spontaneous christian bale film festival

Equilibrium: (2002. dir: Kurt Wimmer) Ridiculous but interesting faux-Matrix stab at Orwellianism. Emotion has been outlawed in this futureworld in attempt to save mankind from self-destruction. In pursuit of this end, indulgence in art, music, literature, and all things beautiful is proscribed and punishable by execution, and all citizens are required to take continuing doses of an emotion-numbing drug. The silly bit is that any little kid (or Sartre) could tell you that it's OTHER PEOPLE who rouse up emotions of all kinds, and any attempt to quell passion is doomed to failure unless everyone is quarantined into constant solitary confinement. The story doofs around looking pretty harebrained most of the time: Bale is John Preston, virtuoso of the gestapo in charge of tamping down all that crazy emoting, until his partner crosses over to the emote-y side, and then he meets a girl... et cetera...

BUT... and here's the good part... somewhere inside the silliness and "gun kata" (don't ask) is a really beautiful heart. The section of the film in which Preston stops taking his drugs and rediscovers beauty and sensation is absolutely stunning, a tribute to both Bale's performance and the artistry of the filming. A gesture as simple as removing a glove to feel the balustrade as he walks up a staircase becomes more sensuous than most love scenes. And imagine the power of going your whole life without music, then suddenly hearing Beethoven. I'll own the DVD, just for that twenty minutes or so of epiphany.




American Psycho: (2000. dir: Mary Harron) This might have been a good film, judging by its production values, had it been based on a story--even the same story--as written by, say, JD Salinger, or Joss Whedon, or you, dear reader. Had you written the source material for this film, it might have been a decent view. We will never know, because in fact it was written by Brett Easton Ellis, whose stories are all, always, about Brand Names, the Names of Hip Places to Hang Out, and the Names of Celebrities. The vapid and loathesome characters who "people" his stories (I use the term loosely) exist for the sole purpose of speaking these sacramental words. Because this director has stuck by Ellis in his primary purpose (to hold lovingly to the light and admire the very shallowness for which he feigns disdain) what little story there is disintegrates into a stumbling idiocy of loose ends. Important characters vanish without sound or reason, just as does the mounting and gruesome evidence for the titular psycho's crimes, seemingly via Deus Ex Machina. Ellis' point seems to be that here in the shoals of our frivolous society, humans are entirely interchangeable, but the result is a sophomoric punchline instead of an ending.

For many years a child star in Britain, this is the movie that propelled Bale's full-grown adult potential for superstardom across the water, and it speaks well of him that he's turned down offers to do sequels.




the Machinist: (2004. dir: Brad Anderson) This one goes in a category I call Night Sea-Journey films, a strange, narcotic little piece that is half-dream, half-reality, and you don't know until the end which half is which. (Filed also in this category I keep Siesta and Jacob's Ladder, along with some Cronenberg titles, Naked Lunch, Existenz and Spider among them.) Night Sea-Journey films require a greater commitment toward suspension of disbelief than most, and the burden on the filmmaker is greater to bring the ends in to an ultimately satisfying design. The Machinist is very much a success in this respect, and the performances by Bale (skinny as a whippet) and his costars are compelling. It's also extraordinarily difficult to watch, like being caught in that grinding, exhausting sort of nightmare from which you wake feeling sleepless and spent.