The Machinist (2004)
Directed by Brad Anderson
Trevor, an insomniac lathe operator, experiences unusual occurrences at work and home. A strange man follows him everywhere, but no one else seems to notice him.
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18 films that influenced The Machinist
What critics say influenced The Machinist
Following in the same vein of “Memento,” “The Machinist” is a clever, taut thriller that will have everyone guessing right up to its avant-garde conclusion.
The puzzle of what happened to Trevor starts to slowly piece together, with flashbacks and clues slightly reminiscent of Christopher Nolan's equally moody "Memento."
Anderson borrows rather obviously from his own Session 9 and other films like Memento , the original Norwegian Insomnia, and Secret Window.
Akin to "Memento" in its psycho-cinematic deconstruction of an obsessed man's disintegrating mental state, this movie taps into something disquieting from its earliest images of Trevor (Christian Bale, who insanely lost 63 pounds for the role) examining his bruised, emaciated body in a bathroom mirror after what evidence suggests was a struggle that ended in murder.
Yet Scott Kosar’s script fails to conceal its central surprise from the get-go – the film is so predictable that I immediately guessed the answer to the hangman game (written on a post-it) that mysteriously appears on Trevor’s fridge, and anyone who’s seen Fight Club, Memento or any number of similar movies will immediately be hip to the big mystery.
The Machinist, one gleans pretty quickly, is about duality and split personas, meaning that the central mystery of the piece is the amount of time it will take for Trevor to figure out what an audience savvy with like entertainments ( Identity , Memento , Jacob's Ladder, Angel Heart) already knows.
There are Hitchcocks Psycho, of course, in its own class, and Polanskis Repulsion, and many more recent variations on the theme, the under-esteemed Angel Heart, Eriq LaSalles Crazy as Hell , and Cronenbergs atmosphere-y but less effective Spider among them.
Literally devoted to depicting a waking nightmare, collaboration between Anderson and first-time scripter Scott A. Kosar most readily calls to mind Polanski in his “The Tenant” mode, with echoes of Hitchcock, Lynch, Kafka and Dostoyevsky wafting through as well (Bale’s character is conspicuously making his way through the latter’s “The Idiot”).
But if you just have to go grisly, Roman Polanski's on-DVD The Tenant has a better black-comic bent.
Taking its stylistic cues not from today's crop of horror films, but from such masterpieces as Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" (1965) and Ingmar Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf" (1968), it makes even scarier that most scary of bogeymen: the human mind.
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There are Hitchcocks Psycho, of course, in its own class, and Polanskis Repulsion, and many more recent variations on the theme, the under-esteemed Angel Heart, Eriq LaSalles Crazy as Hell , and Cronenbergs atmosphere-y but less effective Spider among them.
Then he begins to notice his harassing co-worker (John Sharian, who has the shaved head and dangerously psychotic air of Marlon Brando in "Apocalypse Now") lurking around outside his apartment.
There’s also terrific support from Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Ironside, Aitana Sanchez Gijon and English actor John Sharian, who was apparently cast because of his creepy resemblance to Marlon Brando as Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, something that, bizarre as it sounds, adds considerably to the film.
Taking its stylistic cues not from today's crop of horror films, but from such masterpieces as Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" (1965) and Ingmar Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf" (1968), it makes even scarier that most scary of bogeymen: the human mind.
“Raging Bull” was much-hyped for Robert DeNiro ’s dedication to gain the necessary weight, as was “Bridget Jones’ Diary” when word got around of Renee Zellweger’ s 5000 plus calorie diet of fast food and ice cream.
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Drenched in washed-out noir shadows by Xavi Giménez ( Intacto , Darkness ) and scored by Roque Baños to within an inch of Bernard Hermann’s grave, The Machinist‘s aesthetic is as sick as Bale’s concentration camp figure, but like his 2001 spooker Session 9 and the previous year’s Happy Accidents, Anderson’s latest similarly trades in karma but allows mood to trump emotion.
Drenched in washed-out noir shadows by Xavi Giménez ( Intacto , Darkness ) and scored by Roque Baños to within an inch of Bernard Hermann’s grave, The Machinist‘s aesthetic is as sick as Bale’s concentration camp figure, but like his 2001 spooker Session 9 and the previous year’s Happy Accidents, Anderson’s latest similarly trades in karma but allows mood to trump emotion.