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Insomnia
by James Snapko
When the clock in Will Dormer's motel room reads 4:18, we can't tell if it's in the afternoon or early morning.
Neither can Will...
Iin the new Christopher Nolan film, Insomnia, Al Pacino plays Will, an L.A detective sent to a remote Alaskan town, Nightmute (an apt name for a place that has perpetual daylight during its summer months) with his partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan), to help solve the brutal murder of a 17-year-old girl, with the help of a local investigator (Hilary Swank). He suffers from sleep deprivation, and it begins affecting his work, but it is unclear whether the sunlight is keeping him awake, or his conscience.
Then, in attempt to apprehend the murderer, Will shoots his partner. But instead of telling the local police it was an accident, he hides the truth and goes to great pains to conceal the real cause of Hap's death. Unfortunately, the criminal, Walter Finch (Robin Williams), saw the incident, and this allows him to use Will's vulnerability to his advantage. Because they both have something to hide, Walter attempts to work out a deal with Will in order to stay out of jail. From there on, the film plays itself out, focusing its attention on the moral and ethical issues that are inherent in the plight of those assigned the power to decide what's wrong and right.
Insomnia is a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film, of the same name in its English release, directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg and starring Stellan Skarsgård in the Pacino role. I have to say that I prefer the darker and more cryptic original. That doesn't mean that this is a bad remake. The original is good, but not great. Nonetheless, I had a lukewarm response when I heard that Nolan would be directing this movie. Why remake a film that came out only five years ago? Nolan had just come off of making Memento (2001), one of the best films of the last few years in my opinion, and it seemed to be an odd choice. But the choice makes a little more sense to me after seeing it, because Insomnia has a few thematic elements in common with his previous effort. Nolan's decision to make this film after Memento suggests that he is developing a style and a comfort zone in which he can explore in detail the issues he finds engaging.
First, both films showcase an "investigator" searching for something - on the surface what they are looking for may be "the truth." Yet that is too simple - it's not really "the truth" that they're after, but some kind of resolution to inner torment. Corruption is part of what is examined in both films, but it is secondary to the illumination of the psychological aspects of each character. Both films, then, can be considered revisionist film noirs or neo-noirs because of these narrative devices. The main characters' intentions become more and more blurry and less and less trustworthy as the films continue.
It also helps that Leonard Shelby's quest evokes sympathy and pulls the audience in - even though we don't know who he really is or what his past consists of other than a few sketchy details, we still want him to succeed. It's not that easy this time around, because Will's past is more accessible, which reveals some shady dealings that may have occurred earlier, and his personal investment is much less dramatic. Furthermore, Insomnia's narrative structure is very straightforward.
But Nolan is much more successful in Memento than in Insomnia at getting into the main character's psyche. Memento's inventive backward/non-linear structure positions us directly inside the main character's head. We see the world as he sees it.
Memento
However, this film has some elements to recommend it. It looks great, courtesy of cinematographer Wally Pfister; the score by David Julyan is evocative, and there are good performances by most of the cast, Robin Williams notwithstanding. I particularly like the editing strategy Nolan employs, using symbolic images that get at the character's subconscious state. In several scenes we see a barrage of uninflected shots, images that we begin to connect to Will Dormer. They're not exactly memories, and they're not exactly dreams. Images such as blood soaking through cloth, a man's hand rubbing blood droplets into the sleeve of a shirt, and the laughing face of a young girl, seen in repetition over the course of the film, convey a sense of subjectivity, and hint at Dormer's implication in the Alaskan case and his work in L.A. Through these brusquely edited segments we begin to sense Will's ambivalent moral stance.
Thematically, this is how this version and the Norwegian film differ the most. Nolan's version (scripted by Hilary Seitz) tends to shy away from the icy blackness of the main character's mind that Skjoldbjærg's film confronts. Will Dormer's quest becomes an excursion in morals, whereas Jonas Engstrom's journey in the original takes us into much more complicated and unresolved areas. Unfortunately the ending in the new film is very pat, and very uninspired. It feels like the studio's influence worked its way in during the climax, emasculating the psychological tension created in the first hour and reducing the film, in some ways, into something you'd see in a "shoot em' up" high-octane action picture.
Not including the last fifteen minutes or so, it is a decent remake, but there was clearly an unwillingness to go into the depths of the character's pathologies. Skjoldbjærg's version is a dark film that feels more like Hitchcock's Vertigo than a neo-noir.
Nolan's version has that classic film noir feel of the 40s and 50s, but it isn't as incisive as Memento or as many of those classic films are either. Film noirs from that era tapped into the zeitgeist of the time. This film doesn't do that - there are only small hints at the problems of and dissatisfactions with the system, or of any larger social themes that the classic noirs addressed. In the end, Insomnia is a strange mix of elegance, potency, and ineffectiveness.
©2002 James Snapko
CineScene
