11/15/2023 0 Comments Insomnia film light and dark 1997![]() It’s no surprise that Nolan can handle suspense well, but it’s worth mentioning the cat-and-mouse game between Will Dormer (Al Pacino, only working in one classic Pacino shouting session) and Walter Finch (a subdued Robin Williams, working well–and unnervingly–against the grain). In short, this is one of the ways to do genre right–not transcending it, but fulfilling its promises thoroughly and distinctively. It’s serious and often uncanny without getting close to the punishing, po-faced grimness and labyrinthine bullshit of, say, Prisoners. Nolan’s inability to fuck around works entirely in its favor: it’s a film where it feels like the making or unmaking of the characters’ souls is at stake. ![]() Insomnia may not be as purely delightful as Inside Man or as striking as Dunkirk, but it has a great weight to it. It makes good paired viewing: have either a Nolan night and go on to watch Dunkirk, a more seasoned Nolan effortlessly blending “WWII movie” and his own sensibility and fixations, or watch this and Inside Man, Spike Lee’s verve-y and inventive heist film. The result is Christopher Nolan, blockbuster auteur, doing a meat-and-potatoes psychological thriller: familiar elements executed extremely well and with occasional invigorating strangeness. And it finds him at a very specific point in his career–he’s just established himself with Memento, but he’s yet to go on to get to the blank check-providing work on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It has big name stars, but they’re not his regular players. ![]() It’s unusually straightforward, without timeline trickery or reality-bending. It’s a fairly faithful remake of the 1997 Norwegian film, which means he’s guided by someone else’s vision–more so, arguably, than he was with his Batman trilogy. Insomnia is Christopher Nolan in an unusual mode.
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