Day 2: The Machinist

The Machinist

In my long, long, very long life, I've never seen "The Machinist," and never actually known what it was about. It's one of those movies where people don't really know what to say about it, except, HOLY COW CHRISTIAN BALE IS SO SKINNY.

CHRISTIAN BALE. Ohmygod. Have you seeeeeen this movie? Do you realize he's close to 120 pounds in it? And not even a hidden 120 pounds, a 120 freaking pounds that is VERY imperative to the movie's plot. There are literal shots of him stretching and sprawling his emaciated body around, and it's horrifying. And very, very good. It gives a solid reality, a solid base to the chaos surrounding this man's life, the state of being in which he exists.

We see here a Christian Bale not familiar in his current films, (i.e. BATMAN.) Honestly, it takes some getting used to. His body is really upsetting. The suave Bruce Wayne is replaced by a man who does not even know he is slowly killing himself by in inability to function. And when you see Christian Bale in Batman, familiar, confident, focused....and then see him here, floundering, paranoid, unconscious...it is HUGELY upsetting. He plays the role well. Very well. But the situation surrounding his character is a huuuuugely touchy one, and it takes a bit of adjustment, a bit of introduction, to get past the fact that maybe you want to throw up, and begin to believe the film. Believing the film, I might add, is not difficult. Just upsetting, at first.



So. The movie.
Basically, Christian Bale starts out in an not-sane place.
We all know it, we all get it. Anyone who knows anything about Jung's Shadow Self (or who hastily began to read the Wikipedia review to figure out if this was a movie about anorexia,) gets that the irreverent Ivan is Bale's Trevor Reznick's shadow self. That's a given. Nobody sees Ivan but Trevor. Nobody is influenced by Ivan, except TREVOR. Ivan is leading him somewhere, and is common in movies, the invisible character is mostly a reflection on someone's inner turmoil. Such is Ivan. And so we see Bale's descent into COMPLETE chaos. The story really picks up with Bale living an unsettling existence. He goes about his day, we see him reach for a car lighter, see him remember a moment, and, he gives pause to very mundane instances. The music in the film hits a minor chord, the camera lingers a split second on a thought, and, just like Trevor Reznick, we, the audience, are sent wondering what it all means, what it all adds up to.

It becomes quickly established that there are a LOT of things in Reznick's life he does not understand. For example, a post-it note (an obvious symbol of "REMINDER REMINDER,") starts showing up on his refrigerator, with a persistent message. And because he's curious, because he's unhealthy, because he's quickly spiraling downward into an illogical mess, he begins to figure out what it means/where it came from/what is going on.

Oh, what's that? I didn't mention the downward spiral? Well, dear readers, of course there is an inciting event to all the chaos which begins to absolutely pour forth from Reznick's life. He accidentally cuts a man's ARM OFF. That's right. Christian Bale is quietly, resolutely, albeit terrifyingly unhealthily, living his life, when lo and behold, he CUTS A MAN'S ARM OFF, accidentally. At this point in his life, he isn't sleeping, he isn't eating, he's losing two + pounds a half week, and he treats it all very normally. He continues to live his life. And then, the Accident occurs, and suddenly, his world just isn't the same. His work place isn't the haven it was before, and in this accident, in the terror it strikes in the chests of his co-workers, Reznick begins to blame and accuse and pinpoint a kind of pent-up agitation that comes completely from inside him. People around him start to point out their discomfort with his weight, their discomfort with his day to day walking dead-ness, discomfort with him, in general. And it pushes his buttons a little too far. This is where the downward spiral begins. Piece after piece after piece after piece after piece of small information builds and builds its way into Reznick's mind--demanding that he remember, demanding to be noticed. He begins to discover new realities, begins to see his world butt up with a more persistent, more demanding truth. He begins to wake up to his history. and BAM. The world makes sense.



SPOILER ALERT.
It turns out that Trevor Reznick has a hugely repressed memory. One year ago, he was responsible for a hit and run accident of a little boy. Since fleeing the scene, Reznick has buried the memory deep inside himself, very, very, very far down deep. But like all things important, it finds a way to come out. Physically, he cannot eat, he cannot sleep. His guilt is nagging at him, and with the memory repressed, he can't understand why. He stops functioning. He creates a world around the people involved in his trauma--a waitress and her son, small details popping up in every aspect of his life. Like all traumatic events, this one lingers, even as he tries to hide it. This explains the pause on mundane events; Reznick takes a familiarity in such events, and even though he is the cause of such hidden trauma, he works and works towards healing, slowly. It takes a year. And when he finally finds peace, when he finally turns himself into the police, accounting for his hit-and-run of a little boy one year ago, the camera slowly and surely zooms in on Trevor in a pure, light-filled room. He breathes. He relaxes. He falls asleep, for the first time in a year, at peace, content, honest, and absolved. <3 His psyche, understanding the enormity and the consequence of his actions, had placed these "stoppers" in his memory, these barricades that enabled him to continue his idea of a normal existence. The thing that makes Trevor Reznick so powerful, the reason we continue to watch the movie, and exhale with him when he falls asleep, is that his moral truth, his emotional connect will not allow him to deny and refuse his actions. His moral compass guides him to atoning and claiming his actions and their consequences, and in this, through this, we experience with the machinist, we experience, puzzle, and discover his life. The reminder, the post-it note, the game of hangman that has been haunting Trevor the entire movie, is solved. He writes, in his own hand, the word, "Killer."



Very interesting to me is the creation of Reznick's alter-ego, his doppelganger, Ivan in this story. Reznick creates a VERY active existence with the characters involved in his accident. All these split second memories flesh themselves out into an engaging interaction in his daily life. Maria, a waitress he sees every night at 1:30 is actually the mother of the boy he hit. He speaks to her, imagines what her life is like, imagines her existence with her son, entangled with his own memories of a childhood with his mother. And here, dear readers, is where I can't remember my own details. Was Ivan at the scene of the original crime? Who was he? Or was he ENTIRELY fictional? The born creation of Trevor's emotional mind as it geared his psyche and emotional guts to confront each other? And if it was a born creation, then why, oh why, was that actor cast? What was it about him that complemented Christian Bale's Trevor Reznick so well that he represents his other half?