Product Description

Christian Bale, Brad Anderson, Jennifer Jason Leigh "Fight Club Meets Memento" - Loaded "Christian Bale is awesome!" - Heat Trevor Reznik (CHRISTIAN BALE - Batman Begins) has not slept for a year. Ravaged by fatigue, his body is little more than a bag of bones. Wracked by exhaustion, his weary mind increasingly plays tricks on him. Then, one fateful day at the machine shop where he works, he's involved in an accident and a fellow worker loses an arm. Reznik's guilt turns to paranoia when he discovers cryptic notes in his apartment and a ghostly apparition haunts his every move. Is it someone out to exact revenge for the gruesome accident? In a desperate attempt to save his sanity, Reznik must uncover the truth...but the more he learns, the more terrifying his sleepless nightmare becomes. "Gripping...The Machinist is set to be a cult classic" - Sunday Times Culture

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11247 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-09-25
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 98 minutes

Synopsis
Christian Bale delivers one of cinema's most sacrificial performances in Brad Anderson's mesmerising thriller. Written by Scott Kosar (2003's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE), THE MACHINIST takes place in a bleak and nondescript American city, where Trevor Reznick (Bale) is quite literally withering away to nothing. During the day Trevor works in a colourless industrial factory, while at night he seeks refuge in the bed of a tender prostitute, Stevie (Jennifer Jason Leigh). For reasons unknown even to Trevor, he hasn't been able to sleep for an entire year. In the process, he has shed over sixty pounds, making him look like a walking skeleton. After an accident at the factory costs Trevor his job, he finds himself tracking a mysterious figure that may or may not, in fact, provide some answers to his confusion. Meanwhile, he begins to connect with a pretty airport waitress, Marie (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon), who shows Trevor some much-needed sympathy. By the time the film builds to its revelatory conclusion, it becomes quite clear just what has been tormenting Trevor all along. Anderson and Kosar's vision is brought to spectacular life by cinematographer Xavi Gimenez and composer Roque Banos, whose haunting atmospherics recall the best work of Alfred Hitchcock. And then, of course, there is Bale, whose performance is as terrifying, brave, and devastating as the screen has ever seen.

Customer Reviews

Take a stroll down memory muddy path
Too often actors wax lyrical about how much they've thrown themselves into a part and how well they know the character. Christian Bale seriously raised the bar in The Machinist. The amount of weight he lost for this role is so astounding that you can't help but wonder if the extra shots of him stretching and checking himself in the mirror were just a case of the director not believing it either and needing to catch every bone and tendon on celluloid as proof.
This whole movie is expertly carried by those bony shoulders with some great support from Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bale does a masterful job. He manages to portray a strung-out and haunted character whose favoured companion is a prostitute yet still attracts our empathy.
Bale and director Brad Anderson take our hand and lead us through the tunnels of the main character Reznik's doubt, fear and deteriorating sanity in such a way that it feels a mental vice is slowly being turned until something must give. When we discover Reznik's past we are exposed to a sense of loss and despair rather than a demand for retribution which indicates how subtlety we are drawn into Reznik's psyche.

Weird and compelling
OK, so I've watched The Machinist once and will definitely be watching it again.

I don't know what to say about it really - I think the description on the DVD case says 'Fight Club meets Memento' and I'd go with that.

It has a edgy, stark feel to it - very much a sense of sleeplessness - disconnected at times, not sure what's happening or what's going on.

And for all of that, by the end of it I wanted to watch it again - I suspect it's one of those films where a lot of stuff makes much more sense the second time round.

And to say Christian Bale is thin doesn't even begin to describe the physical presence and pathos, if that's the right word, that he brings to this role. Haunting.

Ominous and Intriguing
You may well have at least an inkling about where this film is going fairly early on, but don't expend too much energy trying to figure it out as you would be far better advised to let the film simply engage you and carry you with it. Even if I were to give away the ending, it probably wouldn't impair your enjoyment that much. But I wont.

But this is not a negative observation: The Machinist doesn't really ask you to follow a story, instead it involves you in the head-state of Resnik who, thanks to Christian Bale's extreme diet, looks very ill indeed. This is largely due to the fact that Resnik hasn't slept for a year, although I do wonder if this is biologically possible. Needless to say, he's not getting a clear perspective on things and his life seems to be in meltdown.

The depiction of mental states has seen few worthy appearances in film. Perhaps one mistake has been to attempt to realise it though use of effects: distortions, extreme camera techniques and so forth. While these may conjour up a sense of disorientation, fear and alienation, they generally fail to offer any real empathy with the character in question. The Machinist avoids these devices. Through the use of desaturated colours which range from sombre to downright sinister, along with a series of coincidences, repetitions and motifs which are often quite casual but ominous in their appearance, the film subtly allows us to sense the state of Resniks mind. The joins between what may and what may not be fantasy are seemless and this stirs up a greater sense of alienation and unease.

Many films of this type are let down by a poor resolution but the Machinist wraps things up neatly and doesn't leave you with the feeling that you've been undersold. It is Bales' film and his performance completes the experience of Resnik's disintigrating world, a process in which he is both helped and hindered by the other characters in his life, all of who are quite believable thanks to a solid supporting cast.

The film is certainly a very visual one and style does win out over content if you're looking for a psychological thriller. Psychological, yes. Thriller, no. The Machinist seems to want to be an art-house film but it holds back, falling somewhere between that category and the mainstream. This is a pity because it is an honest, well rounded and skillful piece of work which is worth a second viewing and while it's not actually that easy to find anything wrong with it I do feel that it could have been more.