THE MACHINIST
US/Spain, 2004, 102 minutes, Colour.
Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez Gijon, Michael Ironside, Anna Massey.
Directed by Brad Anderson.
Quite an impact. This is a tour-de-force portrait of madness and the disintegration of a personality.
Screenwriter Scott Kosar has written horror films up till now – and the influence can be seen in this psychological horror portrait. However, he has moved on to a deeper level of human experience: conscience and guilt. He invites us into the mind of Trevor Resnick, a machinist in a large factory. Trevor is profoundly disturbed, destroying himself from the inside out. We soon realise that he is paranoid and delusional but we do not quite know what is real and what is not. He seems to be living a desperate nightmare even though he cannot sleep. Audiences need to hold on to their uncertainty as to what is actually happening to Trevor and what he is seeing in his fearful fantasies. There is a satisfying resolution and explanation – and a realisation that we have been offered clues all the way through if we have been alert enough. It is the kind of film that repays a second viewing to appreciate what has gone on, even if the experience is quite gruelling.
American financiers baulked at making the film so Kosar and his director, Brad Anderson (Next Stop, Wonderland) found support in Spain. You won’t pick it while you watch the film as it seems so authentically American, but it was all filmed very effectively in Barcelona. Anderson has created a striking visual style with his cinematographer, Xavi Gimenez, and an offbeat mood with his composer, Roque Banos, who has scored the film in the multi-instrumental, orchestrated style of classic Hollywood psychological dramas. All of these contributors to the film mention Hitchcock in their interviews.
Widescreen is exploited well for both naturalism and for paranoia. The colour style is limited palette, again partly natural but mostly suggestive of the subjective perspectives of Trevor.
Promotion of the film led to many interviews with star, Christian Bale, about his loss of weight for the role to make him look skeletally gaunt. (He did control his eating and lost 63 pounds.) His physical appearance and his skill in looking insane one moment and normal the next form the basis for a completely convincing while puzzling characterisation. Also in the cast (as real characters or figment characters) include Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez Gijon, Anna Massey and Michael Ironside.
Critics have been busy finding names to suggest how the film works and the impact it makes: Hitchcock, David Lynch, Michael Powell (Peeping Tom), Christopher Nolan (Memento), Roman Polanski (especially his films about madness, Repulsion and The Tenant). The experience is referred to as Kafkaesque. The main clue is on screen with a copy of Dostoievski’s The Idiot. More to the point is Kosar’s reference to Dostoievski’s , The Double. Actually, The Machinist has absorbed these influences within its own originality.
1. The impact of the film? Visually, the techniques, the themes, the issues, characters, madness?
2. The Spanish settings standing in for Los Angeles? An American feel, the city, the freeway and apartments, the factories, the airport and the diner? The colour style?
3. The naturalism of so much of the film – especially for a film about fantasy and madness? The sense of realism? The moving between reality and fantasy? The dramatisation of mental disorder and disintegration?
4. The editing, the moving between the different worlds? The orchestra and the different instruments?
5. The machinist himself, a seemingly ordinary young man, audiences being able to identify with him, seeing him at work, with the other workers, home, relationships, sexuality? The loner?
6. The madness – inside out? His insomnia, the effect of the insomnia for a year, his collapse, what was going on in his mind, creating another life, his conscience?
7. How well did the film explain what it was doing with this character, madness from inside out, the clues? The clues from the hit-run, getting hit, the police, the child?
8. The opening, the situation, the water? The contrast with the end, Ivan – empty?
9. The themes of paranoia, schizophrenia? The importance of the notes on the wall, their content, style? Killer Miller?
10. How well could the film develop a character for Trevor given his condition? Aspects of character? With Stevie, after the issue with the body, his being at ease with her, sexual encounters, the visits, sharing with her? Her giving up? Cook, ease, pay, the photo, the change? The build-up to the confrontation?
11. The airport, the talk, the pie, easy and nice, compassionate, the boy, the outing, the fork? The bond? - and the later reality?
12. The portrait of the landlady, her wanting payment, going to the room, the leak, her leaving, wanting the bowl? With the police?
13. Trevor at work, the workers, the boss, Ivan – and appearances? The car, racing the lights, the bar, sexuality and laughter?
14. Miller and the accident, the aftermath, Ivan? Trevor interrogated? Ivan, the confrontation by the others? His being on his own, the attack, the visit of Miller and the argument?
15. The car, following the car, the highway, the numberplate and the request? Hitting the car, asking the police? Which self was this?
16. The desperate drive, the women, the Miller visit, the police and the hit? Imagination?
17. The ultimate effect of watching the film? The experience of sharing Trevor’s life, psychological dislocation? The other characters, Stevie and Marie, Miller, Ivan, Jackson? Mrs Shrike? The supervisor, the inspector? The real personality of Trevor, Christian Bale’s presence and interpretation, sleepless, skeletal? His guilt and acting out his guilt? The truth?
