directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg
written by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg

Criterion #47.

This is a Norwegian movie but unfortunately I don’t get to play with Google Translate because it’s already called Insomnia (instead of, say, Søvnløshet, thanks Google Translate!). Probably this was done with an eye to the international market. Perhaps it’s also a case of the Diabolique effect, where a foreign-y name makes something feel even more dangerous and fantastico.

The movie takes the standard setup of moral-slippage noir (i.e. the detective/hero himself does very bad things) and gives it a nice jangly quality by associating it with sleep deprivation (which he suffers under the endless daylight above the Arctic Circle). In most such movies, alcohol or drugs serve the same function, but this is better: insomnia is ostensibly involuntary, a form of natural friction against the world, and thus makes it harder for the audience to blame the protagonist for his plight. We are denied any easy way to stop identifying with his increasingly dissociative immorality, and are forced to slog through it all with him, queasily. That form of guilty queasiness is the point of this subgenre. Of course, just seeing any movie where the protagonist breaks the moral code is already automatically queasy, but for the distinctly rancid flavor of noir, the film must be clear that its point of view is not clucking disapproval; it can’t afford to be because there are even worse monsters out there. As there are in this movie.

You can say something about how setting “noir” in excessive light rather than excessive shadow is some kind of provocative inversion, and I don’t doubt that that was part of the conception of the script, but speaking as an audience member, that feels a little pat and overstated to me. I never insisted on those shadows; people just kept putting them there. There have been fatalistic movies with bright lighting for years. The thing to note here is not that “noir means black but this movie is not black!!!” but rather that the beauty-slash-insinuating-hostility of the far north has been cleverly made to serve an alienating role just as well as the beauty-slash-insinuating-hostility of the city. There’s a version of this movie to be made in every setting. And I will want to see it! I generally like any movie that finds a way to reveal how scary and unwelcoming some particular locale already is. The suburbs, the forest, the desert, the hospital, the ruins, the library, whatever.

(Twin Peaks takes nearly the same premise and the same characters and the same setting — you will think of it while watching this — but then uses all the implicit emotional leverage to go no place in particular. Which is part of its charm: it has all the pieces in place to show us that the world is terrifying and hostile, but like real dreams, instead it shows us all our different feelings: scary, stupid, confused, and soothing, all muddled together. This movie, by contrast, goes on a murder investigation in the north with a real single-minded purpose. The character’s mind is drifting but the movie is wide awake.)

Mr. Skjoldbjærg understands how all his genre concepts are supposed to work and has everything pretty well in hand. I would say that’s what I enjoyed most here: the sense that someone intelligent had thought through all the stuff under the surface that makes these movies go, and that I could just focus on what was there. (I recently rewatched Blood Simple, with which this has a couple of secondary genre features in common, and felt the same way: its greatest strength is that it knows why it’s doing these things.) What’s there in Insomnia is sometimes a little ordinary or a little stilted, but fundamentally it’s reliable.

When I watched this, as it turned out, I wasn’t quite in that playful mood where one can really relish rancidity, but it was done well enough that I wasn’t put off it. I can always make good use of the clean whites and simple self-assurances of European thrillers. This felt a little like some imported TV a la “The Killing.” Good bleak fun, if a little emotionally cool, and sometimes that cool is as pleasant for me as it obviously is for Europeans.

I think that’s about all there is to say. It’s a 1997 neo-noir crime movie with some mild arthouse crossover potential because it’s foreign and its touches of personality feel distinctly un-Hollywood. But they’re just touches. This is the kind of secretly-completely-commercial movie arthouse cinemas make their money off of.

Hey speaking of Hollywood, how would you like to see this movie done right, if you know what I mean. I mean AMERICAN for crying out loud, 2002-style! Where instead of Stellan Skarsgård we get, say, Al Pacino (it’s still only 2002 so don’t worry, he promises he will do at least 5% of the necessary work to differentiate the character from “Al Pacino”); and as the other cop, obviously America’s 2002 platonic semi-sweetheart Hilary Swank; and as the creep, get this: Robin Williams! His agent’s been telling him he’s got an image problem from all that saccharine and needs to play some villain roles ASAP. And the guy who did Memento can direct, since that was sort of the American equivalent movie. Except now this will be the American equivalent movie. It will be so equivalent that it will be called Insomnia (2002). And it will be exactly the same. Except in Alaska. And except that where the original felt like it had a certain hungry-young-director’s-original-idea fire behind it, this will feel like it has some rising-young-director-trying-to-live-up-to-expectations-with-a-bigger-budget can’t-afford-to-risk-a-fire behind it.

I saw it at the time, not really taking in that it was a remake. It made a middle-of-the-road impression and then I forgot pretty much everything about it other than the title’s premise.

Skjoldbjærg, upon seeing what had been done to his movie, was apparently surprised at how literal a remake it was. He made a public statement about being grateful that it had been done so conscientiously, but I have to wonder if he wasn’t actually disappointed. For this they had to make it again?

After watching the original I watched a few clips of the remake on youtube. Comparing this (link will surely be taken down soon! turn on English subtitles) to this made me reflect on all the needless fat and indulgence of the American standard practice, at least of this era. They write lines that might be said, they get coverage of what they might need to see, and then they edit it (particularly badly in this case). All the technical craft (yes, sure, even of the acting) is admirable in itself, and yet why? Why is anyone doing this? In the Scandinavian original I get the sense that the creatives and the crew may not be quite as expert but I have no doubt that they have a real clear sense of purpose, logic, rationale, meaning. By comparison there is something psychologically masked and avoidant about the Americans, both in front of and behind the camera. Our priorities are more profoundly compromised.

Music is by Geir Jenssen. Who? Oh, sorry, you surely know him as ambient electronica artist Biosphere (redirected from Geir Jenssen). He lays down some of that signature Biosphere sound, which I guess is sort of like underwater dial tones. And underwater heartbeats. Generally the score is quiet synthetic soundscaping, just at the very edge of what one would consider music rather than sound design. It’s effective and appropriate to the tone, but also kind of arty in its subtle way, and is one of the things that helps keep the movie feeling European enough for the arthouse.

Our selection has to be the end credits, the only place where the score really goes for it and has an ordinary beat, like humans use. Some listeners might feel that this track kind of puts the Euro thing over the top, but don’t worry, by the time you hear this the movie is already over. Actually I think it’s pretty good for what it is; the icky disco of it feels about right for the sleep-deprived moral moonscape where things end. Track 47. Warning: this begins with the trunk slamming shut.