Machinations

I recently saw The Machinist, a movie I was warned was "tough to watch," but that I nevertheless remained curious about. Though it was not widely seen in its theatrical release five years ago, it gained some notoriety as the movie Christian Bale went all "De Niro" for. That is, he starved himself down to a skeletal 120 pounds to portray a man suffering the mental and physical ill-effects of months of insomnia.

The plot is, expectedly, of a psychological nature. While there is definitely a forward-moving plot, it's littered with lots of non-sensical moments designed to put us in the mind of the main character. What's real, what's not? And just what is the truth that ultimately explains all the odd things we're seeing?

The movie starts strong, with the opening camera shot showing us the main character rolling up a dead body in a rug. I found myself instantly pulled in and, in the good way, wanting to know what was going on. The narrative soon jumped back in time, but as more strange clues piled on, I still found myself becoming more fascinated in what I was seeing.

But unfortunately, there came a saturation point. About an hour into the film, there was still no sign of any explanation, nothing to make sense of the unexplained. The unusual slowly began to become annoying. The sensation that a carefully hidden secret was being slowly revealed to me transformed into the sensation that the film was just stalling as long as possible before exposing a gimmick that would fail to satisfy any expectations. And as forty more minutes droned on, that new feeling only intensified.

Ultimately, the answer that explains all the madness arrives, minutes before the final credits roll. On the plus side, it does explain everything we've seen. On the down side, it was indeed not half as clever as all the anticipation makes you hope for. I felt vaguely reminded of the movie Stay, in how I was so underwhelmed by the movie's final destination.

Christian Bale is good in the movie, but it's far from his best performance. His acting is not nearly as striking as his physical transformation. A supporting cast, including Jennifer Jason Leigh and Michael Ironside, is similarly "good but not great." I'd give the same assessment of the direction, for a hat trick of "neither exceptional nor mediocre."

Ultimately, the film didn't overstay its welcome so long as to make me dislike it. But I guess it was a disappointment when I consider the tremendous promise with which it began. Overall, I'd rate it a B-.