Dostoevsky, guilt and paranoia

Rating: 9/10 (27 July 2012)

''The Machinist'' distributed by Paramount classics, 2004.
The Machinist is a very dark, English language Spanish psychological thriller film that centers around a machinist named Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) who suffers from chronic insomnia. Trevor works as an industrial worker in a gloomy factory and after not sleeping for a year he's in terrible condition. One morning his supervisor, Tucker sends him to his boss' office to have a little talk and his boss asks him for a urine sample because they suspect he might be on drugs due to his horrid appearance and behavior. Trevor walks out on to the factory's parking lot with the cup and goes to have a cigarette in his car.
When he is sort of dozing off in his car, he hears a voice. It's coming from a huge, bald man sitting in a car beside his. The man introduces himself as Ivan and says he's a new co-worker of his, picking up Reynolds' shift, saying that Reynolds was ''picked up'' by the feds because of an old warrant. Ivan is a mysterious, eerie looking fellow with a huge grin that never seems to leave his face. He's almost demonic in his appearance and his high-pitched voice and laughter is taunting.
Trevor spends time with Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a sympathetic prostitute that he sees every now and then and she's very fond of him, in fact she's probably the only person he can actually trust or talk to. The guys at work have turned against him because of an incident that caused one of his co-workers, Miller to lose an arm and they don't want to interact with him because of his strange, paranoid behavior and dismiss him as a lunatic claiming he's ''lost it''.
Every night, Trevor goes to a diner at an airport and talks to the kindhearted Maria (Aitana Sánchez-Gijon) who's a waitress there and always serves him black coffee and pie. When he's there the night before mother's day she suggests that he come to the amusement park with her and her son Nicholas. He says he'd really like that and they arrive there the following day. There's a scene where Trevor takes Nicholas on a grotesque horror-house ride called: ''Route 666'' after Nicholas' enthusiasm drags them there. The ride is terrifying and symbolic to the film's plot, even though I've seen people over-analyze it a bit, it is still a terrific scene with the kind of atmosphere where you just want to look away but still witness it like a kid seeing his first horror movie.
I don't want to spoil too much in this review but this really is an excellent film, trademarked by it's theme of paranoia and guilt, poetic structure and it's creepy atmosphere similar to the work of Alfred Hitchcock and more recent filmmaker Gaspar Noé. It's also a good example of how insomnia can make you paranoid. There are a lot of references here to older films, mainly Hitchcock's like for ex. Vertigo and also a lot of Dostoevsky books are referenced in the movie; ''The Idiot'', ''The Brothers Karamazov'', ''Crime and Punishment and ''Notes from Underground''.
Trevor is experiencing a hellish nightmare and the movie begs the question, is the nightmare eternal? The way the story is built up is a lot like something out of a Kafka novel, even the directing and environment that the characters live in, are all unseemly in way that Kafka would have imagined.
Now I want to focus on the main parts here.
Performances: 10/10. Christian Bale's performance is golden, I've always appreciated him as an actor but I think this is his best performance thus far. It's so sincere in a way that you begin to believe Trevor is a real person. The rest of the cast is rounded up well and the guy who plays Ivan, John Sharian is magnificent. Jennifer Jason Leigh is convincing portraying the role of a sympathetic prostitute and her character blends well with the script.
Dialog: 10/10. It's surreal but sharp, It appears to have a red herring subplot on first viewing but if you watch it again you get all the double meaning messages that were going on through out the film. It's a fantastic script by Scott Kosar.
Cinematography and directing: 9/10. While viewing it, it feels like your walking through a mist, first connecting with Trevor as an observer but then you join him on the ride to hell or salvation, who knows, it's a blur. Some is very Hitchcock-like for example when someone is driving their car (which actually occurs a lot in this movie) it has the feeling of early 50's cinema. Great angles are used to perfection and to say it's bleak or cheerless is an understatement.
Fantastic film, the atmosphere is terrifying, breath-taking, obscure and appears unseemly. All the portrayals of these characters are vivid and complex. It fits well with the paranoia. It's a good mix of drama, thriller and mystery. Highly recommended.