Christian Bale is an actor that has never believed in comfort in lieu of commitment. Over the decades, he has created a reputation of change that puts his body and mind to uncomfortable extremes in search of authenticity. He also again ventures into very physical demanding territory with The Bride! directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, where he plays the monster of Frankenstein. But even with the reputation of a radical devotion, the working of this position put upon him patience and endurance in most unforeseen directions.
This is a radical adaptation of the classic Frankenstein story, with the Bride being played by the actress Jessie Buckley, and Bale having been cast as the monster. The change demanded much more than the technique of performance. It required hours of immobility, powdered layers of prosthetics and that mental torment that comes with giving up your own face in order to be something completely other. Every day in set started way before the cameras were turned on. It would take Bale almost six hours of excruciatingly precise application of makeup, which demanded utter immobility and compliance.
Spend a lot of time in makeup is no exception to many actors. Six hours is however not preparation but a test of stamina. Bale acknowledged that he could not stay that long sitting without going to his breaking point. The physical pain was very clear, yet the psychological one was equally severe. He told Entertainment Weekly in an open interview that the long immobility was rendering him insane. The term was not used hyperbolically. Any person who has even spent a few seconds in a salon chair can think of how the body starts feeling sore and the mind starts finding a way out.
Bale has had to travel to extremes in his physicality. His audiences recollect his scary weight loss in the Machinist, his bodybuilding change in the Dark Knight Rises, and the focus and discipline he showed in American Psycho and Ford v Ferrari. In both instances, the transformation was incorporated in the mythology of the performance. However, it is not the endurance that is different but the way that he decided to handle it.
Instead of isolating himself and mutely ticking the seconds by, Bale made the experience more societal and oddly therapeutic. When it came to the last days of makeup application, he would bring almost 30 crew members to him every day. Then in what must be called an impulsive ceremony he bade them all scream and howl.
Paperwise, the picture sounds chaotic. A professional film set with a crowd of professionals bursting into mad shouts in a room prior to the commencement of shooting in the daytime is far from being a common practice. But to Bale it was a needed discharge. The general outcry was a relief after hours of restraint, silence and discomfort. It turned negativity into power. He did not leave the strain to isolate him, but summoned other people to the moment.
This style is somehow revealing. The concept of method acting tends to bring to mind images of a single-minded intensity, of actors retreating within themselves in order to keep their concentration intact. That was the reverse of the strategy of Bale. He opened the tension that had accumulated hours by engaging the crew. The yelling and the wailing were not mere tomfoolery; they were a vent.
Rituals tend to be naturally produced in intense creative settings. Athletes possess cheers before the game. There are backstage traditions of musicians. Even actors also have their own methods of becoming character. This ritual might have had a dual purpose to Bale whose career has been characterized by immersion. It made him bear the physical weight besides bringing out the primal energy of the creature he was about to embark on. The monster created by Frankenstein is not a sophisticated or modest man. He is crude, emotional and misunderstood. A room where there is howling appears to be inbred with that spirit.
