Countdown to Inception, Part III: Insomnia
By Andrew on July 11th, 2010
Insomnia
After two features which made a habit of distorting time and perception, Nolan’s third outing is a decidedly more straightforward affair. Except for flashing glimpses of past events, there is no sequential warping or colour coded chronology. Instead, Insomnia unfolds like most any other hollywood crime thriller, telling the tale of a pair of LA homicide detectives as they are called up to Alaska to lend a hand in a murder investigation.
Under investigation for forensic fraudulence, detectives Dormer (Al Pacino) and Eckhart (Martin Donovan) escape the Internal Affairs heat in their LA department for the calm of a small Alaskan town. A community perpetually lit by daylight in the summer months, which has been recently shaken by the murder of a seventeen year old girl. With the pressures facing him back home about to escalate due to his partner’s confessed intended betrayal, a rather straightforward murder investigation becomes rather taxing on Dormer, with the endless Alaskan daylight depriving him of sleep doing little to make affairs any easier. After a botched attempt to ensnare the killer (Robin Williams) on a foggy beach leaves Eckhart dead by Dormer’s gun, the sleep deprived Dormer is left wondering whether or not he meant to kill his partner between the calls from the killer, who saw the accident, trying to exploit his fortuitous turn of events.
.
Much like in Following and Memento, the question of who’s guilty of doing what is never really an issue. We see the character’s actions clearly, and no attempt is made to present the scenarios as anything other than what they really are. Where the ambiguities of Following and Memento arose from sequential manipulation, Insomnia’s ambiguities are strictly ones of character, giving the film a stronger moral foothold than anything Following’s and Memento’s distortion could ever attain. So if Following resonates on an emotional level, and Memento on an intellectual one, then Insomnia completes the trifecta with its ethical focus. The ironically named Dormer (derived from the Latin verb for sleep) faces a rather Machiavellian dilemma as he debates whether or not its right to let one killer go to keep thirty years worth of murderers locked up, or to pursue the present murderer at the risk of having his sterling career and bright future irrevocably undermined.
Lacking the directorial panache that permeated his first two features, Nolan keeps Insomnia relatively straight and trusts his actors to do what’s expected of them. As the sleepless days tick by, Al Pacino’s Dormer wonderfully executes the ongoing unfastening of his character’s hinges. Subtle gestures that could be easily lost, like the fumbling for a coffee mug or the slipping of fingers around a doorknob, make Dormer’s affliction affecting, while the wallpaper sears and the blinding lights hiss in his desperation to keep the sunlight out of his hotel room. The other leads don’t get this kind of attention, however, so Hilary Swank’s rookie cop and Martin Donovan’s disloyal detective tend to fall by Alaska’s rocky wayside. Even Robin Williams, nailing the meticulous phrasing and menace of a memorable movie murderer, loses considerable charm when the teasing voice on Dormer’s hotel line needs a boring body to go along with it.
More about a tense and involving narrative quandary than showing off film school flair, Insomnia may feel more organic and natural than Nolan’s previous features, but its core isn’t so mysterious and involving as to warrant the same level of commitment. For anyone else, this would be a great crime thriller to have in their filmography. But as a followup to Memento, it feels just a tad bloated and a little vacant.
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Interesting. This is the only one of Nolan’s major films that I haven’t seen yet, and I was planning on checking it out before Inception was released. That’s not looking very likely, however, considering it comes out this Friday.
Anyway, from the basic premise it sounded much more like a character study than an exercise in crafty film manipulation like Following or Memento. It’s good to see him doing both kinds of movies, however it seems to me that a film like this is arguably more in the hands of the actors and how capable they are instead of the director himself. However, even what appears thus far to be his weakest film is still better than the vast majority of films out there, and I have a soft spot for crime thrillers. 
Next up is Batman Begins obviously, but I’m actually really interested to hear your thoughts on The Prestige. In terms of critical acclaim, this is considered his weakest movie, however I really enjoyed it. Without spoiling it for anyone reading, the principle criticism seems to be that the ultimate explanation for what’s going on is a cop out, but I disagree. I think that’s mostly a reaction to people really not expecting it. And believe me, you’re really not expecting it. It’s just not the kind of movie that would appear to have such an explanation in it. In fact, one such critic said that he loves this kind of story, he just wanted to be told that this was that type of story ahead of time, because it’s really not apparent. Indeed, I myself was pretty jarred at first too. However, if you’re willing to suspend disbelief and accept the inherent…well let’s say implausibility of it, I think it’s actually a really cool twist for two reasons.
One, if you think about it, it’s actually a perfectly logical extension and escalation of what comes before in terms of how they’re upstaging each other. And two, it creates a really interesting and tense situation for one of the main characters which totally plays into the theme of how far the two rivals are willing to go to outdo the other. In fact, author of the original novel Christopher Priest saw the film multiple times and said he not only loved the twist, but he wished he had thought of it, since it was different than the book.
Anyway, this has gone on long enough, but if you haven’t seen the movie and you’re planning to watch it, let me just warn you without spoiling it by saying that it’s not what it appears at first, so keep an open mind. And if you think about it, that’s actually quite appropriate for a film about magicians.
@Gyorkos: Sorry I’m not keeping up with reading/commenting on these. I just started a new job that actually requires a brain, and that I actually like. I’ll definitely come back and read this when I have time though!
@Butash: Geez, what do they pay you for? I’m forwarding that massive comment to your boss.
Well I haven’t seen The Prestige yet (later on today, I will have), but I’m rather thankful to have an interesting and thought provoking movie lined up that hasn’t been ruined for me yet. I actually think I saw bits and pieces of The Prestige as an in-flight movie or something, but wasn’t really paying attention because air plane headphones are just the worst.
And don’t worry about not keeping up, since I’m still quite shocked that I’ve managed to stick with this all the way to Part IV so far. I honestly thought I would’ve posted part one, gotten fed up with it, and just changed the title from “Countdown to Inception, Part I: Following” to “Following (mini-movie review)” two days later. I might actually see this through to the end, which is shocking to me.