Christopher Nolan's newest film, Insomnia, is his first foray into the studio system. With increasingly larger budgets and bigger stars in his films, one wonders if Nolan's ideas about the film business have changed much. But at the end of the day, it's all about the story to Nolan. And it's a comfort to know that his intensely ingenious stories will not suffer from the glare of the spotlight.
\n\nSome find it odd that Nolan, 32, chose to follow up his immensely critically acclaimed Memento with a remake of the 1997 film, Insomnia. In fact, Nolan actually started investigating Warner Bros., the studio which held the rights to Insomnia, before he even made Memento. After having the psychological thriller Memento under his belt, Nolan beat out more established directors to remake Insomnia.
\n\n\"It occurred to me when I saw the original movie that if you took those narrative events and set it in a different arena with the really big iconic cop figure, a heroic figure in that sort of American role, you'd have a completely different moral paradox and a completely different relationship between the events of the story and the audience's interpretation of it,\" Nolan said. \"I wasn't interested in remaking the original. I was interested in creating a different film, but with almost exact same plot and situations.\"
\n\nHardened LAPD detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino) is called to a remote Alaskan town with his partner to investigate a brutal murder of a popular town girl (very Twin Peaks-esque). Early in the investigation, primary suspect and local mystery writer Walter Finch (Robin Williams) witnesses Dormer's fatal indiscretion that leads to a highly psychological battle to expose one another.
\n\n\"The overall narrative - the who-does-what-to-whom - to me, is the basis of these kind of psychological thrillers. To me, the action is primary and the first thing you have to nail down, and the characters begin to emerge from that,\" Nolan said. \"What you get when you're working with great actors is the opportunity when they come onboard to push the characterizations further in the context of the story. That to me is a more organic way of working than trying to be too specific on the page about details and the psychology of the character because you don't know who is going to play the part for starters.\"
\n\nIn the film, Pacino treads on familiar ground by playing a detective as he has portrayed police officers in past movies such as Serpico, Sea of Love and Heat. To balance the casting scales, Robin Williams was cast wholly against type to play the deadly calm killer. In a recent effort to become more versatile onscreen, Williams has been straying from his beloved funnyman roles to tread the murky waters of darker characters in films like Death to Smoochy and his upcoming film, One Hour Photo.
\n\n\"Once you got Al Pacino as a veteran cop, you've got this monolithic presence. But the nature of the story is the axis between these characters, the balance,\" he said. \"Then you've got to find someone to stand opposite him with equal weight. Robin is perfect, because I think he is equally striking to the audience as a movie star.\"
\n\nDormer and Finch do not sit on opposite sides of the spectrum of good and evil. Throughout the film, the audience becomes less sympathetic with the veteran cop as his past indiscretions are revealed, and Williams' portrayal of an unintentional killer is less obtrusively wicked than most.
\n\n\"The stories I like to deal with have lots of different facets and shades of gray, and they do function in this gray area where right and wrong is a little bit confused. For me, the characters that then inhabit that world take on the same mixture of right and wrong,\" Nolan said. \"I'm interested in that, because it is more like real life. I think that if you create stories, a theatrical version of that sort of multifaceted ambiguity, I think that it is going to resonate more, because people are going to be able to relate to it more.\"
\n\nWhere the original Insomnia used bright, bleached out lighting techniques for ambience, Nolan wanted a darker atmosphere for his film. Dormer has trouble sleeping due to the unflinching 24-hour sun, or \"white nights\" as they are called in Alaska. To instill a noirish feel, Nolan created dimly-lit interior sets. Like the threatening light filtering in the windows, Dormer's misdeeds are on the brink of exposure.
\n\nWhat is interesting in Nolan's films is his exploration of subjectivity and point of view. In all three of his films, the main characters tell the story, and in doing so infuse what could be well-worn plots with edgier angles.
\n\n\"My first film (Following) was about a voyeur, somebody like the rest of us who had a voyeuristic tendency. That character aspect always gives you a specific take on events. To me, it really gives me something to sink my teeth into in terms of telling the story,\" Nolan said. \"Hopefully, it makes the audience look at these stories in a slightly different way from a slightly different angle, and that way it's fresher and more entertaining.\"
\n\nWith each movie, Nolan has had an increasingly larger budget to work with. He made Following for almost nothing, and Memento for roughly $4.5 million. Insomnia was his first studio film with a large budget. According to Nolan, the amount of money really hasn't changed the way he makes movies.
\n\n\"It really hasn't made much difference because when you have more money, things are more expensive as well. There are all different kinds of compromises,\" he said. \"When you're making a no-budget film everything is a compromise. They are your own practical compromises, and you're not as defensive about them. You make the best of what you have. At the end of the day, it is all about the story.\"
\n\nNolan received some help from acclaimed film director Steven Soderbergh (sex, lies and videotape, Oceans 11) in making his first studio film. Soderbergh, who was the film's executive producer along with George Clooney, formed a production company called Section 8 that helped produce Insomnia.
\n\n\"It was a big help, and he came on as an executive producer. He is very keen to help other filmmakers who are sort of going through that, which is very nice of him,\" Nolan said. \"Steven specifically added the point of view from another filmmaker as opposed to a studio exec. George was very much a fresh pair of eyes on the film.\"
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| \n Pacino's Top Cop Roles\n | \n
\n![](\"/site_images/0605pacino.jpg\") \n Serpico\n1973 \nPacino plays true-life New York City cop Frank Serpico, whose honest-eyed idealism never taints even as his partners accept bribes from the drug dealers they are supposed to be tracking down. \n\nSea of Love \n\nHeat | \n
\n\n\"To me, a question worth answering is going to be unanswerable, because that is why it's interesting. I don't like films that take on a question like that and construct certain characters and events in which they can answer the question,\" Nolan said. \"That's intensely and unnecessarily artificial, because I don't think audiences demand that total closure of thematic elements - story elements, yes, but thematic elements not so.\"
\n\nInsomnia opened two weeks ago and claimed the No. 3 spot at the box office below Attack of the Clones: Episode 2 and Spiderman. With Nolan's continued success an open road lies before this young writer/director, and after Insomnia, most people won't want to wait to see which path he chooses.
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