The Machinist
Dir: Brad Anderson
2004
*****

I’ve been a fan of director Brad Anderson since his brilliant and criminally underrated 2001 horror Session 9. His career has had a few ups and downs but his 2004 follow up – The Machinist is a modern masterpiece and one of the best thrillers of the millennium thus far – again, criminally underrated. I’ve heard more about Christian Bale’s weight loss than I have ever heard about the actual film though which is quite frustrating, as the film is a brilliantly dark mind-bender that is so much more than its lead actor’s dedication. I’m in no way knocking Bale though, his sacrifice to the film is astonishing. The story follows Trevor Reznik (named after Trent Reznor, whom co-writer Scott Kosar wanted to score the film), a machinist whose insomnia has led to his becoming completely emaciated. His appearance and behavior keep his coworkers away, and they eventually turn against him when he is involved in an accident which causes his coworker, Miller, to lose his left arm (Michael Ironside – once again on limb-losing duty). Trevor (Bale), who was distracted by an unfamiliar co-worker named Ivan (John Sharian), is blamed for the accident. No one at the factory knows of Ivan and there are no records of him. Trevor seems to find peace only with Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a prostitute with genuine affection for him, and with Maria (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a waitress at an airport diner he frequents. He is haunted by brief flashes of recurring imagery, and objects (such as his car cigarette lighter) take on a menacing air. A mysterious series of post-it notes appear on his refrigerator, depicting a game of hangman. These vague incidents send him further into paranoia, but he nonetheless attempts to establish a relationship with Maria. Meeting her at an amusement park, Trevor goes with her son Nicholas on a fun house ride called "Route 666," whose flashing lights cause Nicholas to suffer an epileptic seizure. No longer able to think clearly, Trevor suspects that the bizarre events are a concerted effort to drive him insane. These ideas are fed to him in small random clues. One of them is a picture of Ivan fishing with Trevor's coworker Reynolds, which he discovers in Ivan's wallet when Ivan leaves it unattended in a pub. Another near-accident at work causes Trevor to lash out in rage at his co-workers; as a result, he is immediately fired. Increasingly distracted and alienated, Trevor forgets to pay his utility bills and his electricity is disconnected. A dark, viscous liquid begins trickling out of the freezer, coating the fridge door with streaks of what appears to be blood. After several attempts to confront Ivan, Trevor tries to trace his license plate. He follows Ivan's car to read its license plate, but runs out of gas during the pursuit. When a DMV clerk insists that personal information cannot be released unless a crime has been committed, Trevor throws himself in front of a car in order to accuse Ivan of committing a hit and run. He files a police report with Ivan's plate number on it, only to be baffled when he is told that the car in question is his own; he had reported the vehicle totaled one year ago. He flees from the suspicious policemen and goes to Stevie, who clothes and washes him, but he finds the photo of Ivan and Reynolds framed in her home and accuses her of conspiring against him. Confused, Stevie says the picture is of Reynolds and Trevor, but he refuses to look at it and is thrown out after a verbal conflict. He goes to the airport diner, but is told by an unfamiliar waitress they've never had an employee named Maria. The waitress at the counter tells Trevor she has served him every day for a year,and in all that time,saying speaking so little, she began to think he was a mute. In the film's climax, Trevor sees Ivan take Nicholas into Trevor's apartment and, fearing the worst, sneaks inside. Nicholas is nowhere to be seen and doesn't respond to Trevor's calls. He confronts Ivan in the bathroom and kills him after a struggle. He pulls back the shower curtain, only to find the bathtub empty. He goes to the refrigerator and opens it to find rotting fish and other spoiled food tumble out. His mind then flashes back to the fishing photo, which actually shows a healthy Trevor with Reynolds, just as Stevie claimed. Ivan being in the photo was part of Trevor's hallucination. The scene returns to one that occurred during the opening credits, in which he tries to dispose of someone's corpse - presumably Ivan's - by rolling it in a rug and casting it into the ocean. When the rug unravels, there is nothing inside. Ivan, alive as ever, appears holding a flashlight and laughs. The scene then cuts to Trevor staring into a mirror at home, repeating the words "I know who you are." It is revealed that one year ago, Trevor ran over and killed a boy identical to Nicholas after taking his eyes off the road to use the car's cigarette lighter, which was witnessed by the boy's mother, identical to Maria. He decided to drive away, and the resulting guilt became the deep-seated cause of his insomnia, emaciation and repressed memory. Ivan was a figment of Trevor's imagination and a manifestation of himself before the accident. He fills the missing letters of the hangman note to spell "killer." He briefly considers going to the airport and escaping, but instead drives to police headquarters, signifying his "road to salvation," a recurring theme in the film. He is accompanied by a silent but encouraging Ivan, who bids him an approving farewell outside the station. At the police station's front desk, he confesses to the hit and run. Two police officers escort Trevor to a cell, where he states his intention to sleep and does so for the first time in a year. It’s a clever winding road of symbolism and mystery but in all honesty, you could throw all kinds of slick direction at the script but without a seriously dedicated performance it would have been for nothing. The film, as amazing as the script is, belongs to Bale. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Aitana Sánchez-Gijón are both brilliant too, but Bale’s performance is something special. It’s easy to dismiss his acting and say that he relies solely on his new stature but it isn’t the case. Bale goes full method and, for once, it is totally worth it. His daily diet in preparation consisted of just water, an apple and one cup of coffee per day, with the occasional whiskey. He also took up smoking to help calm his appetite. He lost 62 pounds (28 kg), reducing his body mass to 120 pounds (54 kg). Bale wanted to go down to 99 pounds (45 kg), but the filmmakers would not let him due to health concerns. Anderson hadn’t actually asked Bale to lose such a vast amount of weight and was genuinely shocked when he saw his appearance on the first day of shooting. He later confessed to being thrilled by the actor's dedication. It annoyed me somewhat that the film was compared to Fight Club so much when it was released. While there is an obvious theme in common, the film is clearly influenced by Dostoyevsky and it references the Russian novelist several times, first when Reznik is shown reading The Idiot, one of the faux marquees reads Crime and Punishment when Reznik is riding the "Route 666" attraction and in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the character who is visited by a devil is named Ivan. It’s a worthy film and it is a fitting tribute to Dostoyevsky’s work. I’m never much of a fan of cold grey and blue cinematography but Xavi Gimenez and Charlie Jiminez’s work here is sensational and fits the story and mood perfectly. Screen writer Scott Kroopf once referred to it as "the last movie that Alfred Hitchcock would have ever made". I totally disagree, The Machinist is not Hitchcockian, it is Bergman-esque but either way, it’s a modern masterpiece that deserves far more recognition than it has thus far received.