Take a sleeping pill. Or watch this movie.

Rating: Null/10 (5 September 2011)

I tried watching this a while back, but couldn't get past all the moaning and groaning about how they couldn't get any sleep. Not exactly riveting dialogue.
But the reason I gave up on it was more personal. I've lived in Alaska, and this ain't Alaska. Look, Hollywood, Alaska is a pretty amazing place, and if you bothered to learn about it before you made your films, they might be better films. Instead, Hollywood just takes the Alaska name and uses it as an excuse to make up all sorts of fantasies, as though no one besides a half-million Alaskans have ever been there.
Insomnia was filmed in Stewart, British Columbia, Canada, which is adjacent to Hyder, Alaska, the southernmost point of the state, which is a largely abandoned gold mining town and unsuited for filming this story. Stewart, on the other hand, is more modern than most small, rural Alaska communities, and doesn't look Alaskan. But more importantly, there is no midnight sun there.
Heck, there's no midnight sun in Fairbanks, either; you have to go well above the Arctic Circle for that, and then you are going to find yourself in some really small, off the road communities, often without much in the way of utilities, shall we say. Not anything like Stewart, BC.
What you do get in much of Alaska is that it stays light at night for much of the summer, even though the sun is below the horizon. In Fairbanks, it almost seems like daylight around the solstice. You see little kids playing softball at 11 p.m. in the summer. Alaskans love the long summer daylight, and stay up late by choice. It's not a matter of insomnia; you just have more energy with all that light, and figure you will have plenty of time to sleep in the winter.
OK, so these cheechako detectives come up to Alaska and they can't sleep. And they keep moaning and groaning about it. Let's see, what oh what can they do?
A) Go into your hotel room and pull the curtains, so it is dark in the room, put your head on the pillows and shut your eyes.
B) Buy a sleep mask, one of those blindfolds that goes over your eyes while you sleep, which any regular airline traveler should have.
C) Take two Benadryl.
D) Go to a doctor and ask for a sleeping pill.
These guys are detectives and they can't figure out how to cope with a little insomnia? They've never heard of sleeping pills? Sorry, no sale.
But the larger problem is movies that don't match the reality of their settings. People tend to get a bit touchy. I saw someone complain that the 1945 version of State Fair didn't look like the real Iowa State Fair. An Indian complained that Dances With Wolves didn't match the look of the authentic tribes involved. Etc. When we see our home locale on the screen, it is easy to nitpick. Even if there are major errors, it depends on the type of movie whether such criticisms are justifiable.
What bothers me about grossly inaccurate movies like Insomnia is the provincial stupidity they reveal about their makers, people too lazy to do even the slightest research about what a place like Alaska is really like. Many years ago there was some Italian director filming scenes in the train station in Anchorage with Harvey Keitel, except the movie was set in eastern Canada, and Keitel was supposed to be taking a train to the Canadian Arctic. Huh? Absolutely none of this made any sense, geographically. Train? Try a small plane, buddy. The movie, as far as I could tell, was never released, if it was even completed. Maybe they finally looked at a map.
The reality of the far north of Alaska and Canada is much more romantic and interesting and beautiful than most of the idiotic versions produced by Hollywood. That's what also makes me sad about seeing ridiculous films like Insomnia. If they had filmed it in something resembling a real Alaskan bush community in the far north, one with a mile or two of road, 10 bars and two general stores, that would have been a film with character.