The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.-Winston Churchill
How often have you spent sleepless nights, tossing and turning in the bed? You would have tried everything to go to sleep, but could never. It could be due to some stress and strains acting on you, or some issues that is bothering your mind, or more often than not, just plain Insomnia.
Will Dorner( Al Pacino), a top cop in the Los Angeles Police Dept( LAPD), he has been called into a remote small town in Alaska, Nightmute, to investigate the murder of a teenage girl, Kay Connel. Nightmute is one of those small, sleepy towns where nothing much ever happens, and Kay’s murder has sent shock waves there.
Will flies in along with his partner Hap Eckhart( Martin Donovan) to solve the case, where they are met by the local cop Ellie Burr( Hilary Swank). Ellie is a young and up coming officer, who idolizes and hero worships Will, considering him her role model, to that extent that she has studied every single case of his.
The prime suspect in Kay’s murder case happens to be her rather abusive boyfriend Randy, a cocky and arrogant stud kind. Will however is convinced, that he is not the actual culprit, and he suspects Walter Finch( Robin Williams), a writer of pulp detective novels. Kay has been a big fan of Walter’s novels, and also a close confidant of his. In the mean while, there is another sub plot of Will facing an Internal affairs investigation back home in LA, and Hap using that to his advantage. So who is the real culprit in the entire mystery? Has to be seen to find it out.
The Insomnia here Will faces is on two counts, one is Will unable to adjust to the Alaskan environment. Alaska a place where there is continuous daylight for 6 months of the year, and continuous darkness for the other 6 months. The midnight sun totally affects Will’s sleeping, to the extent that he barricades his hotel room, shuts off the windows to prevent light from coming in. But the more troubling issue is the internal affairs investigation he is facing back home. Will had planted evidence deliberately to catch a criminal then, and he feels that what he did was right, as the person was a vicious murderer. Hap however threatens to testify against Will, in an effort to save his own career. And Will’s mental state becomes worse after Hap is shot dead by Will accidentally, during a police operation. The burden of guilt keeps weighing on Will’s consciousness eating him up.
Also fascinating is the cat and mouse game between Will and Walter, the latter taunting and teasing him playing on his mind. The scenes between Al Pacino and Robin Williams are some of the best in the movie. Cinema is essentially a visual medium, and Christopher Nolan is one of those who fully recognizes the fact. More than the visuals, it is the way Nolan creates the atmosphere or the mahaul, as one would call it, that is the movie’s biggest strength. Right from the opening credits, where a plane flies over the barren, Alaskan landscape, to the shots showing the towering mountains, glaciers and waterfalls of Alaska, to the scenes showing Will’s sleepless nights, the atmosphere just overwhelms you. The characters in a way here are a part of the environment, letting it dominate them, dictate their actions.
Though a murder mystery, Insomnia is not a conventional action movie that Hollywood usually churns out. It is much slower, but the tension here, comes again from the mahaul. You can actually feel the dread, the fear in the atmosphere, but you need to allow yourself to be soaked by it. As you see the characters playing the mind games, playing cat and mouse, you can actually feel the danger hanging thick in the air. Insomnia is more of a pyschological thriller, the kind where you actually have to think, understand the character’s motivations, nothing happens without a purpose here.
Al Pacino is as usual brilliant here as the cop, who has to bear with the consequences of his past actions, as well as the burden of guilt which begins to eat him up from within. Robin Williams usually seen in comic roles, does well in a role with gray shades, cunning and calculating to the core. Compared to the more frenetic Batman series and Inception, Insomnia is one of Nolan’s slower movies. But to dismiss it as one of his weaker movies is not fair. I would highly recommend this, but just remember if you are looking for a conventional Hollywood cop thriller with big bangs and chases, this is not the movie for you.