The Machinist: What is Really Divided? The Movie or Us?

In a series of films depicting schizophrenia, the patient's dual personality is usually externalized by two actors with distinct styles and contrasting characteristics. The biggest problem we face is how to trick the audience into ignoring the clear-cut directional details that run through the entire film, thus forgetting to find the ubiquitous connection between them. This type of story falls under Jean-Claude Carriere's classification of the second story type: the person who tells the story knows it, while the person who listens to the story doesn't understand it. In such stories, it is not particularly difficult to interest the audience, and there is no need for airplane crashes or building collapses (which just waste producers' money), only a little bit of mysterious unknowable factor is enough. In films depicting mental patients, such mysterious factors usually come from the "narrator's" imaginary space, namely, some irrational behavior of the protagonist representing his second personality (such as his sudden appearance and disappearance, and usually, he remains blank in everyone else's memory).

Certainly, with the vast scale of today's movies, there might be fewer opportunities to ponder this issue. As unique narrative methods become repeated, and viewers learn to identify various storytelling devices, they may even predict the ending from the beginning. The significant challenge for screenwriters then becomes how to sustain the audience's suspense and engagement when the endpoint is already apparent.

In this sense, some aspects of "The Machinist" are successful and worthy for us to learn. Unlike another film also depicting mental illness, "Fight Club," where an intertwined female character named Marla Singer is inserted between two main characters throughout the movie, the director carefully removes the tiny yet crucial detail of "three never appear together at the same time" and easily leads the audience's usual interpretation astray. The protagonist Trevor Reznik in "The Machinist" is more melancholic and silent than anyone else, so it is not difficult for viewers to guess from the beginning that Trevor Reznik and the many-appearing fat guy (Lazinik's imagined other personality) are actually the same person due to extreme lack of communication. It must be pointed out that the events surrounding black people are too weird and exaggerated, as well as the director's excessive concern about the appearance difference between the two men, which may be the fundamental reason for the narrative failure here.

Fortunately, there is still hope for salvation.

Trevor Reznik is an ordinary worker with a dull and boring life, as well as a failed career. He had been suffering from severe insomnia for a year which caused him to be extremely skinny. The setting of this character largely corresponds to the common living conditions of people, on the other hand, it also has some incredible elements, such as why he suffered from severe insomnia, which itself is enough to arouse the interest of the audience. In “Fight Club”, the part that traces back the origin is intentionally omitted in order to form a complete reflection structure.

There is a definition that all stories are about games between what we know and what we don't know, and the entire function of a story lies in delving into the unknown to explore new things. This can explain why the story of Jesus is constantly remade without getting bored, and it can also explain why the audience still finds it hard to get bored when they know that the black man and the protagonist are the same person. Narrative style and story itself are two completely different things; narrative has its own patterns and techniques, and what does well in "The Machinist" is the hiding and continuous discovery of information (usually by matching repeatedly appeared small details with certain characteristics of the truth), as well as the use of cold and bleak imagery style.

The visual art of "The Machinist" is realistic and slightly brutal, with worn-out rooms, low grey clouds, and the protagonist's dry body preaching a certain end-of-the-world mood. Facts have proven that such decadent style always has a huge impact on the sensitive nerves of modern people. The last ten minutes of the plot really play a role in saving the film - although it comes too late. The revelation of truth reorganizes all the information, and the seemingly far-fetched plot finally makes sense, thus avoiding vulgarity.

At this point, we finally realised that most of the events that appeared earlier in the movie are just the hero's imagination due to his psychological mechanism, and they eventually become a hint of the truth, pointedly. In this regard, "The Machinist" follows the approach of "Stay", except that the latter's plot structure is based on illusion rather than imagination, making it more absurd and ridiculous. Regardless, the crucial aspect is that the main storyline of both films unfolds within the hero's mind. This fundamentally distinguishes them from most action or sci-fi movies. The audience, in the role of the narrator, must continually break down and reorganize the information they receive while watching the movie. In this sense, the story primarily transpires within the audience's mind.

The audience serves as both the narrator and the narratee, allowing certain emotional experiences in life to seamlessly overlap with the movie. This is why, despite "The Machinist" having a complex structure, a perplexing plot, and profound undertones, it manages to capture our attention and even reach into the depths of our innermost hearts.