Focused observation...

Rating: 7/10 (2 October 2007)

It's a work of special care, making a movie like "The Machinist". A work of confidence and bravery, of knowing the same mistakes aren't going to be made. The story of Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale), a machinist, and the problems his insomnia brings to him and the ones around him; establishes a fine premise and character development, but then it goes deep and it becomes dark and (at times) unconvincingBut it doesn't make the same mistakes that movies of its genre commonly make these days.
Like those movies, "The Machinist" relies on focused observation, which is okay if you're the kind of viewer who likes to 'watch'. Director Brad Anderson, from the warm "Next Stop Wonderland", proves he's able to control various moods and feelings in the same movie. With big help from Roque Baños' score, Anderson accentuates the drama, the suspense, the little amount of horror and the loneliness the story contains.
A story of a man so lonely that he could invent a parallel worldThis is, briefly, what Scott Kosar proposes in his screenplay; and Christian Bale gives Trevor the unpredictability only he can achieve, in a performance that's not superb but that requires the responsibility than no one else has for a role. How the guy who wrote this is the same writer of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake? We don't answer those questions, because people need to work. But this, Kosar's best screenplay, is what lets us see that mistakes can be omitted.
For example, in the place where Trevor works, a place as lonely as himself, he's not the only one the camera and the movie care about. There are other people there, and they live and talk and participate; unlike films where everything is about the main character and the characters the plot requires. The same in the street, where everyone carries on with their lives normally, but they are thereThey exist! How interesting the contrast that the movie is so lonely, and its main character too, but he never finds the time to be alone. He suffers from insomnia, he's about to fall asleep, but something always wakes him up. "We always suffer from insomnia from time to time", Stevie (another main character nicely developed, played by Jeniffer Jason Leigh) tells Trevor. "Stevie", he says. "I haven't slept in a year".
Then he goes to the airport coffee shop, Maria (another main character, also nicely developed, played by Aitana Sánchez-Gijón) serves the coffee and he just looks at it; and the clock, which appears to be stuck at the same hour, at the same minute. "The Machinist" is like the awful "Darkness", produced entirely in Spain and worked by the best technical team that exists there. Better than "Darkness", the film could have been directed by Christopher Nolan; and it would have been even better.