The Machinist

The Machinist
Promotional poster
Directed by	Brad Anderson
Written by	Scott Kosar
Produced by	Julio Fernandez
Starring	Christian Bale Jennifer Jason Leigh John Sharian Aitana Sánchez-Gijón Michael Ironside
Cinematography	Xavi Giménez
Edited by	Luis De La Madrid
Music by	Roque Baños
Production company	Fantastic Factory (Filmax/Casteleao Producciones) (Spain)
Distributed by	Paramount Classics
Release dates	October 22, 2004 (US) December 17, 2004 (Spain)
Running time	102 minutes
Country	Spain
Language	English
Budget	$5 million
Box office	$8,203,235

The Machinist (also known as El Maquinista) is a 2004 English-language psychological thriller film directed by Brad Anderson and written by Scott Kosar.

The film stars Christian Bale and features Jennifer Jason Leigh, John Sharian, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, and Michael Ironside. It was produced by the Fantastic Factory label of Filmax and Castelao Productions.

Plot

Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) is a machinist who has had chronic insomnia for a year and has progressively lost weight to the point where he has become severely emaciated. His alarming appearance and strange behavior causes his co-workers to keep away; they eventually turn on him after he is involved in a machine accident that costs Miller (Michael Ironside) his left arm. Trevor, who was distracted by an unfamiliar co-worker named Ivan (John Sharian), bears the blame for the accident. No one at the factory knows of Ivan and there are no records of him as an employee. Trevor seems to find peace only in the arms of Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a prostitute who develops genuine affection for him, or in the company of Maria (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón), a waitress at the airport diner where he spends many of his nights.

Trevor is haunted by brief flashes of recurring imagery, and everyday objects take on a menacing air, like the car cigarette lighter he seems almost afraid to touch. A mysterious series of post-it notes that appear on his refrigerator depict a game of hangman; these vaguely threatening incidents send Trevor further into paranoia. He nevertheless attempts to establish a tentative romantic relationship with Maria. Meeting her at an amusement park, Trevor accompanies her son Nicholas on a grotesque funhouse ride called "Route 666" whose flashing lights cause the boy to suffer an epileptic seizure.

Trevor is no longer able to think clearly and begins to suspect that the bizarre events in his life are a concerted effort to drive him insane. These ideas are fed to him in small random clues. One of them takes the form of a picture of Ivan fishing with one of Trevor's co-workers which he discovers in Ivan's wallet when it's momentarily left behind in a pub. Another near-accident at work causes Trevor to lash out in incoherent rage at his co-workers and as a result he is fired on the spot. Growing increasingly distracted and alienated, Trevor forgets to pay his utility bills and his electricity is disconnected. A dark, viscous liquid begins trickling out of the freezer, eventually coating the refrigerator door with streaks of what appears to be blood.

After several unsuccessful attempts at confronting Ivan, Trevor tries to trace him through his license plate. He follows Ivan's car to read its license plate just before his gas runs out. When the DMV clerk insists that he cannot release personal information unless a crime has been committed, Trevor throws himself in front of a car in order to accuse Ivan of committing a hit and run. After filing a police report with Ivan's plate number on it, the battered Trevor is dumbfounded when the investigator tells him that the car in question is his own; Trevor reported the vehicle totaled in a wreck one year ago. He runs from the baffled policemen and goes to see Stevie, who clothes and washes him. But then Trevor finds the fishing picture of Ivan and Reynolds now framed in her home and accuses her of conspiring against him. Stevie is confused and says the picture is of Reynolds and him and not Ivan but Trevor refuses to look at it. Following a short, intense bout of name-calling Trevor is thrown out. He goes to find solace at the airport diner but when he asks about Maria, an unfamiliar waitress tells him they never had an employee there by that name.

In the film's climax Trevor sees Ivan take Nicholas, who appears to have been kidnapped, into Trevor's apartment. Fearing the worst, Trevor sneaks inside. Nicholas is nowhere to be seen and does not respond to Trevor's calls. Trevor confronts Ivan in the bathroom, and asks him what he has done with Nicholas. Ivan tells him "you know he's dead". Trevor struggles with and ultimately kills Ivan. He then flings open the shower curtain, expecting to see Nicholas' dead body, but the bathtub is empty. He goes to his refrigerator and opens it only to have rotting fish and other spoiled foods come tumbling out. His mind then flashes back to the fishing photo which now shows a heavier, healthier Trevor standing near his co-worker Reynolds just as Stevie claimed. Ivan was never in the photo; it was all a part of Trevor's paranoid delusion.

The scene then returns to one which occurred during the opening credit roll, in which Trevor tries to dispose of someone's corpse (presumably Ivan's), rolling it in a rug and struggling to cast it into the ocean. When the rug unravels, there is nothing inside. Ivan, very much alive, appears holding a flashlight and laughing. Trevor, suddenly home again and staring at himself in the mirror, begins to repeat "I know who you are." He then recalls his own role in a hit-and-run accident a year ago, in which he ran over and killed a boy identical to Nicholas after taking his eyes off the road for a moment to use the car's cigarette lighter. The boy's mother, whom he later fantasizes as Maria the waitress, was on the scene; in an act of supreme callousness and cowardice Trevor decides to just drive away. He fills in the missing letters for the hangman game on his refrigerator to spell "Killer".

Upon recovering this deeply repressed memory he briefly considers going to the airport and escaping. Instead he drives to police headquarters, accompanied by an encouraging but silent Ivan, who bids him an approving farewell from outside the station. At this point Ivan can be understood to have functioned as a doppelganger embodying Trevor's conscience while insisting on the Freudian "return" of repressed unconscious memories. As an embodiment of conscience Ivan is satisfied only when Trevor takes responsibility for his actions. At the police station's front desk Trevor duly confesses to his crime from one year earlier. With his guilty conscience finally at peace there in the holding cell, Trevor falls fast asleep for the first time since the accident.

Cast

• Christian Bale as Trevor Reznik
• Jennifer Jason Leigh as Stevie
• John Sharian as Ivan
• Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as Maria
• Michael Ironside as Miller
• Anna Massey as Mrs. Shrike
• Larry Gilliard, Jr. as Jackson
• Reg E. Cathey as Jones
• James DePaul (uncredited) as Reynolds

Production

Bale lost more than 60 pounds (27 kg) for his role in The Machinist.

Despite its setting in a West Coast American city, the film was shot in its entirety in and near Barcelona, Spain.

Christian Bale starved himself for over four months prior to filming, as his character needed to look drastically thin. Allegedly, his eating consisted of one cup of coffee and an apple (or a can of tuna) each day (approximately 275 calories, or 1.2 kilojoules). According to the DVD commentary, he lost 28 kilograms (62 lb), reducing his body mass to 54 kilograms (119 lb). Bale wanted to go down to 45 kilograms (99 lb), but the filmmakers would not let him due to health concerns. He later regained the mass, plus an additional 27 kilograms (60 lb) through weightlifting and proper eating, in preparation for his role in Batman Begins.

Brad Anderson hurt his back during filming and directed much of the film while lying on a gurney.

Influences

The name Trevor Reznik is derived from Trent Reznor, the founder and primary creative force behind the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, and the original script had NIN lyrics on the first page. Other NIN tributes include the reversed N on the movie poster and early press articles describing Reznik as experiencing a "downward spiral".

However, the strongest influence is the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky. In the DVD commentary, Scott Kosar states that he was influenced by Dostoyevsky's The Double: A Petersburg Poem. The character Reznik is shown reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot early in the film. When Reznik is riding the "Route 666" attraction, one of the faux movie marquees reads Crime and Punishment.

Reception

The Machinist was well received critically with the review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 75% of the critics' reviews tallied were positive.

See also

• Twist ending

External links

• The Machinist at IMDb
• The Machinist at AllMovie
• The Machinist at Box Office Mojo
• The Machinist at Rotten Tomatoes