The Machinist

The Machinst (2004) is a movie with Christian Bale (Batman) acting as the lead character, Trevor Reznick, who has failed to sleep a wink in over a year. Why has he not died from this? No one has ever directly died from insonmia. There are people with chronic insomnia living today who have not slept in years.

From Wikipedia:
"Chronic insomnia lasts for years at a time. It can be caused by another disorder, or it can be a primary disorder. Its effects can vary according to its causes. They might include sleepiness, muscular fatigue, hallucinations, and/or mental fatigue; but people with chronic insomnia often show increased alertness. Some people that live with this disorder see things as though they were happening in slow motion, whereas moving objects seem to blend together."

You may recall other such movies that have dealt with insomnia and its hallucinatory effects, i.e. Fight Club, and you will certainly notice similarities between the two. This is not a bad thing. The perspicacious watcher will also notice many similarities between the plot line and the plotlines (plotline can be written with a space or without, by the way) of a few works by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Those alluded to being: The Brothers Karamosov, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, and the novella The Double, in which a character begins seeing and interacting with a human manifestation of his own less desirable qualities. Once again, Fight Club uses this same motif.

Reznick is seen reading a copy of The Idiot at one point early in the movie, and the words Crime and Punishment are seen in the background at one point as well, so the deliberate association with Dostoevsky is palpable. Although there is no time to describe the genius of these books of Fyodor's, I will suffice it to say that they are worth your time, more so than this movie.

This movie was really good though, even without all the literary allusions. I wouldn't think of ruining the ending for you, but it all ties together fairly neatly at the end, unlike another movie that I recently watched that I would also highly recommend, but which doesn't tie up so nicely, Barton Fink, a Coen brothers movie from a few years back, John Turturro, John Goodman. It was good, man, but I am still trying to figure out what happened.

Anyway, Trevor Reznick, Trent Reznor, whoever this character is, can't sleep, starts to hallucinate, and the plot thickening ensues. It's a dark movie: the Dostoevsky, the Trent Reznor reference, the music, and the thing that I have thus far failed to mention. Christian Bale lost so much weight for this movie (he wanted to lose more, but the producers feared for his health) that he literally looks like a walking skeleton. And you thought Tom Hanks was dedicated to his craft when he gained/lost all that weight for Castaway; Christian Bale, in The Machinist, makes Tom Hanks look like the laziest hack in Hollywood, and makes Hanks' skinny character from Castaway look like Dom DeLuise, check it out if you have the time.