Rating of
4/4
Incredible descent into madness
TheWolf - wrote on 10/10/07
Let me get this out of the way first, the only mention I plan to make here about the insane weight loss of Christian Bale for this role is that he had to put it all back on and then add a lot of muscle to play Batman a year later.
The story is considered to be slow for most people. Personally I didn't mind the pacing of how it works. Honestly the pacing I feel puts the viewer into the tormented frame of mind that Trevor is going through. Everytime he gets even close to sleeping something always manages to wake him up. The lighting and the coloring of everything around him is an old and dreary feel, there are no bright colors, and nothing that can extract hope or happiness for the existence of the character. This is an amazing technique. By keeping the colors dark and even the tones very muted it doesn't allow the viewer to get that "Everything is going to be alright by the end" kind of feeling. So the pacing actually works well for the story, it drags you into Trevors existance and it makes you feel the pain that he is living every day.
The story is amazing. What I like about it is that there is nothing that gives you any idea about what is happening or is going to happen. You are walking through the paces as blind to it all as Reznik is, there is nothing that is set up to give away what has happened or will happen. There is virtually no predicability of this film and that makes it very well told.
This has become one of my favorite movies, and while its rewatch value is somewhat low, I'll watch it over and over again just because of the little nuances that make it different from most other movies of the same genre. Camera angles, scene choices, environments, they all make this movie completely amazing.
