The Machinist: Exploding the unconscious

Ren, Mike, Julie and I saw "The Machinist" last night at the Brattle Theater. The director, Brad Anderson, was there before the film, talking about another film they showed prior. We watched a 120 pound Christian Bale play Trevor Reznik, a machine operator who can't sleep, and who slowly, through delusions and accidents, comes completely undone.

This reminded me of Grace Jantzen's discussion (in her book, "Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion") of what psychoanalytic theory argues about the human subject. The human subject is not a given, i.e. we are not born "who" we are today. Instead, "human personhood is achieved, and achieved at considerable cost. A human baby begins life as a mass of conflicting desires. In order to become a unified subject, some of these desires have to be repressed. This repression of desires is the formation of the unconscious; and from the unconscious, repressed desires may always threaten to erupt. Therefore, strategies have to be put in place to control thought, feeling, and behavior, lest the fragile subject falls apart once again into fragments."

This about sums up the film. For Reznik, however, it's not a bunch of conflicting desires, but rather a traumatic experience, and one conflict: to take responsibility for his actions, where there would be material consequences, or not. In the beginning of the film, he opts not to take responsibility, and so the film is an exposition of the "strategies" of controlling the desire and memory of the trauma, to repress these in a variety of forms. These forms include his insomnia, delusional visions and conversations, and writing notes for himself.

However, this repressions continually cause problems, and the traumatic experience continually asserts itself. For instance, he sees a delusional aspect of himself, which he calls "Ivan." This man - who's hand is deformed, an interesting mirror of Reznik's own deformed body - becomes the focus imaginarius for Trevor's rage and fear. The desire to be punished for his actions is externalized in this delusion, where he becomes the judge, the Law, and Ivan is the subverter, the menace, the one who needs to be punished. He pushes this farther and farther until Trevor thinks he's killed Ivan, only to find Ivan resurrected in the question: "who are you?"

This "who are you" confirms my thesis that the film is about human subjectivity, and the systems of controls we use in order to prevent our unconscious desires from erupting into uncontrollable passions. In the end, Trevor takes responsibility for what he did (and I'm skirting around 'what he did' because it would spoil the film), and the conflict that engaged his system of controls ends, and he finds a type of peace (even though he had to give up his material well-being).

Beyond the "philosophical" content of the film, it is a very affecting vision of what it might be like to have a mental illness. The director takes us between Trevor's delusions visions, and the more "normal" relationships he has, in a way that makes you realize just how debilitating it is to have a "private sense", which many schizophrenics have, for instance. It is very uncomfortable when Trevor sees this delusional Ivan character. Ivan is so uncanny (another favorite psychoanalytic term) that you're completely afraid for Trevor. Then, as you realize Ivan is a delusion of Trevor's, you own reality feels turned upside down.

In general, the director does a nice job imbricating us into what happens with Trevor, and I suppose that's a mark of a good story-teller.