Abhijoy-Gandhi-WG05 Review of Insomnia

Insomnia (2002)

Nolan holds back and objectifies a compelling opportunity to dive deep into the psyche!

[27 January 2004]

INSOMNIA/ USA 2002 (3.0 Stars) 11 Jan 2004: The first scene from Insomnia, that of a two seater plane gliding over endless glaciers perhaps sets up the mise-en-scene of cold spaces and unexpected occurrences in alien lands. The rest of the film only builds on this growing sense of alienation even as British Director Christopher Nolan takes great care to build the entire film around one single occurrence. While I haven't seen the original Norwegian film of which this namesake is a remake, I can't imagine Scandinavian cinema to be quite so literal, aka Insomnia equals the protagonist never sleeps. My guess would be that Al Pacino's physical manifestation of what might have been a hugely meta-diagetic depiction in the original renders the two films as very different, albeit with a common storyline. The part I enjoyed the most was the mood that Nolan created through the clever use of texture. A harsh key light with an extra-ordinarily high lighting ratio played out the metaphor for the charred emotional feeling the central character, an upright detective (Pacino) is experiencing. This stylistic element in stark contrast to the polar blues of the Alaskan horizon (where the film is staged) aptly sets the stage for nervous expectation. The spoiler is that Detective Pacino accidentally shoots his partner where they are investigating the murder of a teenage girl in a small Alaskan town. Pacino, who works for the LAPD has a history of disagreement with his partner, and therefore feels compelled to keep the truth to himself. The catch is that the teenage-girl killer has been witness to this mishap. The killer turns out to be Robin Williams, who surfaces only in the latter part of the movie and whom we have all but forgotten about by now (the fact that he was even a part of this film). The exploration of the relationship between a conniving killer & a seasoned detective with a dark secret leaves the film wanting in the end. Nolan, who so successfully explores Guy Pierce's amnesia in Memento fails on the encore. We are thus left with a film that continues to work on our sub conscience with its artistic mist in never-land, but one that is finally guilty of narrative triteness. Eminently watchable for the transfer of plight and mood, Pacino does a good if somewhat less intelligent job of portraying the hapless Detective, cursed to sleeplessness in a land where the sun ironically never sets.