Worth the effort.

Rating: 8/10 (28 April 2005)

Following the success in Spain of his gritty horror Session 9 (2001), director Brad Anderson was approached by production company Filmmax to shoot a feature in Barcelona. Finding that there's a corner of America anywhere, if you look hard enough, El Maquinista (The Machinist, 2004), became a Spanish produced, English language film.
The Machinist documents the dreary twilight existence of a shift working lathe operator Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale), and his deteriorating physical and mental health. Emaciated and insomniac, Reznik causes a work accident that claims the arm of a colleague. His deterioration quickens. The post-it aide-memoirs he leaves for himself become increasingly cryptic and alien. He soon becomes convinced of an elaborate conspiracy against him, and chases it's, and his own, shadow.
Current Batman Bale undoubtedly provides the core of the film, and not just in terms of content. If you've heard anything about The Machinist, it's most likely in reference to the physical appearance of it's lead. Bale shed around a third of his body weight in order to portray Reznik, a man who proclaims he hasn't slept for a year. The result is a painfully sullen, gauntly compelling central performance, for which Bale will remembered in years to come. In contrast to the narcissistically athletic physique displayed in American Psycho (2000), Bale here resembles a concentration camp victim, wearing his clothes like a wire coat hanger. There's even a shot in which a rotund refrigerator seems to poke fun by comparison at his frail figure. The film's exploration of identity, reality, insomnia, and memory will draw obvious and rightful comparisons with Fincher's Fight Club (1999), and Nolan's Memento (2000). However, the film's strong visuals and distinctive sets evoke also the nightmarish industrial claustrophobia of Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) and Gilliam's Brazil (1985).
All of the performances in the film are of a high quality. Jennifer Jason Leigh copes well with the burden of 'tart with a heart' Stevie, the prostitute that Reznik relies on for intimacy, but it's John Sharian that steals his scenes. Looking like a cross between an Apocalypse Now (1979) era Brando and Sloth from The Goonies (1985), Sharian plays Ivan, a gimp limping, toe fingered enigma who may or may not actually exist. There's even Michael Ironside on hand to put in a reliably villainous turn as Reznik's work supervisor.
A fittingly delicate score rounds off a very well made, but faintly hollow film. At points, it seems as if the screenplay has been kept deliberately vague in places to avoid having to make decisions; instead piling on the allegories, visual cues, and literary references. Let Dostoevsky sort it out. I was however taken aback that the screenplay was as good as it is when found out that writer Scott Kosar's only previous credit was penning the horribly redundant, ignorant remake of the classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). He seems to have reverted to type with his most recent project, beating the long dead, never haunted horse of The Amityville Horror with another 'pretty people in peril' exercise in cloying Michael Bay gloss. Overall, The Machinist fails to reach peerage with the likes of Memento or Fight Club, but features more than enough quality to make it well worth viewing.