Today's protagonist is suffering from Insomnia, his condition is so bad that he hasn't slept for one year, can you imagine? His physical condition was detouring, losing weight day by day, it was just his skeleton. I googled about how long a human can stay awake and it refers to the longest experiment so far as 11 days. I do have sleeping issues but not like these, sometimes I call myself an insomniac but after a few google searches today I found too many bad situations that are way worse than I could imagine.
The Machinist is a psychological thriller genre film. It was directed by Brad Anderson and written by Scott Kosar. Christian Bale is our main protagonist here as Trevor Reznik.
Trevor is a machinist and the issue of his insomnia makes him vulnerable in his workplace, his co-workers don't like him much, and after an incident, it went to its peak. Let's get some idea about Trevor's living, he lives alone in an unorganized apartment, his workplace, visits a prostitute regularly to whom he feels at home and both of them grow feelings for each other, and yes another place is the dining of an airport where a waitress called Maria is also a good companion of him.
Well, I forgot to mention the very first scene, we see Trevor in a messed up condition, as if he got beaten but he was carrying a dead body folded in a carpet to dump into the ocean, and then someone with a torch asks for his identity. So we can expect a murder or a crime by Trevor that he wants to hide, but whom? Throughout the rest of the story, we would see Trevor seeing someone called Ivan, who is kinda weird to us. This is the person that creates a distraction for Trevor which costs his co-worker's left arm in an accident, he keeps chasing after that anonymous person but his existence seems to be fake as per others' opinions when asked. Few other scenes too, that would feel like just hallucinations.
Enough of explaining the story, I was feeling the pain of being an insomniac a little bit. Like, without sleep I feel like a zombie, what I am doing or thinking becomes out of control, same shit with Trevor. You know, after a certain period of its runtime you would be able to predict what's coming ahead, not entirely but up to a level, I saw that coming too but in the end, it came and left me perplexed too.
The ending has a few realizations too for us. Lemme give you a hint about the ending without spoilers, there would be a ride of Trevor with Maria's kid Nicholas named Route 666, a ride of horrible scenes. That contains different people and incidents, you may relate them as different pieces of the puzzle at the end of the movie, in the end of the ride there were two routes indicating one as the route to hell and another to salvation, Trevor wanted to go right but Nicholas took their ride to left towards the hell and he came out senseless in Trevor's arm.
I would tell you to finish the movie and think about the ride again, you may rewatch it again, and find the whole story here, right before your eyes. I did and got the explanation and message of the whole story. Someone else may find it differently, that ending may serve them a different explanation, it depends. But trust me, I loved how they managed to portray the whole thing here too. I really really loved this movie, go for it, the story has way more to unfold than I have presented before you. Go for it, you would love this.