In a Different Light
Compelling remake of Norwegian film Insomnia is the thematic inversion of its predecessor
by Donna Bowman
Insomnia (1997)
dir.: Erik Skjoldbjærg
NR, 97 min.
Now showing at the Belcourt Theatre
Insomnia
dir.: Christopher Nolan
R, 118 min.
Now showing at area theaters
Jean-Paul Sartre said that any significant action represents the cusp between two states of being. Before the action, infinite possibilities remain open, and the actor does not know what will happen. He is in the state of anxiety. But after the action, when the world of possibilities has narrowed to a single fact, the actor has to live with the world he has made, sick over his lost freedom and the prison of his past. This is the state of nausea.
The two versions of Insomnia—the Norwegian original from 1997 and the current American remake—tell the story from different sides of that cusp. Although many details of the screenplay have been changed for the remake, most notably the setting and the ending, the films differ chiefly in psychological tone, and differ so radically that the material does not feel at all recycled.
Erik Skjoldbjærg’s original film (which he directed and co-wrote) stars Stellan Skarsg&squo;rd as a Swedish detective exiled to the bleak north of Norway, where the sun never sets this time of year, to investigate the murder of a teenage girl. His methods aren’t exactly by the book, which is part of the reason he’s there—something about getting too intimate with a witness on a past case. When he accidentally shoots and kills his partner in a fog-shrouded stakeout, his pursuit of the girl’s killer takes on a new urgency: His official report blames the suspect for his partner’s death, but the murderer saw the shooting and knows that the report is false. Also hot on the detective’s trail is a local policewoman, whose reconstruction of the shooting scene leaves her doubtful that it happened the way her official visitor claims.
Here the tension is between protocol and effective action, familiar territory for police thrillers. Skarsg&squo;rd values results over correct methodology, and refuses to worry about the prosecutors who will have to clean up after him in a courtroom. Driven to find the killer, he sets traps, plants evidence and terrorizes or seduces witnesses. After the accident in the fog, he hardly hesitates; the lies begin definitively and immediately. This is not a man in turmoil over what he should do. Everything that happens merely follows from what he, with his usual lack of self-control, has blundered into doing.
This may sound like a conventional police story, but the plot details define an existential situation more than they provide the customary thrills. Skjoldbjærg is interested in the detective’s nausea, the roiling pain of having an irrevocable past. His character spends the entire movie trying to escape the consequences of his actions, just as he escaped Sweden after fouling that nest. The opportunity to create a new version of the accident and have it become officially sanctioned truth provides a tantalizing glimpse of a way out. But like the 24-hour sunlight that bleeds through every available window covering in his hotel room, the fact of what he did and what it has made him cannot be escaped. No matter what anyone else finds out, the detective will always be sickened by the lives lost in the fog—his partner’s and his own.
Skjoldbjærg’s cold, distant palette and his axial compositions of Skarsg&squo;rd perpendicular to an uncaring horizon define the nausea side of the existential knife blade. As if understanding this, Christopher Nolan, director of the celebrated Memento, chooses the other state of being, anxiety, for his version of Insomnia. The result is a vastly different film, even though the plot details are almost identical.
The action has been moved to Alaska, and Al Pacino’s detective has arrived from Los Angeles, where an Internal Affairs investigation has rocked the Robbery Homicide division. Pacino’s partner (Martin Donovan) is about to become a cooperating witness for the IA investigators, despite the fact that some of Pacino’s benevolent irregularities will come to light as a result. So when Pacino shoots Donovan in the fog, the accident isn’t going to look like an accident. And when the murderer—a third-rate mystery writer played by Robin Williams—tries to enlist Pacino in a cover-up of the original crime, his leverage is Pacino’s certainty about the consequences should the deception be found out.
But that’s the only thing Pacino is certain of. Although Nolan’s film is also about an irrevocable act, it isn’t about dealing with the consequences. It’s about being unable to fix it firmly as fact, and therefore remaining in a state of anxiety over how to move on. Pacino becomes more and more confused about his own motivations—perhaps he did mean to kill Donovan in the fog. He arrives with words of sage advice for a young policewoman who idolizes him (sensitively played by Hilary Swank). But even before the accidental shooting, he second-guesses his own plans to trap the killer with misinformation. Where Skarsg&squo;rd knows his own guilt and spends the movie trying to erase it, Pacino grows increasingly tentative and unsure of himself.
Nolan uses the theme of insomnia and the all-pervasive rays of the midnight sun to represent Pacino’s inner state rather than external reality and objective truth. He’s kept awake by the slightest hint of light because there is no escape from the task of deciding what he did and therefore what he should do. In contrast to the Norwegian film’s lonely, long shots, Nolan keeps the camera tight on Pacino’s lined, weary face, eschewing until the final scene the wide-angle lenses and scenic vistas that the Alaskan setting seems to demand.
The ending changes in tone and visual style, and it’s problematic. I’m not sure that the imperative to end the film differently, just to distinguish it from its predecessor, serves Nolan’s hard-won psychological insight well. But the new Insomnia proves that the director is more than a puzzlemaster and merely competent stylist. He flips the existential coin to show us another compelling side of material that seemed to have already given up its darkest secrets.
Comments (0)