The Machinist: Between Truth and Madness
Machinist is a psychological one of the most popular movies that talk about the deterioration of a humans mental state due to the stresses of life The main heroine of this movie is Christian Bale who has given a memorable performance The role he was playing in the movie was unique and so intense was his performance that he nearly entered another phase of life so that he could be in a position to play this role in the specified way.
Christian Bale acts in this movie as a character named Trevor Reznik He is a factory worker and also has chronic insomnia He has not slept for a whole year which puts him in a very tough mental condition This man started having trouble differentiating reality and unreality He begins to see things that arent there like a mysterious person who shows up and tries to make his life hard for him The conflict that he experiences internally lands him in a whirlpool of doubts and confusion.
But the weird concept in the film is that it is not just the condition of insomnia that governs his life but also the condition of psychological and social isolation in which he exists and which makes you realize how intense psychological pressures can be to the extent of creating imaginary characters in a persons mind What is more thrilling in this film is the way all the events connect at the end disclosing the mysterious truth behind all that Trevor went through.
This film doesnt just depend on action or suspense but on the profound insight into Trevors character That is why The Machinist is one of the films that makes you question everything around you Christian Bale in short did a superb job in playing this role to the point where in preparation to live the character seriously he lost almost 30 kilos of his weight before filming the movie and this was evidence of how much he would go out of his way to make an effort to portray a real role.
To me the movie shows the extent to which a human being can descend into a machine when under constant mental pressure losing the ability to feel anything Trevor the main character is an ordinary man who works in a factory but his mental distress causes him to lose the ability to differentiate what is real from what is not The individuals he sees and the strange events that happen around him are all part of his confusing inner world.
What the film clearly indicates is the effect of psychological isolation on a person and how a person gets disconnected from the real world if he falls into a whirlpool of suspicions and perpetual tension Ultimately when you discover the truth you will realize that everything was linked to a great error of thought on the part of the hero of the film and that he was escaping from confronting himself This turned the movie into one of those which lingered in your mind most after watching it.
