Once is not enough

Rating: 9/10 (10 June 2002)

Christopher Nolan's "Insomnia" is so good, so full of intriguing detail, that I found it even more enjoyable on second viewing than on the first. The direction is first-rate, and the acting is generally better than good. The really good news about "Insomnia" is that it's at least as good as, and arguably better than, the original film on which it's based. This isn't always the case when Hollywood re-makes a "foreign-language" film for the big screen and the big names.
There are several good reasons for the artistic success of "Insomnia" (2002). First, is the choice of Christopher Nolan as director. The man really does know how to use his camera and his actors: clearly, his "Memento" of two years ago was no flash-in-the-pan success. Another reason for the film's success is that the screenplay was written by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg, who also wrote the 1997 Norwegian original. (Skjoldbjærg also directed the original.)
Although the two versions of "Insomnia" are different in many ways, the basic plot outline is the same. A young woman is murdered, her body cleaned of all useful forensic evidence - except that the very cleaning is evidence of a kind - and left on a rubbish heap. A famous police detective is brought in from the south to assist the "locals" in solving the crime: from Los Angeles to Alaska in the current film; from Sweden to northern Norway in the original. In both cases, the locale is in the far north, in the summer, when the sun never sets. The southerner finds the continuous daylight disorientating, with night turned into day, and his sleep patterns are disrupted - hence the film's title.
In the course of the investigation, during a stake-out gone wrong, the famous detective shoots and kills his partner, and then attempts to pin the killing on the young woman's murderer, through manipulation of the physical evidence. In each case, the rest of the film is an exploration of the detective's sense of guilt, his bizarre relationship with the murderer, who has witnessed the shooting, and his increasing instability from lack of sleep.
The back-stories of the two films are very different. Detective Will Dormer (Pacino) arrives in Alaska with a lot more baggage than can be carried by hand. He's fabricated evidence in a gruesome abduction/murder case, and he's under investigation by Internal Affairs. His partner, Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) is about to cut a deal with I.A. to protect his own career. This provides the necessary tension between the two men to make the apparently accidental shooting suspect, not only in the viewer's mind, but also in Dormer's. In the original film, detective Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård) also has a blot on his record, but there appears to be no I.A. investigation (or whatever the Swedish equivalent might be), and thus no real tension between the two detectives, beyond the fact that detective Erik Vik (Sverre Anker Ousdal), a much older man, is a bit of a plodder, cut from smoother cloth than Engström.
The principal supporting role, that of the local female detective is also very different in the two films. In the current version, detective Ellie Burr (Swank) almost fawns over Dormer, and that characterisation creaked a little for me. Burr declares she has read all of Dormer's cases (how likely is that, really, since it appears that Dormer has been an L.A. detective for about 30 years?), and made a detailed study of one of his major cases during her stint at "the academy". In the original film, detective Hilde Hagen (Gisken Armand) is a seasoned, tough professional, who suffers no burden of hero-worship. For me that characterisation worked better. Happily, Swank's character grows as the film develops.
I have mixed feelings about Robin Williams's role, possibly because it's a new take for him. (Which is all to the good: some of Williams's sentimental past performances require dangerously high doses of Gravol to sit through.) I thought that his character had rather too much to say for a demented killer, and in some scenes he was, as the English would say, "too clever by half". Overall, I would give his performance one-and-three-quarters thumbs up. I will say, however, that I liked the original - Bjørn Floberg as the killer/writer Jon Holt - better. His characterisation had an edge, and a dangerous quality, that the Williams character lacked.
One cannot say too much about Al Pacino's performance as Will Dormer. One review I read declared that the essence of the film is written on Pacino's rugged and wasted countenance. And that's true enough, but the greatest quality of his performance is in his eyes, in the depths of pain lodged in remembrance, the aspect of a decent man who has seen so much that he has, in his own last words, "lost his way". It's a brilliant turn. Pacino works the part for every nuance that it has, and then some.
Skarsgård's take on detective Jonas Engström lacks the bravura quality of Pacino's Dormer. His character is less dramatic, more mundane, and the script gives the actor fewer opportunities for the "big scene". We never learn enough about him to have much reason to develop sympathy for his situation. The role is a great challenge, therefore, and Skarsgård does very well with it.
Final note. "Insomnia" is beautifully filmed, the scenery rugged and spectacular. Those viewers who waited for the final credits to roll by will have discovered that the film, with the exception of the aerial footage of the ice fields at the start, was shot not in Alaska but in northern British Columbia. As a Canadian, that gave me added pleasure in this very fine film.