snallygaster wrote:I've noticed, however, that I've come to think of Blake as being dead the whole time, and the whole movie -- ie, everything between the opening train ride & the closing canoe ride -- takes place in a kind of purgatory. Partly this is because of the symmetry between the start & end of the movie, partly because of what Crispin Glover says on the train, and partly because the dream-like atmosphere is pretty constant throughout the whole movie -- it's not like he gets shot in Machin, and THEN things start getting surreal.
Aye, train denotes, coal and furnace. the smoke of the metalworks, workers keeping the fire burning. Cackling employees. Sweaty John Hurt the decider. Robert Mitchum apparition - after Night of the Hunter (plus photography).
The frontier town of Machine is an earthly Hell. As Blake walks down its muddy street in his clownish Eastern business suit, he is accosted by vile and vulgar sights. Freshly made coffins are stacked in the doorway of a shop. He passes a cart of sun bleached bones and piles of carcasses. In another open doorway he can plainly see a man sodomizing a women at gunpoint. The Dickinson Metal Works is a seemingly endless maze of narrow walkways and over-sized machines. When Blake finds the office of the plant, he informs the office manager, played by John Hurt, that is the new accountant. The office manager, Schofield, tells Blake that he is too late and that the position is already filled. When Blake demands to see the owner, John Dickinson, about the promised appointment, Schofield and all of the office workers laugh derisively. Upon entering Dickinson's office there appears to be no one there. On Dickinson's desk there is a smoking cigar and a human skull.