Machinist, The

Machinist, The

"You know, the one where Batman is anorexic?" That seems to be how everyone has come to recognise the latest film from director Brad Anderson, The Machinist. It's odd because, though Christian Bale's drastic weight-loss was the most publicised aspect of the film, I struggled to understand why it was even in the film at all.

Anderson's last film, Session 9, was effectively creepy and had a few memorable scares, but the story was just an ambiguous mess. And not in the good way either. Critics and people teaching screenwriting will praise ambiguity in film and how "sometimes it's good to not explain things", but sometimes it's just bad writing if the audience don't know what the hell you're on about.

Not the case with The Machinist. A far more straightforward narrative, it revolves around a factory worker, Reznick (played by Batman), who has not slept in a year. He's also involved in an accident at work, going out with a waitress as well as a hooker, seeing a man that no one else sees and finding strange post-it notes around his house. Sound busy? He's also really, really skinny. I began to wonder, "Is all this stuff really necessary?"

Multiple plots aside, the film is ultimately about Reznick, and it must be said that Christian Bale puts in an excellent performance here. After seeing Bale in American Psycho and Batman Begins, I began to wonder if he was the 'serious' actor he was percieved to be. I was actually surprised with how much humanity and likability Bale portrayed Reznick, particularly given his physical appearance in the film. You actually care for the guy, which manages to draw all these story elements together and make the film even more suspenseful when stuff starts going wrong for him. They should have slimmed down the plot (ahahaha!) and just focused on this lonely guy who works in a factory and starts 'seeing things'. It could have been a nice Taxi Driver-style character piece.

As all these plots began to come together, I hoped and prayed Anderson was not going to leave it all open and confusing.

And you know what? He didn't.

And that was problem! (is that my cake? Can I eat it too?)

This time, he did explain it all, and I just wasn't satisfied. It's such an integral moment in films such as this where a weird bunch of stuff goes on for most of the film, and at the end you've got to justify why it all happened. Otherwise it's just cheap thrills and mood lighting. Films like The Sixth Sense or Jacob's Ladder do it well. Just a slight nudge in the right direction and you go, "Of course." Instead, the end of The Machinist reminded me more of something like The Village or any Scream film, where they spell out every detail of the twist for you, and you go, "Ah huh," and a moment later, "but hold on..."

I think the main difference between these films is that the ones that work often commit to other-worldly or supernatural ideas, whereas films like The Machinist are quite grounded in reality. And this is from where the questions begin to arise: why did all this happen to him? Why's he so special? But you can't not sleep for a year, can you? Why is he really, really, really fucking skinny?

It may not seem apparent in this review, but I actually did enjoy The Machinist. It was scary and unusual and had a very interesting character at the centre of it all. But like The Village, I was really enjoying the film until all the mystery was explained. These days, when I think about all the cool stuff that happened in The Village, I want to watch it again, until I remember the end and it ruins all the cool stuff. Ditto, The Machinist.

Did Christian need to get so skinny for this film? In terms of the plot, no. There is filmmaking and film marketing, and the Star Wars saga has proven that the latter should never influence the former. Then again, I wonder if this film would have recieved as much attention, or if I even would have bothered watching it, if it wasn't "the one where Batman is anorexic".