The Machinist. Dir. Brad Anderson. Perf. Christian Bale. Paramount, 2004. Film
Brad Anderson's The Machinist is the story of Trevor Reznik, a machinist whose life begins to spiral out of control. We learn in beginning of the film that Reznik is an insomniac and is losing a great deal of weight. He begins to have visions that he suspects are caused by someone or something that is trying to drive him insane. A mysterious man appears and begins to haunt Reznik. Suspecting that this man is responsible for the unexplainable events in his life, Reznik follows the man in an attempt to find out who he is and what he wants. Eventually, Reznik learns the strange events that have been haunting him are pieces of his imagination. These events turn out to be the result Reznik's own conscious, as he killed a young boy in an auto accident a year earlier and tried to forget about it.
The Machinist, like The Metamophosis, is a story of self alienation. In this case, Reznik's grief after the accident caused him to spiral into a state of alienated delusion. The film does not show us the events that caused Reznik to hide these memories inside his mind, but we do see the consequences of his attempt to hide this from himself. The film creates a vivid example of alienation. Reznik exists in his own world, unaffected by the daily events and struggles that affect the rest of the population.
