Since drifting into the realms of the super-blockbuster with the likes of Batman Begins, is somewhat easy to forget the quieter and smaller affairs that brought Christopher Nolan to the table in the first place. But while Momento, the movie that placed him firmly on the map as the master of mind fuckery, has plenty of structural fireworks and story telling chutzpah to still be a noticable point of call for such complicated thrillers such as Inception and Interstellar, the film he crafted after has all but been left out in the cold.
Maybe it’s because someone else scripted Insomnia (the only one of Nolan’s works not to have some influence from his usual circle); or maybe it’s because it’s actually a remake of a 1997 Norwegian hand wringer that featured Stellan Skarsgård; in fact the reason might even be that it chooses to use a linear plot to tell it’s tale rather than flip time and expectations in an audacious fashion. Whatever the reason, it’s a goddamn crime, because Insomina is something of a classic eye-opener.
After the body of seventeen year old Kay Connell is found beaten to death, L.A. Detectives Will Dormer and Hap Eckhart are flown in the small, Alaskan, fishing town of Nightmute to assist the local law enforcement in their investigations. However, playing on Dormer’s mind is the fact that Internal Affairs has been sniffing around various cops in his department and may soon be targeting him despite his glowing record. As they’re paired the enthusiastic, local Ellie Burr, they start picking apart the case in order to find something incriminating, but the already highly strung Dormer finds that multiple factors from the outside are making it tough to focus. Firstly, Nightmute is going through a period where the sun doesn’t set at all, which plays merry Hell with his sleep patterns and secondly, he finds that Hap is planning to cut a deal with IA in order to get them off his back.
However, after the well prepared killer makes a rare mistake, Dormer, Hap and the entire Nightmute police department gives chase, but in the Alaskan mist, Dormer makes a horrendous mistake that changes the entire situation completely that leaves him horribly vunerable to the killer.
Emboldened by what he knows, the killer reveals himself to the detective as crime novelist Walter Finch who swears that Kay Connell murder was an accidental crime of passion and now claims that, because of what he knows, both he and Dormer are now partners who must now attempt to watch each other’s backs lest both their dirty little secrets escape out into public knowledge.
Thus a game of four-dimentional chess ensues as both men attempt to get the upper hand gain the leverage in this twisted union while both keeping each other out of jail – but the pugnacious actions of the innocent Detective Burr threatens to overturn the board completely.
Movies that use the titular sleeping disorder as a metaphor for guilt or mental fatigue isn’t exactly new (check out Brad Anderson’s The Machinist for equally gripping results) and after witnessing how Nolan dealt with memory issue in Memento, you may initially be surprised that the director doesn’t find some sort of funky, weird, in-camera gimmick to screw with your perception of the plot. However, Insomnia sees a Christopher Nolan that’s less concerned with elaborate, storytelling gymnastics and more concerned with harnessing the talents of his leads in a way that he hasn’t really done before of sinse. Oh Nolan knows how to get performances out of actors, for sure and no matter who they are, they almost always do his material justice, but there’s always a feeling that in a more traditional film from the perception warp auteur, that everything comes second to the central concept. Not here, however and to be honest, over complicating Insomnia’s tense intertwining of hunter and prey would only have drawn the attention away from two duelling actors operating at peak capacity.
Firstly, we have the one, the only, Al Pacino playing a character not unlike the ranting live wire he portrayed in Michael Mann’s Heat, but while that indomitable, combative and confrontational style is very much in effect (the line “You’re about as mysterious to me as a blocked toilet is to a fucking plumber!” is barked into someone’s ear at one point), it’s tempered with a very real vulnerability that we don’t usually see from the man whose reactions to most things is to bellow at them like a fucking mad man. However, as the guilt, stress and perpetual sunlight marr his ability to get even the slightest of shut eye, he gradually starts to unravel, doubting even his own recollection of events.
It’s a showy role typical of the great man, but he’s very nearly upstaged by Robin Williams who counteracts that formidable bluster by underplaying the unremarkable Walter Finch and making him sickeningly ordinary. After around a decade of saccharine, bittersweet roles, 2002 turned out to be a year of villainy for Williams as he appeared in both this and One Hour Photo within months of each other, butvwhile his role in the latter may be the more outwardly creepy, his devastatingly banal exterior betrays a keen mind bolstered by a writer’s ego that allows him to believe he can plot out this real life murder just like on of his crime novels.
The result is a slow burn masterclass as both men turn their considerable IQs on each other as they try to manuever themselves out of the sizable stakes they’re immersed in, parrying and blocking taped confessions, hidden evidence and anything else the other can throw at them. As a counterpoint to this deadlock, Hilary Swank’s virtuous, wide-eyed Detective may initially seem a bit of an obvious metaphor to the days when Pacino’s old warhorse had more of an idealistic outlook of the job, but the actress manages to convey a real sense of shrewd intelligence that may very well checkmate both men.
Despite the odd chase scene (a scramble across floating logs like some sort of life or death version of the game Frogger harkens at the kind of polished action Nolan perfected later), Insomina chooses to keep things restrained and quiet, letting its tension and twists hold you tight without resorting to any wasted motion.
Arguably the least like a Christopher Nolan movie Christopher Nolan has ever made, measured performances and a steady hand make this a title from the director’s back catalogue that you definately shouldn’t sleep on…
🌟🌟🌟🌟
We Have Issues 
One comment