Saturday, September 06, 2003
I've just seen the original version of Insomnia that got remade by Chris Nolan. The usual thing is to say how the original version wipes the floor with the remake but that's not the case here, they're both competent but not particularly exceptional films. It was interesting to spot the differences. In the original the character that Al Pacino plays is not under threat of being investigated for misdeeds, neither is there anything about him falsifying evidence 'back home' to convict someone he knew to be guilty. Therefore when he shoots his partner it's a clear case of the partner being in the wrong place at the wrong time (and the partner is actually wrong, as the cop told him to go left and he went right). And at the end the author falls through the pier and drowns, the cop getting to drive away rather than confessing his sins and dying as he does in the remake. The cop in the original is more unlikeable as he does start feeling up the dead girl's teenage friend while driving her out of the town, then later almost rapes the receptionist at his hotel. It seems strange that he doesn't get made to pay for his transgressions, he actually gets away with them all. There's an ambiguity about him which never gets explained, why did he lie (as Al Pacino's cop does in the remake) about the circumstances surrounding him shooting his partner. Pacino's Will Dormer is able to rationalise everything as being for the greater good or not his fault, Stellan Skarsgård's Jonas Engström doesn't seem to have that process going.
We do however get a better idea of the effect lack of sleep has on Skarsgård than Pacino. The former does seem to genuinely look worse and worse as the film progresses, which possibly explains what happens between him and the teenage girl and later the receptionist, whereas Pacino didn't really seem to change that much at all. We don't have the director of the original doing little breakaway moments or having his cop loose control of his car to make the climax more exciting. Neither does he have him chase the author over a row of logs. They meet in a ski-lift rather than a ferry, although it does seem a bit implausible that they could have any kind of privacy in such cramped surroundings.
We do however get a better idea of the effect lack of sleep has on Skarsgård than Pacino. The former does seem to genuinely look worse and worse as the film progresses, which possibly explains what happens between him and the teenage girl and later the receptionist, whereas Pacino didn't really seem to change that much at all. We don't have the director of the original doing little breakaway moments or having his cop loose control of his car to make the climax more exciting. Neither does he have him chase the author over a row of logs. They meet in a ski-lift rather than a ferry, although it does seem a bit implausible that they could have any kind of privacy in such cramped surroundings.
