Home
sign up| features / film interview |
 content by: editor |
 the machinist interview
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Director Brad Anderson gets paranoid. The Machinist, Brad Anderson’s eerily affecting psychological thriller, boasts as many novelty attractions and conjuring tricks as any traditional house of horrors. “People have described it as a horror movie. That brings to mind guts and gore and heads getting lobbed off. It isn’t really that kinda movie, but it has a couple of little moments. It’s a psychological paranoid drama, like Polanski,” offers the director.  Cut from the darkest school of gothic film freakiness, the story follows Ivan (Christian Bale), a machinist consumed by inner demons, who hasn’t slept or eaten in a year. He has visions of men who aren’t there, and is pursued through fairgrounds by monsters from the id. Yet, disturbing as this plot is, it is nothing compared to when Christian Bale first appears on screen, 60 pounds lighter than usual, with deathly bags under his eyes and every vertebra in his back sticking out like cogs in a machine. As Anderson recalls, “The script is about a guy who hasn’t slept in a year. It couldn’t all be special effects and make-up. When Christian stepped off the plane in Barcelona he looked like a shadow of himself. It was terrifying and thrilling at the same time. It was like, ‘Man, this guy really went beyond the call of duty.’”  Set in an unplaceable American every-city, the film was indeed shot in Barcelona, calling for some inventive sleight of hand from Anderson. His secret? “Licence plates. I’m serious! As soon as you see a European licence plate it destroys it. It was all the details. Even the doorknobs. We had to have all these little gadgets sent from New York.” Destined to be remembered as the movie that turned Christian Bale into a walking skeleton, The Machinist has more going for it than sideshow gimmicks. It’s a classic crime-and-punishment fable, grimily soaked in industrial black mood.
Skye Sherwin
The Machinist, on general release 18 March 05.
 conversations
Read members' comments.
|
 |
related info
 useful links
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
see also
also on bbc.co.uk
on bbc.co.uk/movieson bbc london books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
access 1000s of articles
