The thrill of “Insomnia” is not in the murder case at the center of the plot, but the self-inflicted mind game that puts Dormer through the moral wringer, which makes it a quintessential Nolan psychodrama. Dormer solves one problem and creates another by killing his partner, and the further down the rabbit hole he goes to catch the real killer he thought he was shooting the more he must confront his murderous action. The murder becomes a psychological maze for Dormer, as his partner was intending to testify against him in an investigation into Dormer’s use of questionable evidence in the past. Nolan takes the structure of Skjoldbjærg’s “Insomnia” and doubles down on the guilt-ridden existential downfall that plagues the protagonist, Detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino), after he mistakingly shoots his partner dead. The project set a precedent that Nolan could infuse pre-existing material with an original filmmaking voice, thus opening the door for his “Dark Knight” trilogy. In fact, “Insomnia” was such an assured studio debut for Nolan that it laid the groundwork for his studio blockbusters. Little did anyone know at the time that the Warner Bros.-Nolan pairing would become one of the modern studio system’s most prolific partnerships.
Steven Soderbergh was such a “Memento” fan that he forced Warner Bros. executives were reluctant at first to meet with Nolan as they weren’t so eager to put a $45 million thriller in the hands of a first-time studio director. The project marked Nolan’s first foray into studio filmmaking after the breakthrough success of his 2000 indie “Memento.” Warner Bros. Released theatrically in May 2002, “Insomnia” is Nolan’s remake of Erik Skjoldbjærg’s 1997 Norwegian thriller of the same name. It’s remarkable how menacing never-ending broad daylight can be, considering that most crime thrillers favour the inherent threat of the dark and the shadows.‘The Idol’ Debut Was No ‘Succession’ Finale, but Was It a Success? The look of the film, with its muted palette of cold blues and browns and the harsh light of the midnight sun, is a crucial ingredient and so is the Norwegian landscape, especially during the tense chase sequence set in the misty wilderness early in the film. I haven’t seen the 2002 remake by Christopher Nolan with Al Pacino (the only Nolan film I haven’t watched yet), but I’m willing to bet that it softened its version of Engstrom considerably. Even though his misdeed is an honest mistake, Engstrom is hardly a sympathetic character and it’s to Skarsgard’s credit that he remains a compelling protagonist to follow. The line between real and imaginary becomes blurred, making it hard to say whether certain sequences only exist in the detective’s fevered mind. I won’t spoil it but I’ll just say that the sunlight streaming through Engstrom’s hotel window at night is not just a quirk of the film’s setting, but a manifestation of his guilt.įrom that point on Insomnia unfolds more like a psychological study rather than a conventional procedural, as Engstrom becomes both the hunter and the hunted and his life transforms into a walking sleep-deprived nightmare.
#INSOMNIA FILM 1997 STREAMING MOVIE#
So far so yet another small-town dead girl mystery, but then the movie goes and throws a curve when Engstrom’s plan to trap the murderer goes terribly wrong.
The movie begins with a disturbing montage of the murder, with the killer leaving no trace and even carefully washing the girl’s hair before dumping her body. Skarsgard plays Jonas Engstrom, a disgraced Swedish detective who is called in to investigate a murder of a young woman in Tromsø, a city above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway where the sun doesn’t set for months in summer. I’ve been watching bleak and moody Danish noir lately, so I thought I’d change it up and watch some bleak and moody Norwegian noir instead, namely this 1997 thriller with Stellan Skarsgard.
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