DIRECTOR
Christopher
Nolan
SCREENWRITER
Hillary
Seitz
based
on the screenplay by
Nikolai
Frobenius
Erik Skjoldbjærg
PRODUCERS
Broderick Johnson
Paul Junger Witt
Andrew A. Kosove
Edward McDonnell
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Wally Pfister
MUSIC
David Julyan
EDITOR
Dody Dorn
CAST
Al Pacino (Will Dormer)
Robin Williams (Walter Finch)
Hilary Swank (Ellie Burr)
Maura Tierney (Rachel Clement)
Martin Donovan (Hap Eckhart)
Nicky Katt (Fred Duggar)
Paul Dooley (Chief Charles Nyback)
Katharine Isabelle (Tanya)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 118m
U.S. release: May 24, 2002
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
Other Christopher
Nolan films
reviewed on this website:
- Memento
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Beauty is in short supply at
the movies just now -- I mean real beauty, not pretty
pictures painted by computers. Insomnia, the new remake
of Erik Skjoldbjærg's brooding 1997 psychodrama, gives
us opening images so stunning they're almost painful: a small
plane angling over the rocky, godforsaken outskirts of Alaska.
The terrain looks savage and unforgiving, as if nature itself
had decided to keep its secrets by keeping outsiders away. But
the plane continues on, carrying two detectives from Los Angeles
-- Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan).
They've come to investigate a murder, but we know it won't be
that simple, not in this bleak place where the sun never sets
but never really seems to shine, either.
The original Insomnia
was an artsy mood piece, and highly enjoyable as such, anchored
by the sturdy presence of Stellan Skarsgård as the sleepless
detective hiding dark secrets and impulses. The new version,
directed by Christopher Nolan from a more fleshed-out script
by Hillary Seitz, wears its insecurities on its sleeve. Nolan's
previous films, 1998's trim, stark cheapie Following and
last year's famous Memento,
took the unknowability of truth not only as their theme but as
their style. Here, Nolan doesn't mess with nonlinear narrative,
but near the end, when Will is asked a crucial question and says
"I don't know anymore," we believe him. If Nolan's
work is about anything, it's how nobody can be trusted, least
of all oneself.
Will stares down wearily at
the corpse on the slab -- a high-school girl beaten to death.
With him is eager local rookie cop Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank),
too awed by Will's legend (she did a paper on one of his cases)
and by the very fact of murder in the dull town of Nightmute
to be very upset at the loss of life. Nobody in town seems terribly
surprised that the girl was killed; maybe it was her reputation,
or maybe the land itself gives the impression that it wants blood
sacrifice. With sunlight piercing his motel room at all hours,
Will can't get any sleep. "No rest for the wicked"
was the tagline of the first Insomnia, equally appropriate
here. Will may be a great man, but he's too casually intimate
with death and evil to be a good man. The job has begun to decay
him from the inside out.
Al Pacino has simultaneously
never looked worse or better. His voice seems just about shot,
until he gets it up into a roar (infrequent here, and the more
effective for it) and reminds us who's in charge. Generally,
this isn't one of his airhorn performances; he makes us lean
forward and listen. He stays still, yet manages to suggest restlessness
and constant mental fidgeting. With young actresses like Hilary
Swank and Maura Tierney (as the motel clerk) he is fatherly and
protective; he gets a weird vibe going with Katharine Isabelle,
of last year's superb Canadian horror film Ginger Snaps,
as the dead girl's best friend (blink and you'll miss Isabelle's
costar in that film, Emily Perkins, delivering the eulogy). With
men, like the untroubled Martin Donovan and the highly troubled
Robin Williams, Pacino is subtly combative, as if Will were holding
on to macho codes that life beat out of him decades ago.
Williams, as the story's "wild
card" (his character's phrase), doesn't stretch as much
as you've been led to believe. Only those unfamiliar with his
brief, terrific dramatic work in Dead Again and on TV's
Homicide could be all that surprised by his unsympathetic
turn here. What's new about his work in Insomnia is the
sense of suppressed hysteria: He doesn't seem just about to go
off on a manic riff -- he seems about to do something violent.
Nolan gets a lot of mileage out of the potential for violence,
yet I only count five gunshots that draw blood, one of which
is fired into a dog carcass. This director has an unerring knack
for arresting imagery and disorienting narrative that often plays
you for a sap; given the latter, I wouldn't trust him as far
as I could throw him, but given both, I wouldn't miss his movies.
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