In my quest to catch up with all things Christopher Nolan before the release of Inception, I felt it necessary to watch those in his back catalogue that have eluded me thus far. So, whilst I wait for Following to arrive in the post, I sat down to watch Insomnia, a film that, whilst being Nolan's most conventional film to date (and, on a side note, the only film not to have been written by him in some capacity), what I saw was a terrific and criminally overlooked thriller brimming with Nolan's trademark psychological ticks.
Not so much a "whodunit" as a "whydunnit", in true Nolan fashion, conventions are toyed with and audience perceptions are warped. Our protagonist is, like Leonard in Memento, deeply unreliable. Did he deliberately kill his partner or was it a tragic accident? He doesn't know. Was he morally justified in planting evidence in the past in order to secure a conviction of a man who knew to be guilty? He doesn't know. Just because he's a detective does it make him better than the killer he's chasing? He Doesn't know, and it's in this not knowing, the sheer fact that the man we're investing all our time in is unsure of pretty much everything, makes the narrative questionable, our trust in Pacino's Will Dormer strained.
Nolan has had an unbelievable run as a director and I am pleased to see that Insomnia continues this. Despite it being his weakest film (remember, I am yet to see Following), with a back catalogue that includes Memento, The Prestige and the excellent Batman movies, it's hardly a critique and succeeds in being better than most thrillers of the last decade.
Robin Williams is rather frightening. He's not hokey or camp but naturalistic and works very, very well.
4.5/5
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