Insomnia

I've been mentioning recently that I've got a glut of foreign films on my DVR that I have to get through, which is why there have been more posts on foreign-language films recently than I normally do. (Indeed, I failed to watch one, Late Autumn, before it expired on my DVR.) I've also been trying to mix up the languages, not wanting to have a bunch of Japanese or French films in quick succession. This time, we get something rather less common, which is a Norwegian film: Insomnia.

Stellan Skarsgård plays Jonas Engström, a detective for the Norwegian police service out of Oslo together with partner Erik Vik (Sverre Anker Ousdal). Something Norwegian viewers would pick up on is the Ö in Engström's surname. It's a letter in the Swedish alphabet, not the Norwegian, which uses the Ø instead. Most dialects of Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish have a reasonable but not complete level of mutual intelligiblity, but Engström is originally Swedish and his Swedishness is a plot point in that characters either have difficulty understanding him or seem less willing to talk to him rather than a real Norwegian. (It's explained later in the movie that Engström is working in Norway because of a professional indiscretion back in his native Sweden.)

Anyhow, as the movie opens, Engström and Vik are on a plane from Oslo up to Tromsø in the far north of the country because a rather horrifying murder has taken place. Indeed, we actually see the murder play out before the real action, although it looks like it's portrayed as though it was filmed on a video camera instead of a movie camera. A young woman was subjected to some form of assault in an isolated cabin, and when the assailant pushed her against one of the walls, it appears she got stabbed by a nail or something that hastened her death. The murderer was very painstaking in trying to destroy any evidence from her body, cleaning out under the nails and washing her hair. Maybe he was a fan of old Hollywood movies and saw Kid Glove Killer. Tromsø doesn't have the sort of expert police detectives necessary to investigate such a case, which is why the two men are flying up from Oslo and crossing over the Arctic Circle at the start of the movie.

The murder occurred in late May, which is just after the sun set for the last time until late July, but also while school is still in session, explaining why the police detecives are able to go to the school where 17-year-old Tanja, the murder victim, attended classes. She had a boyfriend Eilert, but also apparently other boyfriends since a search of Tanja's apartment (she was an orphan living on her own) reveals dresses much too expensive for her to have bought with her own money. Eilert seems like one plausible suspect, but with other boyfriends, somebody else could easily have done it too.

And then there's a bit of a break in the case, as a couple of Tanja's classmates find the backpack Tanja used. The police don't reveal this information to the public, instead deciding that they'll leave the bag at the cabin where the murder occurred and say that they haven't found it yet, hoping that the murderer will come and try to pick up the bag himself. And indeed, this works, at least in getting the murderer to go out in public.

But it fails in other ways. The murderer goes to the cabin on a foggy day, such that the police can't get a good look at him. They also don't realize there's a bunker under the cabin, so when the murderer flees into the cabin, he's able to escape by going into that bunker, which has a passage out a good ways away from the cabin. The other big point is that Engström has to this point found himself unable to adjust to the 24 hours of daylight, and has not been able to sleep for a couple of days, which is really screwing up with his judgment.

So when gunfire erupts, Engström shoots back. Unfortunately, he doesn't hit the killer, but hits Vik, killing Vik. It's a tragic mistake, and one that ought to get Engström a suspension from duty for a while but nothing big, as long as he's honest. But the rest of the police think the killer may have done it, leading Engström to go along with that lie.

The actual murderer figures all this out, and uses this to try to get Engström to compromise the murder investigation. Meanwhile, Engström's insomnia is getting worse, resulting in his getting more erratic and violent, along with suffering from hallucinations.

One of the reviews I read suggested that Insomnia is more of a character study than a murder mystery or thriller, and for the most part I'd have to agree. It's a well-made movie, albeit one that I felt had a plot hole or two. Engström takes several hits along the way that you'd have to think would lead to multiple concussions, yet he seems to recover just fine from them, even though one of them has him bleeding from the head.

Insomnia was remade by Hollywood, moving the setting to Alaska since that more or less has midnight sun as well. (Well, Fairbanks, the biggest city that far north, is far enough north that dawn and dusk keep the night from getting truly dark even though the sun does set.) I haven't seen the remake, which is already over 20 years old, so I can't compare and contrast the two films. But the original is certainly worth watching.