Insomnia (1997)
A review following my second viewing of the Norwegian psychological crime drama — this time after having also watched the American remake
When Swedish police officer Jonas lands with his colleague Erik in northern Norway, his reputation precedes him — not only as a determined and relentless detective but as something of a renegade who, allegedly, was ushered out of the Stockholm police department after sleeping with a key witness. True or false, Jonas doesn’t dislike these rumours. As a man who has learned not to rely too heavily on the opinions of others, Jonas finds little more than amusement in what the Norwegian investigators think of him. He considers them, like the law when it stands against him, to be beneath the scope of his attention.
Arctic Norway has a reputation of its own. It is a country where the summer sun never sets, plaguing foreigners with dreadful insomnia. Jonas and Erik have arrived there to solve the murder of a teenager, Tanja, whose meticulously-washed corpse indicates the work of a cold and calculated killer — though they shortly find their unidentified suspect may not be quite calculated enough. A simple sting operation has the suspect pinned until a mixture of fatigue, unfortunate circumstances and incompetence across the force leads Jonas to shoot Erik, misidentifying him as their armed suspect through the heavy fog. Erik is killed; the sole living witness to Jonas’ mistake is the escaped fugitive, who is not above using it to ransom Jonas.
Unlike its American remake (2002, dir. Nolan), Insomnia is largely unconcerned with the theme of memory, but it is easy to see where Nolan might have found the inspiration to use Insomnia as a vessel for his second feature exploring the subject of amnesia. In the original, it is Erik who suffers from a fading memory — a vice which puts him at the wrong end of Jonas’ pistol when he, Erik, misremembers Jonas’ instructions as they pursue the suspect. “You said (go) to the right,” a dying Erik stutters in Jonas’ arms, though we know this is false. In the remake, this narrative point is flipped upon its head: Much of Will Dormer’s (Jonas’ American counterpart, there played by Al Pacino) psychological turmoil derives from doubts about the validity of his own memory. Did he tell his colleague to run left, or didn’t he? Here, such a doubt never even occurs to Jonas.
Washed with a colour palette as bleak and cold as its setting, Insomnia (1997) is grittier than its remake for its simplicity. From the moment of Erik’s death, the film concerns itself as much with Jonas’ descent into depravity as it does with solving Tanja’s case, though he finds the two are inextricably bound. His journey is as convincing as it is harrowing; his perversion of the course of justice starts with small, basic steps that realistically would occur to anyone, even if we are to hope most would never act upon them. His first thought, for example, is to hide the offending firearm in his hotel room. Yet, as Tanja’s case progresses and Jonas finds it more and more difficult to conceal his mistake, he realises he is capable of far worse than the ordinary criminal.
Ironically, Jonas might have even admitted his mistake to the Norwegian police, were it not for the senior officer who unwittingly offers him a way out: After Jonas recounts the events of the sting operation, the officer misinterprets his statement, incorrectly assuming that Jonas meant to imply that it was the suspect who had shot Erik, not Jonas himself. Jonas opts to roll with the punches and quickly adapts his statement to fit this narrative, rather than admit to carrying a firearm without a permit, much less discharging it so recklessly in spite of the poor vision on the day of the incident.
Jonas doesn’t give many reasons to wish for his success. He isn’t what we’d call a “good” police officer by any stretch of the imagination. His methods of supposed investigation, results or no results, are unquestionably immoral. Unlike anti-heroes such as Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), or even Wade Wilson in Deadpool (2016), Jonas doesn’t wield wit or charisma or any particular favourable personality traits that might make his audience root for him in spite of his immoral decisions. On the contrary, he is malicious and two-faced.
This is both the film’s greatest weakness and its greatest strength; on the one hand, some tension is lost through the lack of any affinity between audience and protagonist, but the film makes up for it through its effective examinations of obstinacy and police misconduct. The story appeals to morbid fascination more than anything else — like watching an ill-advised dare play out, there is a sense of hopelessness in having no choice but to watch how far Jonas is willing to go to cover his tracks.
Particularly during a second viewing, Insomnia aches to be granted an additional thirty minutes or so in which to flesh out Jonas’ relationships with secondary characters. While the insights into the way he interacts with colleagues, witnesses, suspects and civilians are intriguing, that is all they are — insights. Given a little more time, these grounding moments of characterisation in the otherwise neurotic narrative would give the film some needed breathing room. Nonetheless, Insomnia is an accomplished and provocative psychological drama as is. It delivers not only entertainment but inspires serious consideration of its subject matter for those interested in the dirty cop subgenre of the police drama.
Lastly, although the film works well enough as a gritter alternative for fans of its American remake, I think there is more to be gained from starting with the original. This is not to say that the remake is better (far from it) — only that Nolan added more than he removed from the story, which can somewhat mar the effect the original has if one chooses to watch it after the remake.
Scope and story: 💤💤💤/3
Performance and production: 💤💤/3
(Crime exclusive) Tension: 💤💤/3
