Nolan Countdown Part 3 - Insomnia

Hello everyone and welcome to Some Like It Scott's latest limited series: Nolan Countdown. Each week in the lead up to Christopher Nolan's latest film, Tenet, the two Scotts and countdown special guest, Jay Habib, will be working their way through Christopher Nolan's full filmography in chronological order, starting from his humble beginnings making "budget" films like Following and Memento, all the way to his most recent days making mega-blockbusters like his Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk. This time, Jay Habib has actually seen these films (quite a few of them, quite a few times actually), but there will be fresh takes, crazy theories, and deep conversations about one of the most interesting auteur filmmakers of this generation all along the way. Join us each week!

On part 3 of the countdown, Scott, Scott, and Jay revisit what some people consider to be one of the most mainstream or "straightforward" films in Nolan's oeuvre (maybe a final proof-point to show the major film studios that they can trust him with hundreds of millions of dollars and a high-value IP, like say Batman): Insomnia, the 2002 psychological detective thriller American remake of a 1997 Norwegian film. Nolan has the significant talent of Oscar-winning Al Pacino, Oscar-winning Robin Williams, and Oscar-winning Hilary Swank at his disposal, and makes use of them respectively as Will Dormer, a troubled veteran LAPD detective on loan to a small fishing town called Nightmute, Alaska to help solve the murder of a local teen; Walter Finch, a reclusive, local Alaskan writer who the murdered teen had a secret relationship with; and Ellie Burr, a youthful, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed local detective who idolizes Pacino's Dormer. As with all Nolan films, however, there's a catch, as Dormer slowly sinks into delirium due to the insomnia that he suffers while in Nightmute, thanks to the perpetual daylight there during the summer, as well as the guilt he suffers from an event that happens early on in the movie. Wrestling with both his sanity, his guilt over past actions, and the murderer of a dead teenage girl, Nolan sends Pacino's Dormer on a conflicted manhunt of Williams's Finch that sees Nolan experiment with action set pieces for the first time, while still exploring darker themes of morality and the blurred line of right and wrong. The countdown trio give their thoughts on the central trio of performances, how successful Nolan's first true action set pieces were, and whether the technical aspects of this film work as effectively as they might have in his previous film.

 

Sign up for our newsletter here!

Patreon: www.patreon.com/MediaPlugPods

Twitter: @MediaPlugPods