The Machinist

The first thing that strikes you when watching “The machinist” is the extreme thinness of Christian Bale who plays the tormented Trevor Reznick. Anderson, the director, wants precisely this effect and we are bombarded with close-ups of the face of the protagonist being all consumed, his ribs and spine standing out.

 

Reznick looks sick from the beginning to the end, exhausted, tired, about to collapse. " If you were any thinner, you wouldn't exist" will say the prostitute who visits him every week. "Are you on drugs?" inquisitors coworkers will ask him, because Reznick has not always been like this, not at all.

The film begins when the transformation has already taken place but, later, we will see images of the smiling old Trevor, the smiling and handsome one and we will understand, even more, the consternation of those around him. The reason, if that can reassure someone, is that our troubled protagonist has not slept for a year.

His reflexes are diminished, little or nothing they can do for his body; the nights are long moments and, worst of all, his mind weakened senses feel that a conspiracy has been established against him.

Some mysterious events seem to give him a reason to think so, but are these things really happening or are they products of his imagination, impaired by the lack of sleep? Anderson does not let the audience know more than the tormented Trevor does and seeks to immerse the audience in the cold and bluish atmosphere with which he decided to dye this movie, a kind of eternal dawn. 

The sudden changes in the sequences that do not show the end of an action contribute to emphasize the feeling that, perhaps, many of the perceptions are hallucinations or small dreams.

Why can't Trevor sleep? Who seems interested in torturing him and how many are working on it? A sinister game seems to have started and the clues to solve it are very few, beginning with the mysterious notes on his fridge with a game of hangman that must be completed.

“The machinist” is a film about inner torments, about guilt and the inability we have, many times, to take a look into the darker side of our personality. Because sometimes, what's most sinister lurks just inside us.

Director: Brad Anderson

Writer: Scott Kosar

Stars: Christian Bale, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón