The Machinist

The Machinist is a 2004 film starring Christian Bale, directed by Brad Anderson (of Session 9 fame). It's one part Kafka Komedy and two parts surrealist drama, playing on themes from (and, at times, directly quoting from) Crime and Punishment, Taxi Driver, Fight Club, and German Expressionism.

Trevor Reznik suffers from a severe case of insomnia: he claims that he hasn't slept in a year. He spends his days ignoring his landlady and compulsively washing his hands with bleach. He enjoys his regular visits to a sweet prostitute girl named Stevie, who absolutely adores him, and he finds a little bit of romance with airport bar waitress and single mom Marie. During the day, Reznik works at a factory where he sleepily operates heavy machinery. When the inevitable happens and someone's arm gets torn off, Reznik ends up in a emotionally destructive downward spiral and quickly starts losing his mind.

The film very deliberately references the stories that it's based on and aims to be a collage of diffferent techniques and atmospheres. To achieve this, it combines Chiaroscuro visuals with a musical score and camera techniques that evoke the 1950s, creating a kind of Anachronism Stew of editing methods. Bale's performance is an absolute tour de force, and the end result is a haunting, gorgeous film that tells its story in a clever-yet-familiar way.

To play Reznik, Christian Bale famously lost 63 lbs to look like an emaciated shell of a man. He described the experience of near-starvation as strangely peaceful. After that harrowing experience, Bale bulked up to truly superheroic dimensions to play Batman.

Tropes used in The Machinist include:
  • Amusement Park of Doom
  • An Arm and a Leg: Miller, continuing the odd tradition of Michael Ironside losing limbs.
  • Arc Number: 1:30. And at 1:30, a major plot twist is revealed.
  • Arc Words: Arc conversation; "You okay?" "Don't I look okay?" "If you were any thinner you wouldn't exist."
  • Black Comedy: Stevie says the bruises she got from her abusive clients were "occupational hazards."
  • Body Horror: Reznik's thinness, Ivan's disfigured hand, Miller's gruesome accident...
  • California Doubling: Bizarrely inverted. The film is set in California, and it was shot entirely near Barcelona.
  • Cat Scare: A curious subversion. The blood dripping out of Reznik's freezer gets built up for about the last half an hour of the movie. When Reznik finally opens it - it's full of dead fish. This, however, leads to an even more shocking reveal than the audience was expecting.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Car cigarette lighters almost cause Reznik to crash late on in the movie, and resulted in a hit and run prior to the plot's events.
  • Dramatic Irony: Upon second viewing, Reznik's line to Maria the night before Mother's Day. "A little guilt goes a long way."
  • Dyeing for Your Art: To play Reznik, Bale... well, look at him!
  • Enemy Without
  • Fan Disservice: Reznik's body.
  • Groin Attack: Miller gets tired of Reznik's accusations rather quickly. Reznik limping across the street while clutching his testicles is one of the more amusing scenes in the film.
  • Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Stevie
  • The Insomniac: Reznik.
  • Kafka Komedy: And Kafka Drama.
  • Meaningful Echo: "I'd like to report a hit and run."
  • Mental Story: About half of the movie is revealed to be this.
  • Motif: The left-hand and right-hand paths. Might be symbolically relevant considering this.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Reznik, being increasingly unstable, being a Jerkass to Stevie and Miller. The latter was a particularly cringe-inducing example, the man lost his arm because of Reznik's sleepiness and tried real hard to let it pass and not bear a grudge. He welcomed Reznik to his property and, when Reznik verbally assaulted him due to his paranoia, he's looking like he's in a real struggle to keep his composure. He eventually punched him in the groin and told him to leave, a reasonably mild response.
  • No OSHA Compliance: A literal example, when the shop manager chews a co-worker out for taking time to lock out a machine for maintenance, Reznik quotes the regulations to him, the manager tells him to "write your Congressman." Later, the same co-worker is fixing a machine when Reznik accidentally turns it on and it rips his arm off. Truth in Television all too often, especially for small shops with tight profit margins looking for ways to cut corners.
  • Note to Self:: The sticky notes, including the hangman game, which he should have written himself.
  • Obviously Evil: The audience is introduced to Ivan like this.
  • Oedipus Complex: Very subtle example, but it's hinted that Trevor had a somewhat complicated relationship with his mother.
  • Out, Damned Spot!: It's implied that Reznik's compulsive hand washing WITH BLEACH (and later, lye) is due to repressed guilt.
  • Platonic Prostitution: Stevie. Early on in the film he pays her, but later on it becomes this trope.
  • Primal Scene: The public lavatory scene.
  • Recycled in Space: Crime and Punishment IN LOS ANGELES!
  • Red Herring: Loads of them.
  • Retraux: Roque Baños's score is noticeably anachronistic, owing a lot to, in particular, Bernard Herrmann.
  • The Reveal: Happens gradually throughout the film, instead of all at once: Reznik once killed a young boy, drove on instead of stopping to help and is now going insane with repressed guilt. Marie and her son Nicholas are his mind's representations of the family he destroyed this way. Ivan is his view of himself.
  • Rule of Three: Trevor fills in the game of Hangman twice before finding the right answer. Additionally, on three occasions Trevor is faced with a choice between turning left and turning right: the first two times he turns left, the last time right.
  • Scary Black Man: Jones.
  • Seinfeldian Conversation: The locker room banter. Used to establish Reznik's increasing detachment from society.
  • Sampling: Reznik's line in the bathtub ("You know so little about me... What if I turn to a werewolf or something?") was used in the Manic Street Preacher song "Peeled Apples."
  • Shout-Out: To Chuck Palahniuk and Fyodor Dostoevsky. ... It's that kind of film.
    • "No one's ever died from insomnia" is a direct quote from Fight Club.
      • Also, Reznik using lye on his hands.
    • The closeup of a coffee cup at Marie's bar is an obvious Shout-Out to Taxi Driver, which has many things in common with The Machinist. ( Criminally insane insomniac falls for a woman, messes up, then tries to rescue a pretty young prostitute from her job.)
    • And "Trevor Reznik" intentionally sounds like "Trent Reznor".
    • Reznik is reading Kafka's The Castle in one scene and Dostoevsky's The Idiot in another.
  • Special Thanks: To Bale's wife Sandra "Sibi" Blazic presumably for not trying to have her husband committed and just generally standing by her man while he disappeared before her eyes
  • Theme Naming: In a way. Some characters' names are shoehorned to fit the hangman's game.
  • Through the Eyes of Madness: Not a full example, as the ending rationalizes much of the film.
  • Tomato Surprise: Reznik is "Killer".
  • Trailers Always Spoil: The solution for the hangman's game, while not exactly hard to guess, was casually shown in the trailer.
  • The Usual Suspects Ending: Reznik never actually talked to anyone in the airport cafe. Makes you wonder which ones of the events were real.
  • Through the Eyes of Madness: Reznik's paranoia frequently comes into question throughout the movie. It turns out it's more than just paranoia.
  • Unreliable Narrator
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: In-Universe, the amusement park ride, which depicts mutilated corpses and silhouetted sexual acts. Subverted as it's all a hallucination.
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