Brad Anderson, 2004
6.0
i really liked Brad Anderson's Session 9. it had a real creepy atmosphere about it that made the film compelling. The Machinist stars Christian Bale as a, you guessed it, machinist in a factory beset by terrible events. the film is known for having Mr. Bale in a near-cadavorous shape. and although that is quite an astounding feat, the effect is not overused by Anderson, nor does the story even hinge on this "trick". it is but a by-product of the character and never used as a crutch. thankfully so. but what Anderson does have here is a Fight Club-like story (no spoiler here; you'll smell something fishy by the first 10 minutes) that is surprisingly weakly written together. it all looks very good on the page but there's no emotional context to it all (and there's a weird discordant vibe running along courtesy of the Psycho-like score which took the film towards the absurd instead of the creepy). i kept thinking Reznik was an ass for not seeing what was made abundantly clear to us, the audience, pretty much all the way through. we don't figure out all the details but Reznik is so behind all the time that it's a little hard to sympathize with his plight as much we would need to invest ourselves in the film. the film feels like a poorly-written, middle-of-the-road, intellectual trip. the only reason to watch it would be Bale's performance, which, because he is so unrecognizable at first, you can watch almost as a pure performance and not see 'Christian Bale' inside. but in the end, this was a pretty boring film. i just watched it 'til the end to see what it was all about. a good try, but poorly executed.
ps. i'm always wondering what actors bring to these roles, apart from name recognition. well, this is one way of seeing it first-hand. movies are only two hours long; how deep can an actor get, really? in general, we identify with traits, laugh at jokes, and like familiar face; but what do they really do that's so different from role to role? would we recognize their characters outside of their films if they were to utter completely new lines? i would love to think so.
Posted by Anonymous | 12:17 AM
