The Machinist
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Movie Reviews of The Machinist
Movie Review: "I just want to sleep..."
Summary: 5 Stars
I have to say that "The Machinist" is easily the most unsettling, disturbing and bizarre film I have seen so far this year. I mean, you can tell from reading the back of the DVD cover and seeing how disturbingly thin Christian Bale in pictures from the movie that this is not going to be a very happy time. Yet, last night I was in the mood for something dark and uncompromising. I got it and then some with this cleverly haunting film that is unforgettable.
Bale plays "Trevor Reznik," a troubled and fatigued machinist who hasn't slept for a year. He lives his life in isolation, with the few minor exceptions such as a friendly prostitute who takes a liking to him and an airport coffee shop waitress he visits every night. Things take a turn for the worst when he meets a fellow machinist for the first time... but nobody knows who this guy is. They tell Trevor that he doesn't exist. The paranoia and confusion leads to a horrific accident on the job that involves his co-worker. And that's when he gets the strange notes in his apartment. Either Trevor is completely delusional and has lost his mind... or somebody really is out to get him.
What's really intriguing about the movie is that just like Trevor, we do not know exactly what is real or what is made up. There are times when we're doubtful of what we're seeing, and then we get roped in and second-guess ourselves. The movie is a non-stop dread fest that just speaks of loneliness and paranoia, and that's why it works. It looks and feels exactly like it should. From the very first few minutes, it's easy to realize that this is going to be one unsettling and dark experience. It is one that you may want to re-watch after you see it all. You'll definitely think about it for a while after it's all said and done, but personally I didn't think it was that hard to piece together after it was over. It made sense, and it made even more sense on the second viewing. Christian Bale is fantastic in this. I can't believe he dropped down to around 100 pounds for the role. Yes, you should be warned that Bale looks EXTREMELY skinny in this... almost like a walking skeleton, as was intended in the script. I think the movie was very well written and directed.
This isn't a movie for those who get easily disturbed or freaked out. It's a pretty uneasy movie to watch. Let's just say you won't feel extremely cheerful after you get done watching this. You may want to put on something funny after you're done, otherwise you're going to have this movie stuck in your head while you try to sleep. The DVD has a little to offer in the extra features department, such as commentary from the director, a making of feature, 8 deleted scenes and the theatrical trailer.
I really enjoyed "The Machinist." It surprised me and kept me hooked from beginning to end. I have to say that I kind of missed watching dark movies like this. Seems like there's too many "cutesy-wutesy" movies for the family, so it's good to see something so brutal, so raw and so in your face like this. If you want to be disturbed and see something that isn't your typical thriller, "The Machinist" is something to put down on your list of movies to see. As depressing and dreadful as this movie can get... I'm ready to see it again. -Michael Crane
Movie Review: A refreshing walk on the dark side of paranoia
Summary: 5 Stars
If you like your movies dark, depressing, eerie, mysterious, and borderline insane, The Machinist should definitely be on your "to see" list. In these days of sequel- and remake-itis, it's always a treat to find a movie that dares to be original and to walk a dark line all its own. Director Brad Anderson and Christian Bale definitely get an A+ for effort here, but I don't think the ending is quite as effective as it could have been. It's easy to cross the line when you're dancing in a dark and narrow place, and the movie went just a little too far into "the whole world's crazy and everyone's out to get me" (which, on a completely unrelated point, is my personal motto) territory before bringing everything into focus. (That doesn't stop me from giving the film five stars, however - The Machinist is worlds better than most of the junk coming out of Hollywood these days.) Speaking of effort, I don't know what to say about Christian Bale - no Fat Albert to begin with - dropping 63 pounds in order to play the character of Trevor Reznik in this film. He is painfully thin here; a few less pounds, and you could zoom him right through your copy machine and have all the Christian Bales you could want. Why is his character so thin? Well, he hasn't slept in a year, and that kind of wears on a fellow after a while.
Trent is - you guessed it - a machinist. It doesn't look like a great job, but he obviously makes a killing, as he leaves $20 tips every night at the diner and enjoys many an evening with a call girl who sort of becomes his girlfriend. Jennifer Jason Leigh is about the only pretty thing you'll see in the 102 minutes of the film. We first meet Trevor when he's approaching his breaking point. The job of machinist can be quite hazardous, especially if you work with Trevor. When a guy punches in with two arms and punches out with only one, the co-workers get a little restless. Technically, it's Trevor's fault, but he was distracted by this seriously weird co-worker he had just recently met - a guy who, according to everyone else in the shop, doesn't even exist. As you might expect, Trevor becomes rather obsessed about finding out who the guy is and what he wants. As he goes increasingly cuckoo for cocoa puffs, his only links with sanity are Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh) the call girl and Marie (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), his regular waitress at the airport café.
The best way I can describe The Machinist is to suggest that it must be a lot like one of Tim Burton's dreams. There's an oppressive pallor over the whole thing that seems to drain every single image of any color or vitality, and Trevor moves around rather wraith-like in his emaciated form. The mystery of it all starts out with great strength, but I think the director just overplayed his hand a tiny bit - and, by doing so, made the ultimate ending somewhat (but not completely) predictable. It's still a five-star effort all the way. If you just want to forget the world and be entertained for an hour and a half, seek your pleasure elsewhere. When you're ready to indulge the dark side of your personality and engage your mind at the same time, though, you could do much worse than settling yourself into a cocoon and entering the surreal world of The Machinist. This film is, in a word, different.
Movie Review: "If you were any thinner, you wouldn't exist"
Summary: 5 Stars
The Machinist would probably have to be one of the creepiest and psychologically complex movies of the year. The film is also a standout because of Christian Bale's withering, and soul-destroying performance as a man wracked by insomnia, and tortured by guilt. Much has been made of Bale's dramatic weight loss and his astonishing transformation into the main character - he purportedly wanted to undergo a complete physical and mental metamorphosis - but nothing will prepare the viewer for the reality of Christian's starving, skeletal-like body. Bale is nothing short of amazing in this movie - he's an actor of astounding capacities; and it's not just the feat of his physical transformation, but the fact that he totally inhabits and becomes so totally immersed in his character.
With a beautifully moody musical score and a dark, somber, yet visually stunning look, The Machinist is riveting jigsaw puzzle, an astute intellectual exercise where the viewer is left to put the pieces together, and decide which world is actually fantasy or reality. Trevor Reznick (Bale) has terrible insomnia and hasn't slept in a year. He's decimated physically and mentally and has become irrevocably trapped in a prison that is his own guilt-ridden, paranoid, and disillusioned mind - every time he tries to close his eyes something interrupts him. As the story opens, Trevor is busy trying to dispose of a dead body; the story then jumps to the events leading up to this incident.
By day Trevor works in a factory as a machinist, and at night he zealously writes messages on post-it notes, and fanatically washes his hands with bleach. He seeks solace in his favorite hooker (played with tender resolve by Jennifer Jason Leigh), and also the company of Marie (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), a waitress at an airport coffee shop. He enjoys her company and likes to leave her extra large tips. One afternoon while at work, Reznick - distracted for a moment - contributes to a terrible accident involving a colleague. At the same time, Ivan (John Sharian), a bald-headed figure with a horribly malformed thumb and two fingers missing and whom no one else can see, constantly follows Trevor. Increasingly paranoid, Trevor becomes convinced that Ivan and Miller, his co-worker, (Michael Ironside) have trumped up some kind of conspiracy against him and are trying to drive him mad.
The Machinist is weird and difficult. As Trevor embarks on a journey of self-awareness, the viewer is left wondering whether fatigue has robbed him of reason, or whether there is some grand scheme to drive him nutty. Brave and visually sumptuous, one of the movie's many memorable visuals occurs when Trevor takes Marie's son on a horror ride called Route 666, with terrible results for both Trevor and for the boy. Guilt, loss of self, repression and odd mother fixations are all themes that are astutely and cleverly woven into the fabric of the story. For most of the film, Reznik is just a literal bag of bones, desperately floating through empty, dark apartments, and grey, storm-ridden industrial landscapes -a kind of postmodern anti-hero, a ghost who is desperately looking to make his peace. Mike Leonard October 04.
Movie Review: Dostoevsky meets Flannery O'Connor in urban America
Summary: 5 Stars
This film has been promoted as a "psychological mystery," and on one level it is that. But it goes much deeper, and reads almost like a Flannery O'Connor story translated to an urban postmodern setting by Rod Serling. There are also resonances with Dostoevsky: indeed, one of the pivotal character's names is Ivan, and the book the main character, Trevor Reznik, reads in the movie is THE IDIOT. There are also a lot of incidences of symbolism: light vs darkness, right vs left, etc. and lots of symbolic reversals and inversions. These all play into the "mystery" element: how much of what Reznik experiences is real, and how much is in his head? And why are these things happening to him in the first place? All this is resolved in a very satisfying ending, which packs quite an emotional wallop. In that sense it reminded me a bit of O'Connor's story "Parker's Back." It also bears rewatching, as much of the symbolism is only made clear at the end, and if you watch it again knowing the denouement the symbols, foreshadowing, etc. become much more apparent. This isn't just another trick film like THE USUAL SUSPECTS (excellent) or IDENTITY (not so excellent). It has a deep moral and philosophical resonance that other films of this type don't have.
Christian Bale (the new "Batman") is excellent as Reznik; he lost 60-some pounds to play the role and in some scenes he is painful to look at, resembling a death-camp refugee. The other cast members are good too, especially John Sharian as a creepy co-worker who seems to know more about Reznik than he should, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as a world-weary hooker who gives Reznik some temporary solace. The direction is reminiscent of Hitchcock, and the score too recalls that of Hitchcock films, being unusually "retro" (very much in the Bernard Herrmann mode) and not at all industrial or postmodern-sounding like one might expect.
Be warned that the film is a bit of a hard "R." There is some partial nudity, a fair amount of coarse language, etc. But having said that, I can honestly say that I haven't seen a movie in ages (and certainly not a contemporary one) that deals with the same issues that O'Connor and Dosty did, in any kind of adult, satisfying manner. I'd also advise against reading reviews of the film online: many of those I've read have been "spoilers," and most in any case deal only with the surface elements of paranoia and alienation, not with the deeper moral and philosophical issues. Guilt and grace are here, but not in ways you'll expect. One of the Desert Fathers said, "It is a greater miracle for a man to see himself as he really is than to raise the dead." Think about this as Reznik searches for the answer to the chief question of the film: "Who are you?"
P.S. To the reviewers who keep comparing this movie to FIGHT CLUB: you need to pay more attention. This is NOT a "double personality movie," or a one-trick pony like that lamentable film was. As for reviewer "Jimmy" who wants the Dostoevsky comparisons to be stopped, and sees nothing redemptive in THE MACHINIST, he definitely needs to read Flannery O'Connor.
Movie Review: Great brooding noir
Summary: 5 Stars
You know something isn't right when the first scene of the movie is Christian Bale's Trevor Reznik (a name that constantly has me thinking of NIN) is rolling up someone in a rug before taking the rug to the ocean and dumps it. Trevor, looking feverish, beat up, and deathly thin gives a striking image and makes us wonder, what is going on?
Normally, it annoys me when people credit actors with gaining weight (Bridget Jones' Diary), using prosthetics (Nicole Kidman) or losing weight (Christian Bale in this movie). It annoys me not that the actors are doing it but that the simple act of doing it should give them credance that they are Great Actors. I think diminishing their acting skills to a prosthetic or weight loss/gain as the reason for applause is as phony as the prosthetic. So of course here we knew that Christian Bale lost 63 pounds to play the gaunt character. And while it adds a lot to his role, and is quite a thing to do, it's his acting as the lost Trevor that makes this movie the excellent noir it is.
Director Brad Anderson imbues his dark movie with shades of grays and blues. The majority of the movie is filmed in an almost black and white color scheme. Everything is washed out, just like Trevor's life. Trevor has been suffering from insomnia and hasn't slept in a year. He keeps track of his weight loss as well. The only comforts in his life are two women, one a prostitute and the other a waitress at an airport cafe. These two women basically provide the only company Trevor gets in his life. To compound this situation even more, a man named Ivan shows up, bringing with him a lot of trouble. Which leads to the question of why? Why is all of this happening? This question is central to the whole movie.
In fact, what makes this movie work really well is that it's a puzzle. It gives the viewers a situation and a problem, and then takes us on a crazy ride through one man's life. Little pieces of the puzzle become clear to those paying attention, and by the end of the movie every little thing you've seen or thought you saw makes sense. Mostly, it's a very clever movie. There are a few puzzle pieces that are too blatantly obvious. In fact, I will bet that a good majority of the people watching this movie will catch the first "twist." Right from the beginning it is hinted at, and not all that subtly. But by the end where the central question to the movie is answered, I was taken by surprise. By that time I was so invested into the story that it just surprised me but made so much sense.
And that is the highest praise I can give this movie: it makes sense. It's mysterious and involves "twists" but the twists make perfect sense. By the end of the movie, you can see why the entire film took place. It's realistic in that aspect. I very highly recommend this movie. It's interesting and can be suspenseful. It moves slowly, but it's a slow build that continually rachets up the tension and suspense. Very well done. Worth owning.