I watched The Machinist again last night. It's probably been more than a year since I last saw it. Curiously enough, I am still finding little things I didn't notice on previous viewings! Or at least some ideas are coming together in ways they had not before, likely because I was looking too closely.

( Just a few things, possibly but hopefully not repeating myself... much. )

I have to say, too, that this film absolutely holds up. I still love watching it, and I still get tense as hell at all the right parts (especially Miller's accident!). And no matter how many times I see him, I am still unsettled just watching Trevor.

Also, not from the film but the extras, having seen Session 9 I wonder if the chair in the hallway used for Scott Kosar's interview was not an intentional nod to that film. Granted, Session 9 is Anderson's film not Kosar's, but the imagery is eerily similar.

Something I've been meaning to mention but have not because I've gotten into the habit of not mentioning things, is that it's curious to me that Trevor tells Ivan in the bar "normally I don't even drink!" To which Ivan replies "what about abnormally?"

( my slightly inarticulate curiosity )

Was thinking about the women in The Machinist last night, funnily enough on a roadtrip, and had a bit of a delayed obvious revelation.

Picking out the women with the most lines and most action, you've got:

Maria - the mother

Stevie - the whore but also the maiden waiting to be rescued

and Mrs Shrike - the crone

Classic literary archetypes and perfectly represented here in their threefold state. The mother, the maiden and the crone ... liek woah. Just made me remember that thing about the movie being a very literary movie. Argh, yes.

I had a revelation the other night while in the shower (no comments on that, thank you *g*) about Trevor's thinness. ( If you were any thinner, you wouldn't exist. )

Thoughts?

Also, only slightly related is that the first thing Trevor sees on the Route 666 ride is a skin-and-bones dying figure in tattered rags, crawling along in the desert and getting nowhere. Now if that's not Trevor then I'm really a reverend.

In my effort to keep the momentum of the comm up, I'm starting to look obsessive aren't I? But there's plenty to be said still.

( just a few things )

Finally, as much as I should be setting an example over what is and is not relevant on this comm, I'm including a drawing of Trent I did a while back because creedysgirl says I must! I'm working on Trevor but he's avoiding me.

( down in it )

creedysgirl said I had to post this or else! :)

I've been formulating a theory around the "cowboy" theme. I don't quite have it all sorted in my mind, so perhaps you nice people can help me out.

( Fill'er up, cowboy. )

I'm still thinking about it.

[Edit 11/8/06: It occured to me that the cowboy reference can also come from Trevor's desire to be save Nicholas, just as he did on the 666 ride. (Pretty sure this has been mentioned before:)In trying to save Nicholas from an epileptic fit, he is trying to redeem himself. Of course, Maria reassures him that it is not his fault, he couldn't have know (the epilepsy and the accident), but he's just lying to himself.]

Also, she says I have to point out that when they're on the ride, just before they hit the fake kid that's thrust in front of them, there's a crossing guard. He's lost all his fingers but the pinky and thumb, the rest are broken off. Much like Ivan but on the wrong hand. Anyway, another hand reference. :)



PS: My apologies if I am slow in replying. Busy weekend.

PS also, I bought The Idiot! :)

Just to add to the last post, I did a little research and I found definite proof of the NIN/Machinist connection. Here's what Brad Anderson had to say in a interview( Read more... )

Let's see, I'm not really sure I know where to go with this but it's worth a shot.

One thing that attracted me a great deal to this movie was the imagery of machinery, and the fact that Trevor is a machinist. (I mean, it's the title.) Something I'd like to put forward and explore is the importance of this theme. Brad Anderson mentions something in the commentary about how Trevor is this really tiny, frail guy that is tired all the time because he doesn't sleep which in term exacerbates the perils and the danger of his job, he's working with such heavy and intense material. I think there's a lot more that can be said than just that little snippet of irony. I think it's something that maybe could have been explored more throughout the film, (but doesn't take anything away from the film that it's not.)

Trevor is this fragile creature, this skeletal being, pure flesh and bone- but at the same time he's kind of created this machine out of himself a drone for the past year. The machines are an obvious force in the movie, they're what causes Miller's arm, and Trevor to almost lose his. I see the machine as kind of a facade, a physical disguise he masks himself with. While Trevor thinks there is some kind of conspiracy against him, and other forces acting on him, it's really only himself, the machine he's built himself into. I'd like to think that Trevor finds solace in his work. That this is a way he can escape, by fitting cogs and building parts. He's trying to subconciously build this wall around himself, which ultimately turns against him and comes crashing down.

( I'm stuck in this dream )


So I don't know if I've actually said anything worth saying, but it's a little dose of my take on things, that could definetly be delved deeper into.

I watched The Machinist again last night (during a partcularly nasty torrential downpour), and as always came away with a few new things.

( observations, questions, pondering )

I have a ton more but I'll leave it at that for now. :)

I've mentioned much of this before, here and there, but I thought it deserved its own official post: ( make it a double. )

There's probably more. I haven't seen it in over a week! My memory's lifespan is only a few days. V_V

Did Trevor really go a year without sleep? In rare cases, people have been known to be awake for months at a time. If he was awake the whole time, then his strange reality was a series of delusions. If he was not awake the whole time, then could it be that some of his delusions were just nightmares?

Hello everyone *waves* New member to the community and mighty proud about it :D I saw The Machinist yesterday and I still cannot get it out of my mind. Such a stunning movie, had me gripped and on the edge of my chair from the very beginning! Christian Bale made an awesome performance (and this is the moment where someone in the crowd goes DUH!) and I loved him because you can actually see he put so much into this character (literally see it!).

I'm not a big fan of movies without any substance, the wham-boom-the-end kind of movies, so this one was a breath of fresh air from what I've been seeing on TV in the last few weeks. It never ceased to surprise me, even though I knew some things from before (sorry, I just can't resist spoilers >.<)

( The Machinist )

Christian Bale managed to amaze me again with this one. An actor with such dedication is hard to find these days so I was left speechless by the end of the movie (also, my jaw was somewhere on the floor at the first sight of his body. Bloody hell.) And my Bale obsession has probably reached its highest point yet since it started some time ago with Equilibrium on HBO. Awesome actor!

It's great to find such a great community of fans who manage to string together more words than 'OhMy Gawd! This was SoOo kewl' and write such awesome theories (I've devoured every post in here, lol) and it's great to finally know what the community name actually means as this was one of my outbursts in the cinema, heh. Now I must go annoy mom who has promised that if I mention the words Bale and The Machinist again she will throw me out the window and I'm curious how serious she is about it, lmao!

While watching The Machinist this weekend for the nth time, something finally clicked.

( St. Christopher, protect us. )

Since spacequeen brought up the hand-washing, I'll bring up the bleach. There's a theme throughout the film of things being bleached, made white, washed clean.

( pure lye )

I wondered while watching the commentary why Brad Anderson, in all his belly-scratching enthusiasm, glossed over some points that I thought were very important. (I also thought he could have sang Christian's praises about 200 times more than he did! I mean, when you're fortunate enough to get a performance like that, you don't talk about lighting! oO) One that bothered me a lot was that he never mentioned the recurring foreshadowing of the end scenes in the bathroom. To the the point where I began to question if he knew why those scenes were written. Or perhaps he felt they were obvious enough... or foreshadowing was never the intention...

( blood and mirrors )

Please forgive me if this is addressed in the commentary and is all old news. I haven't gotten my paws on the DVD yet. Yet.

So I've never read Dostoevsky - can't even spell him without nervous reference, right? - and couldn't help but notice the very prominent focus given to The Idiot in the film.

Just went hunting and experienced a jaw-dropping moment at this:

It represents, we are told, a dead man who is totally flesh without life, damaged and destroyed, with no hint of a possible future resurrection. ... the dead man in the painting is an executed man, whose consciousness has been brutally cut off. There is a rhythmic meditation on murder and execution in this story ... Connected to the terrible lucidity of the condemned man in the tumbril is the unearthly lucidity of the pre-epileptic aura, bliss without time or space, eternity in an instant. The images are their own meaning. ... The women think they are in a story about seduction, rape, proposals, money and marriage ... The prince is in some absolute moral world in which he can instinctively gauge who is being cruel to whom, who is in need and who is tormenting or tormented ... (the women) consider "loving" the prince for those qualities of patience and attention and kindness, which do attract both over-experienced and gawkily innocent women.

I know I'm getting all that from a review, even if it's written by AS Byatt, but woah!

Anyone read the actual book? Or does Brad say something about it in the commentary? Sorry, bit of an academic nerd here and when films and books collide in such marvellous fashion, I get very excited. :p

I've been wondering where to start with this. There's so much to discuss. But one thing that I felt did not get enough attention in the commentary was the mother connection.

( happy mother's day )