The Machinist
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

Spain, R, 102 m, 2004
Directed by Brad Anderson. Stars Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, et al.

For his title role in The Machinist, Christian Bale took sixty-some pounds off his already slim frame by committing to a six-month nutritional regime that allowed for only one apple and one can of tuna fish per day. The end result will shock you: Bale is so emaciated that he makes David Bowie in his coke-snorting Thin White Duke phase look like Roscoe Arbuckle. With eyes set deep into a skull on loan from the human-alien hybrid in Alien Resurrection and vertebrae that threaten to pop through the skin, Bale takes on the appearance of someone who’s losing a battle with AIDS. (Those who had trouble connecting the wax-faced yuppie in American Psycho to the freckle-faced kid in Empire of the Sun may not even realize that they’re watching the same actor in The Machinist.) Not since Robert De Niro ballooned to titanic proportions in the third act of Raging Bull have I witnessed an actor reshape his form as radically as Bale does here, but it shouldn’t be mistaken as acting. For Bale, it’s a means of becoming mythologized; for the filmmakers, it’s a gimmick that help sells an otherwise irrelevant piece of Kafkaesque hooey.  

God knows it took a lot tenacity for Bale to starve himself into a horrid bag of bones, but there’s nothing in The Machinist that justifies him taking such a foolish gamble with his health. Screenwriter Scott Kosar (who massacred The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for a needless update last year) lifts the picture’s narrative hook from Stephen King’s Thinner, and then pads the action with bits and pieces culled from noirish psychological thrillers such as Angel Heart, Fight Club, Jacob’s Ladder, Insomnia, Memento and Spider. Bale plays Trevor Reznik, a drill-press operator whose deep, dark secret hasn’t allowed him to snooze or eat much in well over a year. (He’s become the skeleton in his closet.) Reznik spends many of his sleepless nights in the company of Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a hooker with—well, whaddaya know—a heart of gold. (When filmmakers are looking to cast the part of a washed-up whore, I wish they’d consider somebody—anybody—other than Leigh. Her world-weary shtick is long past its sell-by date, and she’s a bit too attractive to be playing this sort of low-cost trim, anyway.) When Stevie catches Reznik looking over his cadaverous physique in the mirror, she muses, “If you were any thinner, you wouldn’t exist.” Noting the filmmakers’ tendency to undress their leading man whenever possible, I silently countered, “If he wasn’t that thin, this movie wouldn’t exist.” 

Reznik’s days are spent amid the whizzing sparks and deafening clangs of his assembly-line job. (There’s much talk of it being a union gig, but it never becomes the source of satire that we hope for.) During a smoke break outside of the factory one bleak afternoon (well, the weather is always bleak in this kind of film), Reznik strikes up a conversation with a fellow employee named Ivan (John Sharian), a bald-headed gimp who looks a lot like Morpheus from The Matrix movies. Ivan lost a few digits on his left hand to a machine once, so the doctors replaced them with his toes. Another employee, Miller (Michael Ironside), winds up losing a lot more of his left limb after Ivan distracts Reznik from keeping watch over the drill-press that Miller’s repairing. The gory shop mishap prompts the buttoned-up supervisor, Furman (Robert Long), to give Reznik an even harder time than usual, especially after it’s discovered that there’s no Ivan on the payroll. (“Is Tyler my bad dream? Or am I Tyler's?”)  

Sleep deprivation is scorching Reznik’s brain: he’s often incapable of discerning fantasy from reality, and he’s becoming increasingly paranoid that he’s at the center of some massive plot a la Michael Douglas in The Game. The game here is Hangman, which Reznik plays through a series of Post-It notes that mysteriously appear on the fridge in his crap-hole apartment. The six-letter word that he toils to decipher ends with an “e” and an “r.” Hmmm. Could it be “filler”? (The movie has lots of that.) How about “Miller”? (After sitting through this, a Genuine Draft never sounded so good.) Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants, I’m sure you’ll guess the word long before Reznik does. But I seriously doubt that you’ll be able to predict the reason his freezer keeps oozing blood.

Whenever Reznik tires of scouring his kitchen floor or reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, he motors out to an airport’s all-night eatery for a cup of mud. His regular waitress, a nice-looking Spaniard named Marie (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), is Madonna to Stevie’s whore. She lends Reznik a sympathetic ear, and tries to fatten him up with complimentary slices of pie that he never eats. One day, Reznik escorts Marie and her son, Nicholas (Matthew Romero), to a carnival, and there’s an admittedly creepy scene where Reznik and the youngster take a spin through a spook house called (groan) “Route 666.” As the ride progresses, the ghouls on display begin to partake in some rather lewd activity (such as oral sex), but with Reznik as your guide through this labyrinth of anomalous happenings, you never know what’s real or not. 

The Machinist’s grubby design is straight out of a Nine Inch Nails video, and it’s probably not a coincidence that the protagonist’s name sounds like a nod to that group’s front man. The photography by Xavi Gimenez recalls the washed-out palette of Angel Heart or Payback, and Roque Banos’s overstated musical score (which, believe it or not, incorporates a theremin) freely cribs Bernard Herrmann’s work from Psycho. (Fans of The Machinist will call it “an homage”; its detractors will cry “plagiarism.”) It seems that the only unique thing director Brad Anderson has to work with here is Bale’s body by Auschwitz, which is lingered over so much that it distracts us from Bale’s quietly intense performance. Worst of all, the picture’s inevitable twist ending doesn’t deliver any goose pimples. Quoth the Dame, “It’s the same old thing in brand new drag.” 

We’ve all read that Anderson had to look to Spain’s Filmax to secure funding for The Machinist (it was shot in Barcelona), though I’m sure Hollywood’s decision to pass on the project had nothing to do with it being “too risky.” Perhaps they found it too muddled, too self-conscious, too damned derivative. Whatever the case, it was a smart call—The Machinist fizzled at the box office. It may pick up a following on DVD now that Bale is donning the Dark Knight’s cape and cowl, but lovers of dark cinema should seek out something with more meat on its bones.  

June 12, 2005  

© Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.