Turn one story into another

Marlene 2022-04-23 07:01:19

There are actually a lot of clues in the movie, the hero and the prostitute, the hero and the waitress, the hero and Ivan, the hero and the factory, and the hero's own struggles, which are mixed with various details, inexplicable logic, and blood. scene. In other words, the film has two clues, the bright line is the real life of the male protagonist (the male protagonist and the factory, the male protagonist’s own struggles, the male protagonist and the prostitute), and the dark line is the spiritual fantasy of the male protagonist (the male protagonist and the waitress, Male lead and Ivan). It can be seen that the director has no way to insist on a certain clue and complete the whole film. He tries to use the male protagonist's pursuit of Ivan to lead the whole film, but because Ivan has no way to bring a sufficient amount of confusion and illogicality to the audience ( See the single character of "Barton Fink"), so the director returned to the structure of multiple threads in parallel for the narrative. Paper strips play an important role in this. The whole film is connected in series by that small piece of paper. From nothing is filled in, there is an er, mother, miller and killer, and there are five entries in turn. They appeared at 21 minutes, 35 minutes, 48 ​​minutes, 1 hour 1 minute and 1 hour 31 minutes, respectively. The first and second notes lead the audience into the suspense of the story, and the three terms mother, miller and killer summarize the last three paragraphs of the film.
This is one of the cleverness of the movie.
Although the film thread is so complicated, it still chooses the normal film structure to tell the story. The first climax of the movie appeared at 18 minutes, when the male protagonist accidentally cut off miller's hand in the factory. The second climax of the film comes in the 38th minute, when the waitress's child dies of epilepsy. The third climax of the movie appeared at 1 hour, when the male protagonist and miller had a conflict, and the fourth climax appeared at 1 hour and 8 minutes, when the male protagonist was chasing the subway. The fifth climax of the film appeared at 1 hour and 13 minutes. The dispute between the prostitute and the male protagonist made the male protagonist recall all his experiences in the past year until the truth came out. It can be seen that each climax corresponds to the end of a clue, which is the second ingeniousness. Of course, this isn't exactly where the director did it perfectly, the airport waitress's thread breaks off in the middle of the film, at 48 minutes, and then the film climaxes again at 1 hour and 20 minutes. The disappearance of such an important metaphor here is undoubtedly a loss, and it also bears the emotional development of the male lead and the waitress. In addition, the links between the various clues are not close, and the plot of the male protagonist and the prostitute, the male protagonist and the waitress can be arbitrarily placed elsewhere. This thread of the male protagonist and the factory develops downward in time, followed by Ivan's thread, but by the second half of the film, the two threads become loose. So this is the ingenuity of the movie and also the pity.
The third ingenious thing about the film is that it tells a very ordinary story through a clever narrative structure, it tells the story of a man who is unable to face his conscience after a hit-and-run. But the director will not tell the audience what the truth is from start to finish. He has been describing the entanglement between the male protagonist and the parties, the accident in the factory, and the death of the boy. Attract the audience's suspicion through various fantasies, and pour out the suspense at the end. The so-called "movie, to tell a story into another story", is talking about such a film.

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Extended Reading

The Machinist quotes

  • Trevor Reznik: You know so little about me. What if I turn into a werewolf or something?

    Stevie: I'll buy you a flea collar.

  • Trevor Reznik: How they bitin', Reynolds?