The Machinist

I had to go and see a movie after work today to get rid of (no matter how briefly) the memory of my Boss's insane rage today. This morning while opening the mail, I put a letter addressed to her on her desk and she freaked out because it was a courier invoice. She hates that courier business. How unthoughtful I was. But I ask you, what is worse - Employee putting a letter on Boss's desk when he should have sent the damn thing to the finance department, or Boss flying into a spectacularly insane fit at Employee over such a trifle?
Bah! Enough of my mad insane psychotic boss and onto the movie!
The movie I chose to see was The Machinist. In the movie, Christian Bale plays a guy called Trevor Reznik. The first thing you notice about him is that he looks like he just walked out of a death camp. This is not a special effect, it seems the actor purposely lost all that weight for the role. He is so awesomely thin and bony and unhealthy-looking that I am still wondering how the hell he managed it. What a crazy job!
Anyway, Trevor works as a machinist at a place called National Machine. When he is not at work we see him visiting prostitute Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), washing his hands and looking at his bony face in the mirror, cleaning his bathroom floor with bleach and a toothbrush, and hanging out at a cafe next to the airport every night where he enjoys talking to the waitress Marie.
He soon admits to Stevie that he hasn't slept for a year. Why has he not slept for a year? Why is he so skinny? At one point we see him wolfing down some food. Does he only do this once a week?
Then some strange stuff starts to happen. Outside the factory he meets a strange man who, back inside the factory, attracts his attention while he is helping another guy fix a machine. Trevor accidentally bumps the ON button and the machine cranks to life and rips the other guy's arm off at the elbow.
Back at his apartment he notices a yellow post-it note on his fridge with a hangman drawn on it. There is a six-letter word but only the last two letters have been filled in: "ER" he gets more and more paranoid wondering who has been sneaking into his apartment.
Then we find out that the strange guy (Ivan) who distracted Trevor and caused the guy's arm to be ripped off, does not seem to exist. Nobody by that name works at the machine factory.
This movie is grim. All the colours have been almost washed out. Christian Bale gives an awesome performance. Yes I will have to watch American Psycho again. All the way through the movie you will be on the very edge of your seat wondering just what the hell is going on, and you only find out right near the end. This one will easily make it onto my Best of 2005 list.
The theatre where I saw it was massive. There were only four of us in there so I had a perfect position right in the middle with nobody even close to me.
One noteworthy person in the tiny audience was a man about seven rows in front of me. Early in the movie, Stevie (the prostitute) says to Trevor, "If you get any thinner you won't even exist" to which the man in front of me waved his arms and shouted, "YEAH! WOO!" It startled me. I had never experienced this behaviour before. Had he seen the movie before? Had he been to every session? Was he a Christian Bale fan? At four or five other points in the movie, he cried out, "YEAH WOO!" and chuckled to himself. It didn't annoy me, like those girls with their mobile phone action throughout the movie, or the idiots who keep talking or whispering, in fact I quite admired the fellow for his enthusiasm.
I hope he is at the next movie I see.