Insomnia (Erik Skjoldbjærg, 1997)

Exiled in Norway, disgraced (and quite randy, which is what led to his disgrace) Swedish detective Jonas Engström gets on the trail of the murderer of a girl whose body turned up tidly garbage-bagged in a landfill. Staking out the shed where he thinks the killing went down, Engström accidentally plugs his partner, mistaking him for the suspect behind a thick wall of fog. This would normally be a (literal) fog-of-war mistake, except that cops in Norway aren't allowed to carry without a special warrant, and he didn't have one. Thus Engström must simultaneously cover his tracks and attempt to solve the case, two goals which ultimately come into direct conflict. Also, he can't sleep because this is the Norwegian Arctic, where the sun never don't shine.

* * *

In a few ways, this film is very much an embossed-cover mass-market thriller. It has, for instance:

• a dead teenage girl
• a cop on the edge
• creeping guilt
• a menacing novelist

But then again, we must take into account that:

• it takes place in Norway and not, like, Chicago
• its protagonist isn't a hero, nor a reluctant hero with some ragged edges, but just this guy, who's guilty of a crime himself
• it's always bright outside, even — especially — at midnight
• it's a movie that, when other movies wouldn't go there, it goes there

With these and other qualities, Skjoldbjærg makes Insomnia into something other than your standard police procedural, which is a genre I've just never latched onto. (I've never seen an episode of Law & Order, for instance, or any of the CSI shows; I've lumped the lifestyles where one comes home and watches programs like that on a daily basis into a fairly undesirable mental box.) I even fail to grasp what all those other people see in the form; how many times can one watch detectives go through the motions and remain engaged? Someone dies. The cops show up and grimace at the body. There's some morgue stuff. Detectives set out to find the killer. False crisis. False dawn. Reversal. Real crisis. Real dawn. The end... ? I can barely stand typing out the formula, let alone viewing it.

Insomnia begins as a police procedural, sort of, but the wonkiness of the ingredients diverts it from the standard track pretty quickly. It's possible that a viewer living in the Norwegian Arctic, accustomed to exotic-to-me stuff like the sun not going down and Swedish interlopers whose language is just about intelligible enough, would find it just slightly more engaging that the average cop movie. But they'd prefer the foreign streets of, say, Hoboken, where they'd be able to spot all sorts of fascinating cultural and climatic differences.

It's worth noting that Christopher Nolan remade the movie in 2002, but U.S.'d it up and in the process — I assume, since I haven't seen the newer version but have read quite a bit about it — smoothed it down. The location moves from Norway to another equally sunlight- and lowlife-filled territory, Alaska. Stellan Skarsgård's role is played by one Mr. Al Pacino, and the character is made into more of a conventional "hero" who stands by his moral convictions, shoots dead dogs instead of live ones and doesn't have sex with witnesses. Needless to say, I'm sure it's thus not as good. (Also, the remake has infinity percent more Robin Williams.)

Comments

[insomnia treatment]

It is old but great film, I watched it ~5 times and will watch again

[buy jeans]

In a few ways, this film is very much an embossed-cover mass-market thriller.

[Insomnia Treatment]

It is a mass market thriller but it is certainly well made and very gripping. Hope to see again in a few years.