Neil Young's Film Lounge

Neil Young’s Film Lounge – Insomnia

INSOMNIA

6/10

USA 2002 : Christopher Nolan : 118 mins

Veteran LA cop Will Dormer (Al Pacino) arrives in an Alaskan town to investigate a teenage girls the murder. Chasing a suspect in fog, he shoots his partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) apparently by accident, perhaps partly on purpose. Dormer also has trouble adapting to the perpetual daylight of the far-north latitudes and can’t sleep. Though the local cops – including eager rookie Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) – suspect the victims boyfriend (Jonathan Jackson), Dormers investigations lead to nice-guy local novelist Walter Finch (Robin Williams). But Finch has knowledge of Dormers own dubious activities, and before long the two are soon entangled in a messy, symbiotic web of guilt and accusation

After Memento, expectations were sky high for Nolans followup. Sensibly, he’s avoided the temptation to serve up more of the gimmicky same but with Insomnia hes gone too far in the other direction, constructing a solid, engrossing but ultimately over-familiar, over-conventional movie. Insomnia isnt even original: Hillary Seitzs script adapts Erik Skjoldbaergs1997 Norwegian thriller, co-written by Nikolaj Frobenius. Its as if that, handed a big budget and some very big-name stars -Oscar winners Pacino, Williams and Swank Nolan was determined to prove he could be a safe pair of hands when required. But Oscars are heavy items, capable of weighing down any project with their aura of prestige and seriousness.

This is essentially pretty well-trodden ground and not just in the Twin Peaks-meets-Limbo aspects of the basic set-up. Dormer and Finchs relationship is no more or less intriguing than that between Clint Eastwood and John Malkovich from In The Line Of Fire, or even Kurt Russell and Richard Jordan from the cheesily enjoyable The Mean Season. But Insomnia has pretensions to higher levels its a long, somewhat ponderous affair, but with no accompanying investigation of ideas and nothing much new being said. And while Pacino is always a delight, isn’t he sick of playing tormented-genius cops? Heat should have been the last word on the subject.

Nolans movie is much shorter than Manns masterpiece, but feels longer: the second half drags, right up to the overextended, overwrought finale. And the director seems so concerned with giving Pacino (and to a lesser extent Williams) Oscar-bait prominence he ends up selling short the supporting cast Swanks Nancy Drew part is thankless, but at least she has more to do that the terrific Nicky Katt, stuck in a cliched resentful local cop role. The films situations recall, but have none of the unpredictably edgy intensity of, Bloody Angels (1732 Hotten), another late-90s Scandinavian cop-out-of-water thriller. That movie managed to dramatise and address the political implications of its material, while maintaining both a psychological coherence and a sense of humour. Seitzs idea of irony, by contrast, is to call her sleepless leading man Dormer.

In terms of a script choice, Insomnia may represent a disappointing step backwards for Nolan, but there’s no suggestion that Memento was any kind of directorial fluke. Aided by Dody Dorns editing and some startling widescreen cinematography from Wally Pfister, Nolan confirms he’s perhaps the most accomplished of the younger British directors (hes half-American). In one bravura (newly invented) sequence a breathless chase across logs floating downriver suddenly becomes a desperate underwater battle for survival. And towards the end, as Dormers senses are increasingly distorted by the effects of insomnia, Nolan manipulates the light levels so we feel the exact contours of our heros mental state just like in Memento. And Insomnia also retains that movies subtle feeling for place, as when we accompany Dormer on a furtive middle of the night errand down some eerily bright 3am backstreets.

But these are isolated highlights, and the overall movie doesn’t stack up as satisfyingly as it should do its hard to shake the feeling that Nolan is constantly having to rein in and muting his abilities, as when Soderbergh got the Erin Brockovich gig. These aren’t bad movies by any means, and the box-office has responded warmly to both – but you do wonder if the directors consciences didn’t provoke a sleepless night or two of their own.

21^st June 2002
(seen 15^th June 2002, UCI Silverlink, North Shields)

by Neil Young

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