The Machinist

"I just want to sleep..."
I have to say that "The Machinist" is easily the most unsettling, disturbing and bizarre film I have seen so far this year. I mean, you can tell from reading the back of the DVD cover and seeing how disturbingly thin Christian Bale in pictures from the movie that this is not going to be a very happy time. Yet, last night I was in the mood for something dark and uncompromising. I got it and then some with this cleverly haunting film that is unforgettable.

Bale plays "Trevor Reznik," a troubled and fatigued machinist who hasn't slept for a year. He lives his life in isolation, with the few minor exceptions such as a friendly prostitute who takes a liking to him and an airport coffee shop waitress he visits every night. Things take a turn for the worst when he meets a fellow machinist for the first time... but nobody knows who this guy is. They tell Trevor that he doesn't exist. The paranoia and confusion leads to a horrific accident on the job that involves his...

Stop reading reviews and just watch the movie!
There's so much I'd like to write about this movie, but I can't. I don't want to give even the slightest bit away. Yeah, it's cheap, I know, but I saw it with pretty much a blank slate and I think that's absolutely the best way to do. You must see this movie. Then come back and read some of these reviews, like I did (some of the reviewers give away WAY too much, I felt).

This movie is a feast for all the senses. Christian Bale plays a frighteningly emaciated industrial worker lives like an apparition in a washed out, grimy world. This reminds me of Orwell's vision of postwar England as portrayed in "1984" - grim, bleak, washed-out, bleary-eyed, ephemeral and unreal, like being stuck in a perpetual hangover in an old war zone. For a while this movie was billed as a "horror" movie but it's really psychological horror that manifests itself in a few conventionally horrific ways. It does have similarities to "Sessions 9" as others have pointed out, by the same director. Internal...

Nine Inch Nails in the coffin...and then some
no accident that the main character's named Trevor Reznik; the filmmaker, Brad Anderson, is a fan of Nine Inch Nails, fronted by Trent Reznor: the same dark gloomy kinda thing spills over from the Nine Inch Nails music into this film, with its dark gray washed out interiors and just as dank cloudy exteriors (but they appear only when Trevor's by himself--watch how, for example, when he meets other people, like his co-worker Miller and Miller's wife, the sky is a lot clearer).

Trevor, the ever-insomniac, not only evokes Trent Reznor but also Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari--the ever-present sleepwalker. Trevor is more of a walksleeper than a sleepwalker; he hasn't copped any zees in a year (not very credible, actually; if that were really true, he'd be dead a few times over), moving around in a paranoid daze with a number of flashes of rationality, and solace provided by either a friendly hooker (Jennifer Jason Leigh) or a comely waitress (a beautiful Spanish actress...

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