Insomina (M, 114mins) Directed by Christopher Nolan ****
Nightmute, Alaska. Land of the midnight (and 3am) sun.
Fog-bound, isolated and surrounded by rugged terrain and ice-capped mountains, nothing much ever happens in the self-proclaimed halibut-fishing capital of the world – and anything that does is alcohol- related.
But the town’s peace is shattered when a local girl’s body turns up at the dump, wrapped in garbage bags. Strangely, while she has been beaten to death, her hair has been washed and her nails clipped.
Puzzled, the local cops enlist the services of LA Robbery and Homicide detectives Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) and Will Dormer (Al Pacino). Plagued by an Internal Affairs investigation in their own department, Eckhart and Dormer are glad to be on assignment in a more simple place where there are good guys, bad guys and less public relations.
With the help of enthusiastic local detective Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank), they aim to prove the theory that most homicides are solved by work within the first 48 hours and find the person who crossed the line without even blinking. But Dormer is suffering from severe insomnia and this place of perpetual sunlight isn’t helping.
Then, when a sting operation to catch their killer goes pear-shaped, his chances of sleeping get a lot more remote. As Detective Burr says, a good cop can’t sleep because he’s missing a piece of the puzzle. And a bad cop can’t sleep because his conscience won’t let him.
Director Christopher Nolan, who had wowed audiences with his backwards-thriller Memento two years earlier, played things a lot straighter in this 2002 tale. But that doesn’t mean he lets up on the tension – or the intrigue.
Based on the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg, Insomnia is an ice-cold psychological drama. Like Memento, we are never sure who is to be trusted, and the lines between good and evil remain blurred until the final frames.
Swapping amnesia for insomnia, Nolan again shows he can manipulate a camera and the audience to show a character’s fragile state of mind.Here we have Dormer seeing images flash before his eyes and slipping in and out consciousness as sleep depravation takes hold.
