It's always a bit saddening when I take notice of an actor who has dedicated himself to a character that will never be fully appreciated during its time. Christian Bale will most likely never receive all the praise he's rightfully earned for committing to this film. As far as slimming down for a movie role goes, Mr. Bale's 63-pound weight loss makes Tom Hank's transformation for `Cast Away' seem like a joke.
What really is a joke though, are movie stars nowadays, thinking they can get away with substituting dedication for their celebrity status, such as Nicole Kidman who demanded to wear a wig for the ineffectively languid film `Birth' (Guess she figured the prosthetic nose she wore in `The Hours' gave her some leeway. Guess again, Nicole!) Moviegoers are not that easily appeased. What ever happened to actors trying to fit the role; like Sigourney Weaver's shiny bald head in `Aliens III'?
But "The Machinist" has much more to offer than just the main protagonist's rather unpleasant caricature of a holocaust victim. It's frightfully moving in the daunting peculiar sense, which director Brad Anderson accomplishes so mindfully. In his previous work, Anderson puts to good use this alarming kind of raw visual style, as with "Session 9", that adds a certain slow and off-kilter presence to every scene. But it's more so the symbolic nature and visual style of this movie that really gives it its value.
Christian Bale gives an openly remarkable performance as a repressed, anorexic, insomniac. I never truly appreciated Bale as an actor until I viewed this film. He's very gifted at what he does and the utter devotion to his character, Trevor Reznik, is intensely apparent. Listening to Anderson's commentary on the DVD, I learned that he did not ask Bale to lose so much weight for the film however, Bale took it upon himself to transform his body to what the script described as a "skeleton of a man".
The film's opening is just as intriguing as its end. Ironically, we are lured to this Reznik character knowing so little about him and why he's plagued by symptoms of OCD, such as washing his hands with bleach and self-emaciation. But the actor's unsightly appearance and intrepid performance is just merely the icing on Anderson's cake. From a screenplay by Scott Kosar (`The Amityville Horror' and `The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'), comes a brilliantly told story with an original plot that's chillingly unpredictable.
Having not slept for a year, Trevor's mind and body begins to deteriorate before our eyes as he dispels concern from his co-workers at the machine factory and from Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a dreary prostitute whom Trevor unburdens himself to. "If you were any thinner you wouldn't exist," she tells him. But soon Trevor's paranoia builds to the point of sheer desperation and you find yourself actually sympathizing for this character, particularly when his distraction in the workplace inadvertently causes a co-worker, Miller (Michael Ironside), to violently lose a limb in the drill press.
Anderson does a remarkable job at this: keeping the audience focused and motivated to understand the perils of each character while captivating you with desaturated tones of greenish blue and dashes of red. And it is this vibrant red that's underscored by a sinister outsider, named Ivan (John Sharian), taunting Trevor with perilous car chases and a brusque disposition. Not to mention the mysterious Post-its Trevor finds stuck to his refrigerator sporting a game of Hangman.
With notable literary references to Dostoevsky and a recurring scene of Trevor vigorously scrubbing his hands with bleach is suggestive of Shakespeare's "Lady Macbeth". All this is accompanied by Roque Baños's unsparing use of the theremin for the music score which evokes a Hitchcockian, `Twighlight Zone' feel to the picture.
Midway through the film I somewhat expected it to end with another hackneyed dual personality revelation. Instead, the denouement is much more fervently paced and realistic. "The Machinist" is undeniably Hitchcock inspired and definitely not for those who enjoy the simplicity of the movie-going experience. Nonetheless, it's a disturbingly edgy psychological thriller and Anderson doesn't let you up for air until the very end.
Movie Review: Hangman's Hysteria
Summary: 5 Stars
Usually young director Brad Anderson writes the scripts for all his films--but after reading Scott Kosar's script in 2001, he made an exception. He could see a stunning and frightening film in his mind's eye, something unique and completely off-center; perhaps too much so. They had to shop around for two years before finally finding a quadrate of producers -but they were Spanish. The solution, of course, was to shoot the film in Spain, using mostly a Spanish crew. Anderson was careful with the settings, casting, and art design, creating a world of the story to reside in "Anywhere, U.S.A."; pushing a little to resemble the seedier sides of Los Angeles -which was indeed tricky considering he filmed mostly in Barcelona.
Brad Anderson has directed 12 films since 1995, one of the most notable being NEXT STOP WONDERLAND (1998). He has taught film classes in Boston, and directed a lot of episodes for various television series. He shot THE MACHINIST (2004) from the main character's POV, and he kept teasing us with set ups, camera angles, lighting, and intentional echoes from Hitchcock and David Lynch. To deepen the comparisons, he had composer Roque Barios emulate strains of Bernard Herrmann; punctuated with electronic music that sounded like pieces of the theme from THE OUTER LIMITS.
This film has already achieved cult status. Most viewers are taken aback by the raw intensity of the action, the macabre point of view, and the deep emotions -unstable, angry, and explosive, along with the rampant paranoia. Actually Anderson does build this film to a point where we are offered complete closure for all the plot conflicts and mysteries -but even so a lot of audience members are left in a dark theater feeling still perplexed and confused. Roger Ebert wrote, "We see Trevor's world so clearly from his eyes that only gradually does it occur to us that every life is seen through a filter." I would add to that that every viewer watching every film is filtering that experience through their perceptions, experiences, random prejudices and predispositions. That is the primary thing that makes film discussion and criticism so visceral and engaging.
Christian Bale was brilliant as Trevor Reznik, reducing his beautiful body to an almost unrecognizable state, a rib-bulging cadaver, one of the walking dead, an Ausweis victim. It was fascinating to watch Bale twist and turn, bob and weave, posing for several skeletal tableaus -knowing just how to present those jutting bones for maximum effect. John Sharian played co-worker Ivan, reminiscent of Brando in APOCALYPSE NOW (1979) -a lethal smile with horsy teeth and deadly eyes; mysterious, flashy, and dangerous, but possessed with a wicked sense of humor; a twinkle in one eye and a drop of blood in the other, often hidden behind black sunglasses. Jennifer Jason-Leigh added another hooker with a heart of gold to her role charm bracelet, doing a bang up grand job as Trevor's call girl/girlfriend, Stevie. Leigh is so comfortable in the nude we forget she is acting, bringing both sensuality and matronly affection to the table. She dared to like, maybe even almost love that oddball; that starved bird with the broken wing -and dared to hope he could build a life with her beyond prostitution. During their final scene together when Trevor goes over the emotional edge -the sadness and pain turning to anger on her face was hard to forget; with marked simplicity, just Leigh living in that terrible moment with us watching.
THE MACHINIST transcended genres. It transcended time and space, and even place; filmed in Andalusian limbo to thrust us into a nightmare world that bends and twists like a dragon's tail -spiked and murderous -peopled with dark characters and darker deeds, suggesting demons lurking unseen in the shadows; permeated with that deep feeling of despair, or anger toward the unknown and the unknowable. It requires multiple viewings to fully appreciate the acting, the art design, the psychology, and the writing. An audience member must be at the top of their cognitive game to successfully negotiate the twisted journey within the mind of a tortured soul.
Movie Review: Sleepless in Hell
Summary: 5 Stars
What would happen if you hadn't slept for a year?
That's the basic premise of "The Machinist," a film about a man who can't sleep, hasn't slept in a very long time, and is finding that it's having some pretty deletirious effects on him, both physically and psychologically. The reasons why he can't sleep, and why the people around him are acting so strangely, are brought into gradual focus as the story progresses.
Christian Bale plays Trevor Reznik, who as the movie opens has been suffering from insomnia for quite a long time. Physically, he's wasting away. The closest thing he has to a girlfriend, a sympathetic hooker in the form of Jennifer Jason Leigh, says to him early on "If you were any thinner, you wouldn't exist," and it's true -- he's looks like a walking skeleton, every bone visible under a layer of skin, tightly stretched over his frame. Mentally, Reznik seems to be slowly losing it. He gets easily distracted at work, and an accident caused by his distraction costs a co-worker an arm. He begins to see things and people who don't seem to actually exist...or do they? Increasingly, as the story unfolds, we see that Trevor can't trust his own senses. Is this a by-product of the insomnia, or something deeper than that?
Bale's performance is incredible, probably the best of his career. The fact that his bony frame isn't digital effects -- he really lost all that weight for the film -- is impressive enough, but Bale's portrayal of the perpetually exhausted, edgy, increasingly paranoid Reznik is even better. In every scene, even when Trevor is in good humor, you can see exhaustion in his eyes, the tattered edges of his conciousness showing through. He looks and acts like a man who hasn't slept in a long time. But it's not a one-dimenaional performance at all, as we see that Reznik can be a charming and friendly man, even underneath all the layers of sleeplessness. His emotional responses to different scenes are right on the money, and his growing confusion is clear throughout. It's a perfect performance and it drives the movie.
The other essential aspect of the film is the mood it sets. The early visuals of Reznik's wasted body are enough to make even the most jaded viewer wince, and sets the movie on an off-kilter stance right from the start, which only gets worse as it continues. The lighting is stark and grainy, and the colors are washed-out, often either too bright or too dark than what you'd normally expect. Lots of little details add to the growing feeling of unease in the film, the overall sense that something is seriously wrong here...why is it always 1:30 when Trevor sees a certain waitress from an airport cafe, what do the six letters mean in the Hangman game that appears on a Post-It note in Trevor's apartment, why does he pay the rent early but forget the utilities, and was that just blood leaking out of the fridge?!
There are several surprises waiting at the end of "The Machinist," and to say much more would ruin it. Suffice it to say that this is a film which gets it all right. It tells a compelling story, it sets a definite mood, and it cements itself in the brain even when its over. For those willing to brave the deepest chambers of the human heart and see what waits there in the darkness, this is not a film you'll soon forget.