Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

Of course, not by American filmic portrayal. Marxism = communism = worst evil on the planet = Satan. From what little I know about the US, this is what I gather, anyway.

Last night I saw the film The Machinist on television for the first time. Talk about bleak! Surprise, surprise - the filmmaker couldn’t get funding to make in the States so he had to go to Spain in order do make it. Surprise, surprise #2 - it stars my fantasy bonk Christian Bale. Putain, the man is a phenomenal actor but it was genuinely sickening to see a human that thin.

Bones protruded from places I’d never seen bones protrude from. My ex thinks of himself as very skinny, which he is but this guy beats him hands down. I might not be the biggest adult in the world (though am fairly typical for Asiatic stock) but I swear if I tried to pounce on this guy, I most likely would’ve snapped him in half. Usually when I go to see a doctor who isn’t my usual one, they try to get me to admit I have some eating disorder, so I’m not man-snap-in-half material.

It’s even more amazing that Bale went on to bulk up from his emaciated form in order to be the next Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins. We’re not just talking fit, we’re talking uber-buff. Drool.

Anyway, idol worship aside, why is it Marxist? Trevor Reznik, works in a factory and wears a uniform. Each day seems to be like every other. His apartment is sparse, devoid of personality (at least what little of it is shown). It’s like his life is a machine - perhaps this is why Bale chose to lose weight for the role. Drawing emphasis to the bones of the body somehow forces the focus onto just how machine-like we are though he obscure this with layers - of many things.

Maybe to label the tone of the film ‘Marxist’ isn’t entirely accurate, but it’s not totalitarian in the same way something like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is. It always seems though that with any communist regime that everything is fine till you slip out of the system. There are always going to be people who cannot abide by any political system, but something like, say, democracy gives you a lot more room before you’re considered a loose cannon, or off the rails. In this film, is doesn’t take very long before Reznik’s peers dismiss him as being an outsider to the system.

It also lends itself well to a modernist reading - disdain for industrialisation and mass-production rah rah. I’ve read neither but keep an eye out for some books - The Idiot by Dostoyevsky (it’s easy to spot) but also Franz Kafka’s The Castle (stored in the oddest of places for books!).

Oh, and one more stylistic thing: films with these dystopian themes or that critique dominant (some would say superior) political systems never seem to be sunny. The colour palette, from a cinematic point of view is very limited and bleak - shades from white to black with many greys in between. Is that supposed to remind us that nothing in life is clear-cut? That ascent and descent from various states of experience are gradual?

Example, Reznik doesn’t lose his grip on sanity immediately but at one point, it becomes glaringly obvious to his peers - well before it does to himself.

Well duh, it’s a bloody good film. Naturally, a lot of things about it make sense after you’ve seen it through entirely for the first time but it’s one I need to go back to and sift through. Very much like madness and regaining one’s sanity, really. It’s frightening how one event, action or concept when unresolved can unravel so much in one’s life that is stable, healthy and solid. How heightened one’s senses can be to such little stimulus or provocation.

It would be nice if my acquaintances and less closer friends tried to understand that and why self-alienation becomes so desirable. Oh, to be like them and not understand, and not have need to.