Never trust an insomniac.(6/10). Warning: MAJOR plot spoilers

Rating: 6/10 (3 January 2008)

Because the movie opens with the assumptive objectivity of Trevor Reznik(Christian Bale)'s struggle with a corpse, I have always been suspicious of The Machinist(2004). One of its most preposterous elements is his attempt to first kill, then carry such a (literal) dead weight when he is so weak& emaciated he can hardly walk. Equally, he's still a smoker despite its known negative effects on weight and sleep.
What follows is therefore my spoiler-house-of-cards for the very confused.
"No-one ever died of insomnia" is a refrain that reminds us of Fight Club(1999)'s beginnings as well, and Trevor is equally psychotic. He too is paranoid and hallucinates an entire person into existence--about whom he then becomes entirely obsessive. But he starts from a bad place. Like Fight Club's Narrator/Jack, Trevor seems to have no family or friends, and is permanently sad, merely surviving his insomniac half-life. The steel-blue filter and eerie soundtrack add much to our impression of his depth of isolation. Trevor's "needy"relationships with only two women he knows are inadequate, and he soon starts to verbally abuse his prostitute girlfriend Stevie(Jennifer Jason-Leigh), driving her from his life. Trevor isn't exactly a stable human: when confronted with his derangement, he throws a violent tantrum.
His wild, obsessed rooting-around his own garbage and cupboards is already indicative of this, not to mention his "forgetfulness" and need for Postits. But why does one of them actually question his identity? This hints at even deeper mental disintegration.
Yes, he is "f'king psycho", just as Stevie accuses, because he's hallucinated his swaggering "friend" Ivan(John Sharian) into life, meaning no-one else in the machinist shop can see him; "Ivan"'s Firebird convertible is a phantom car; and "Ivan" just won't stay dead: when Trevor tries to dispose of his body, the "corpse" DISAPPEARS and "Ivan" becomes Trevor's DISCOVERER instead.
As with Fight Club, the protagonist's most threatening hallucination is actually his alter-ego!
"Maria" the mother-figure waitress sadly is also a hallucination, telegraphed by 1) her collection of inanimate objects (the record-player, the glass bowl, the red clown)--which turn out to be Trevor's dead mother's; 2) the repeated clock readouts stuck on 1:30 whenever Trevor hallucinates (possibly the time of his hit-and-run); and 3) the airport reveal, when the waitress who'd been serving him all this time is unfamiliar. Like "Ivan", there never was a "Maria" working there.
To our relief, there's a cascade of resolutions near the end. Starting with his screaming match with Stevie over the fishing photo, Trevor is forced to confront his isomorphism with the looming "Ivan". In confusion, he flees to his airport waitress "Maria", who turns out to be someone else too. Actually, his perception of the unknown waitress is a good sign--his mind is starting to reintegrate/reconcile his hallucinations with the real world. Unfortunately he has another backwards-stumbling hallucination of "Ivan" in the car park, stalking him to Trevor's own home, as "Ivan" takes "Nicholas" to his doom.
Trevor apparently "kills" "Ivan" in vengeance, but as per the opening, "Ivan" keeps remorphing, and the "kidnapped" child is nowhere to be seen. In Trevor's tortured mind, SOMEONE bled to death on his floor, hence his need to bleach the grouting; but Trevor seems to be suffering classic fractured-world paranoid schizophrenia.
Because of "Ivan", Trevor's identity itself is in doubt, just as the Postit mooted, until he recalls WHERE he first saw "Maria": in the final 7mins Trevor remembers the panicked mother running back to her run-over son who, we surmise, is the original "Nicholas". Trevor's overwhelming guilt and its brought-on insomnia-come-psychosis drove him to 1) emotionally identify himself with his child-victim; 2) subconsciously report his own year-ago hit-and-run, citing his OWN rego number as the vehicle that hit him in his present-day self-induced accident (supposedly to discover "Ivan"'s address).
In the present, Trevor's bathtime commiseration to Stevie that "It was my fault, I wasn't paying attention" is a Freudian-slip admission, rather than a falsehood about his deliberate"accident". Stevie's automatic reaction, that "hit-and-run drivers should be hanged" actually inspires Trevor's hangman game with himself. The iconic stick-figure is reinforced both by the graphics from the police report, and "Nicholas'" Mother's Day card on "Maria"'s imaginary fridge.
Trevor's memories of a childhood ride at the pier when his mother was still alive, are reconstructed by his sick mind as a present-day ride with "Nicholas", full of terrifying (hallucinated) hangman displays. Taking a very similar photo of them as one of him and his mother exists in the family album, suddenly blurs hallucinated memory and present-day hallucination for Trevor. However, since the filmmakers never found a proper way to depict this blurring, we're left confused by the scene.
Trevor's psychotic "memory" is indeed playing tricks on him. His hallucinations throw up new situations and characters that are one-by-one revealed as imaginary. He finally redredges his incipient holiday drive in the Firebird, and realizes the cowboy boots were his too, a year ago. They remained among Stevie's clients' left-behind belongings: Trevor really had been "one of (her) best clients".
During one last hazy recollection, to our surprise we resolve Stevie, laughing in the Firebird's front passenger seat, enjoying their holiday drive. Not sure if this is meant to imply any more than their longtime relationship, because had she been present and cognizant of his hit-and-run crime at the time, this interpretation's house of cards collapses.
Machinist repeats Fight Club's theme of sleep-deprivation driving men to psychosis. Its plot is relatively straightforward once we (usefully) ignore the editor's sneaky corpse-dumping opening scene, which left us distrustful of an objective narrative. From then on, clues are laden everywhere.
Finally, the reason Trevor won't be needing his security deposit back from his landlady is because he knows he's going TO PRISON. His decision to turn himself in for his real hit-and-run crime is going to be his Salvation--he'll no longer hide from his guilt. Now he just needs some SLEEP.