Editor’s Note: The article below contains spoilers for Insomnia (1997).When it came time for Christopher Nolan to choose a follow-up to his breakthrough feature, Memento, he decided to remake the Norwegian thriller Insomnia, adapting it into a mid-budget neo-noir starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams. It’s easy to understand why he would be drawn to the 1997 film, since it’s as close to perfection as a thriller can get. Tightly-wound and psychologically dense, it examines the thin line between cop and criminal, finding the differences between the two to be disturbingly few. It also kicked off a wave of Nordic noirs, films that took our obsessions with true crime to chilling new lengths (both literally and metaphorically).
‘Insomnia’ Defies the Tropes of Classic Film Noir

Stellan Skarsgård plays Jonas Engström, a police detective investigating the murder of a 17-year-old girl, Tanja (Maria Mathiesen), in a small Norwegian town. He arrives from the big city with his partner, Erik Vik (Sverre Anker Ousdal), and the two try to lure the killer back to the crime scene by pretending they’re looking for a crucial piece of evidence. The plan almost works, but when their cover is blown, the suspect makes a run for it in the dense fog. While in pursuit, Jonas accidentally shoots and kills Erik, and rather than tell the truth, he allows the suspect to take the blame. His investigation leads him to Jon Holt (Bjørn Floberg), a crime novelist who had a relationship with the victim. Jon saw Jonas shoot his partner, so he blackmails him into shifting suspicion towards the victim’s boyfriend, Eilert (Bjørn Moan). Meanwhile, the midnight sun keeps Jonas awake, and a local detective, Hilde Hagen (Gisken Armand), suspects he isn’t being totally honest about Erik’s death.
The sun never sets in Tromsø, the town Jonas has been sent to. As a result, first-time director Erik Skjoldbærg must find a way to create a classic film noir without the genre’s most fundamental visual tropes: darkness and shadows. Skjoldbærg makes up for this visual absence by allowing darkness to exist within his main character. Prior to moving to Norway, Jonas was forced to leave the Swedish police force because of an inappropriate relationship he had with a witness. During the course of this investigation, he oversteps with the victim’s best friend, Frøya (Marianne O. Ulrichsen), touching her leg suggestively before dragging her to the dumpsite where they found Tanja’s body. He also goes to great lengths to protect himself from suspicion of his partner’s death, shooting a stray dog and replacing the bullet with the one pulled from Erik so that it can’t be traced back to his gun. He even plants a weapon under Eilert’s bed after watching him and Frøya have sex. Try as he might, he can’t escape his guilt, which leads to more sleepless nights. Skjoldbærg takes visual flights of fancy through dramatizing Jonas’ sleep-deprived hallucinations, as Erik and Tanja’s ghosts come back to haunt him.

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‘Insomnia’ Is One of the Best Nordic Noirs

Jonas’s moral dilemma comes to a head when he meets Jon, who talks about Tanja’s murder with chilling detachment. Like Jonas, Jon went to great lengths to cover up his crime, going so far as to wash his victim’s hair before callously tossing her in the garbage. Surely Jonas isn’t as bad as this guy, but is he really? After all, he killed his own partner and did whatever it took to cover his tracks, fearful that another internal affairs investigation could end his career. Is that any better than the crime Jon has committed, or is it worse because Jonas, by simple virtue of having the law on his side, should know the difference between right and wrong?
These moral quandaries animate Nordic noir, which transplants the darkest of movie genres from the shadowy metropolitan alleyways to the icy Scandinavian tundra. Films like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (both the Swedish and American versions) tap into our fascination with serial killers while simultaneously interrogating our obsessions with them. Are we so different from the criminals on either side of the law we’re delighting in watching? That question has never been so frighteningly explored as it was in Insomnia, a thriller that will surely keep you up at night.

Insomnia

Release Date

March 14, 1997

Runtime

96 Minutes

Director

Erik Skjoldbjærg

Writers

Nikolaj Frobenius, Erik Skjoldbjærg