Current photographs of Nicolas Cage’s wild transformation into NFL legend John Madden are inflicting fairly a dialogue in Hollywood. Nevertheless, in that very same upcoming movie, one other actor is present process his personal surprising change. Christian Bale, who’s taking part in iconic crew proprietor Al Davis, can be making headlines for his new look. However anybody who has adopted his profession will know that this isn’t Bale’s first rodeo in relation to this type of intense dedication. And no transformation was extra surprising, or extra whole, than the one he underwent for the 2004 mystery-thriller, The Machinist.
The movie, which holds a Licensed Recent score on Rotten Tomatoes, is remembered much less for its intelligent plot and extra for the haunting, skeletal body of its lead actor. The story of Bale’s excessive weight reduction for the position has change into a legendary piece of Hollywood trivia, nevertheless it has additionally, sadly, overshadowed the movie itself. The Machinist brilliantly makes use of Bale’s bodily transformation as one of the crucial efficient and unsettling storytelling instruments in any trendy thriller. The movie is a chilling exploration of guilt, and it proves that typically, probably the most terrifying horror story is the one that’s written on the human physique.
Bale’s Physique in The Machinist Was Movie’s First Thriller
Earlier than the primary character of The Machinist, a manufacturing unit employee named Trevor Reznik, utters a single phrase, the opening scene of the movie conveys to the viewers that one thing is deeply and essentially fallacious. From the very first shot, viewers are confronted with the surprising image of Christian Bale’s physique, which is nothing greater than a skeletal determine with jutting ribs and sunken, haunted eyes.
This isn’t only a alternative made for shock worth; it’s the movie’s opening riddle. As a substitute of counting on dialogue or exposition to set the stage, the film lets Bale’s startling bodily situation do all of the work. His physique instantly creates a strong sense of unease and indicators that this isn’t only a story a few man who cannot sleep; it’s a story a few man who’s being fully consumed from the within out.
The opening scene units the tone of the movie for a future. With a mix of Fight Club and slightly little bit of Memento right here and there, the ambiance is darkish, cloudy and gritty. The viewers sees a particularly skinny man via a glass window, and he has accidents on his face, with certainly one of them bleeding. He’s making an attempt to wrap up a human physique in a carpet, and we are able to solely see its ft coated in white socks.
Proper after wrapping The Machinist, Christian Bale started coaching and consuming closely, reportedly gaining 100 kilos in six months to play Bruce Wayne in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins.
Within the subsequent scene, he parks his truck at a seaside and carries the carpet with the physique inside to presumably dump it into the ocean. He’s visibly having a tough time dealing with the burden, and on the similar time, there’s a terrifying look on his face as if somebody is following or watching him. As he pushes the physique all the way down to the water from a stage, the carpet is flung open, and earlier than the viewers can see whose physique it’s, the scene is minimize to a searchlight coming from the opposite facet of the seashore, and we hear somebody saying, “Who’re you?”
This bodily decay is a superb and efficient piece of non-verbal foreshadowing. Because the movie’s thriller unfolds, the viewers learns that Trevor is being plagued by a previous trauma that he has repressed. His insomnia and his incapability to eat are the bodily signs of a deep, psychological wound. As Bale himself defined in an interview, the acute weight reduction was meant to be an “outward present of his guilt and being eaten alive actually, you recognize, by guilt.”
Bale’s physique is a strolling spoiler, a visible illustration of the key that’s destroying him. The mystery of the film is not only about who’s leaving cryptic sticky notes on his fridge, however about what occasion may have presumably brought about a person to waste away with nothing. His physique is the primary and most vital clue in your entire film.
The Machinist Turns a Psychological Thriller Into Physique Horror
Most psychological thrillers create a way of hazard via exterior threats. They function mysterious villains, shadowy conspiracies, or a sequence of inexplicable occasions that trigger the protagonist to query their sanity. The Machinist does all of that, nevertheless it additionally provides one other, much more private layer of worry: physique horror.
It’s explicitly not a plot level, however the movie does mix the conventions of a thriller with the unsettling visuals of a body horror movie, making Trevor Reznik’s personal bodily flaws a main web site of the horror. His losing body, his continual insomnia, and his rising paranoia all change into part of the style itself. It is a thriller that’s advised via the language of bodily collapse.
This mixing of genres is what makes the movie so efficient and so deeply uncomfortable to observe. The exterior thriller of who the unusual man named Ivan is, and why everybody at work appears to be conspiring towards Trevor, runs in parallel to the inner thriller of why his physique is betraying him.
The important thing moments of psychological unease within the movie are virtually at all times intensified by a reminder of Trevor’s grotesque bodily state. His jutting bones and paper-thin pores and skin are a relentless, visible reminder that the actual enemy just isn’t some exterior villain, however the guilt that’s consuming him alive from inside. That is what makes the movie’s remaining twist, the revelation of the hit-and-run accident that he has repressed, land a lot more durable.
When the viewers lastly understands the supply of his guilt, his surprising bodily look immediately makes good, tragic sense. In response to subject-matter specialists, insomnia results in a state of being half-awake and half-asleep. In that section, an insomniac individual is typically someplace of their unconscious thoughts, and equally, typically they’re of their aware thoughts. And once they overlap, the difficulty begins.
Travis, on this state, turns into Girl Macbeth as he rigorously begins making use of bleach to his already bleached flooring and later cleans his arms with it too, as if he’s making an attempt to wipe blood off his arms. His feelings are immediately linked to how he’s treating his bodily self. Travis has discovered his personal strategy to punish himself, and that’s via hunger. His melancholy and insomnia do not let him feed himself as a result of he isn’t able to make himself good once more.
Brad Anderson, director of the movie, throughout an interview with ScreenAnarchy, emphasised that this connection between guilt and physicality is central to the narrative, stating:
“Tales about responsible persons are fascinating. What’s extra profound than individuals wrestling with their conscience? All of us have our hidden secrets and techniques, our skeletons within the closet, our emotions of guilt; these items weigh on everybody to a level.”
A Legacy of Transformation That Goes Past Trivia
Within the years since its launch, Christian Bale’s weight reduction for The Machinist is a second that has change into a transformative scale in itself on the earth of cinema. However to see it solely as a gimmick is to overlook the purpose of what makes the film and the efficiency so singular and highly effective. It’s a good and inseparable fusion of an actor’s dedication and a narrative’s central theme.
The movie merely wouldn’t work with out Bale’s excessive bodily transformation, and it’s the cause the efficiency continues to be mentioned in the present day alongside his biggest and most celebrated roles, like his work in The Darkish Knight, American Psycho and his Oscar-winning turn in The Fighter. It’s a testomony to his uncompromising, regarding and harmful devotion to his craft.
In hindsight, his work in The Machinist may be seen as a precursor to the development of “status transformations” that may change into way more frequent within the years that adopted. Many actors, from Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Patrons Membership to Joaquin Phoenix in Joker, have since undergone excessive bodily adjustments to chase a way of authenticity and to marketing campaign for awards.
Nevertheless, Bale’s work on this movie feels totally different as a result of it’s not simply a powerful feat of performing; it’s the whole visible and thematic core of the film. His latest and much-discussed transformation into Al Davis is one other reminder of his career-long dedication to this technique. Whereas that position is shocking, and David O. Russell’s Madden will as soon as once more fire up the dialog round transformation, The Machinist will without end stay the final word instance of how, for Bale, fully altering his physique is a key a part of his technique of discovering a personality’s hidden reality.
