Wherever You Go, There You Are—Whether You Like It or Not

by Tony Fonseca

02/03/2005

The Machinist. Dir. Brad Anderson. 2004.

Thinner.

Memento.

Angel Heart.

These are all movie titles that you are bound to hear when moviegoers walk out of Brad Anderson’s surrealistic dark thriller, The Machinist, as they try vainly to find some mode of comparison to describe this weird gem of a film which features an unrecognizable Christian Bale after he dropped about 60 or 70 pounds¹ in order to play Trevor Reznik, a blue collar machine shop employee who seems to want to disappear, literally.

When we first meet Reznik, he is rolling what looks like a body up into a carpet. He takes this body out to the quarry in order to submerge it, but is interrupted by a night watchman carrying a battery operated torch. Trevor throws the carpet onto the embankment so that it will roll into the water, and just after the carpet rolls out of sight, the stranger shines a light on his face and asks the central question of the movie: “Who Are You?” There is a quick editing cut to Trevor washing his face and looking at himself in the mirror, hardly recognizing what he sees there, and then noticing a post it note on his refrigerator which asks the overwhelming question in writing.

Then the movie gets weird.

Trevor meets a "pit" worker named Ivan, a grotesque looking (he has a constant toothy smile which contrasts his scarred face, and has lost most of the fingers on one hand, which have been replaced by a grafted on toe) muscular man with a shaved head. Ivan begins a campaign of distracting Trevor to the point where he (Ivan) contributes to Trevor's making a mistake that costs a co-worker named Miller his arm. After the industrial accident that maims Miller, Trevor is plagued with a series of Post-Its sporting a game of hangman that elaborate on the "who are you?" message with which the movie began.

When Trevor is interviewed about the accident, he is told that there is no Ivan at the plant, nor is there anyone who meets the man’s description. At this point, those of us in the audience who have seen Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) all nodded our heads knowingly. However, the magic of The Machinist is that even being able to figure out who or what Ivan actually is does not diminish the audience’s interest in finding out WHY he exists. The movie does give plenty of clues, as any well-written mystery will, but not so many clues that it gives away the ending. As such, it is one of those films that almost begs a second viewing (like Memento or Fight Club), so that the viewer can pay close attention for the clues that add up.

The Machinist does have one huge flaw—it is derivative to the point where it contains what seem like “rip-off scenes.” It borrows most heavily from Psycho, the Hitchcock classic. In fact, its second to last camera shot is a direct echo of the final shot of Psycho, changed only slightly. Nonetheless, I personally found this movie to be well worth the price of admission, if for no other reason than to watch Christian Bale’s masterful performance as Trevor. Bale plays Trevor with a sense of pathos and compassion for the character, a once normal guy who is now a shell of a man cursed with his own inner demons. An insomniac who claims he has not slept in over a year (this is proven false by careful viewing, as you will notice that he seems to “nap” at various points, but is unaware that he has fallen asleep), his appearance is nothing short of astonishing, his pallor ghostly. In one of the finer touches of the film, we see Trevor constantly weighing himself, keeping tabs on his “disappearing act” with post it notes that chronicle his weight loss.
 

I once read a Roger Ebert review where he posited this theory: if a movie contains five memorable scenes, it is a good movie. Examining a film like The Machinist in this light is helpful, for the movie is so unconventional yet derivative that conventional criteria do not apply. The story it tells is simple, and is one that can be easily dismissed: someone has a secret sin which he has been unable to incorporate into his vision of his self, so he fragments his being in order to attribute the sin to someone, or something, else. This is what happens in Psycho and Fight Club.

But what makes a movie work is not just its theme and story. After all, a film is a visual representation, so if it is memorable for its visuals, it has done its job. In this respect Anderson must be applauded. His use of washed out color, the constant alternation between blue backlighting and grey tones that permeate the movie, and the uses of the color red are just plain eerie. And to top it off, Anderson displays an innate sense of the use of the cyclical—that is, of a repeated image or line whose meaning evolves with each use—to the point where the audience is shocked by the familiar. There are easily some dozen memorable scenes in The Machinist for these reasons, and if five make a good movie, certainly twice that number makes a movie excellent.

Or to put it another way: if you can’t be astounded and pleased with the final carpet, mirror, hit and run, tunnel, police station, and driving off into the sunlight scenes of this movie, given all the buildup that has preceded them, you just can’t be moved by visual representation.

CAST

¹The producers of the film claim that Bale dropped from about 190 pounds to about 130. They also claim that Bale actually wanted to drop down to 110, but that they would not let him out of fear that his health. His diet consisted of one can of tuna and an apple per day. His actual 63 pound weight loss is said to be a record for any actor for a movie role. He since gained the weight back.

²If anyone has any theories as to why this detail has been added to Ivan’s physical structure by the writers/director, please email me. Usually, I can spot a metaphor or meaningful image from a mile away, but this one eludes me.