Follow us on Google News
Get the latest updates directly in your Google News feed
Christopher Nolan is truly one of the most visionary filmmakers working in Hollywood right now. Rarely does a director command high budgets, and final-cut privileges, and pull a huge star cast even for smaller roles. However, Nolan has managed to make conceptually intimate yet grand-scale films that have earned blockbuster numbers.
The filmmaker broke into the scene with his black-and-white indie thrillerFollowing, which earned him a reputation at film festivals. However, it was his sophomore effort,Memento, which made him a force to be reckoned with. He was nominated for an original screenplay Oscar for his reverse-screenplay format and the film put him on the map.
Nolan went on to makeThe Dark KnightTrilogy and other large-scale blockbusters likeInterstellar, Inception,and more recentlyOppenheimer, which won him the Oscar for Best Director. However, one film of his has nested itself in the corner of his filmography and is severely underrated. And no, it is notThe Prestige. That film is epic and has gotten its due.
It is his third film and his first foray into working with a big studio. Nolan directedInsomniain 2002, which was a remake of the Norwegian film of the same name starring Stellan Skarsgård. The remake starred Al Pacino and Robin Williams in the lead roles and was a commercial success at the box office. It was the start of a working relationship between Nolan and Warner Bros., which would last eighteen years untilOppenheimer.
Christopher Nolan’s Third FilmInsomniaIs An Underrated Classic
When one thinks of serial killer-based thrillers, filmmakers like David Fincher and Jonathan Demme come to mind.Christopher Nolanis known for his sci-fi epics likeInterstellar, Tenet,andInception, with ‘mind-bending’ being the keyword in his style of movies. However, the filmmaker tried his hand at a murder mystery early in his career after tackling the psychological thrillerMemento.
Before he was hired as a director forInsomnia, Nolan reportedly chased Warner Bros. to hire him as a writer for the film. According toSpliced Wire, the filmmaker pursued the project even before hebegan work onMemento,but lost the job to Hillary Seitz. In fact, he reportedly could not get even in the room with the studio’s executives.
All of it changed when filmmaker Steven Soderbergh watchedMemento. According toJoBlo, Soderbergh went into the offices of WB and convinced them to give Nolan a chance. The film had also made a significant impact after and hence, the director finally got a chance to make the film he hoped to write.
Christopher Nolan Cheekily Taking Credit For Timothée Chalamet’s Dune Role is Hilarious After Brutal Move Towards the Star in $732 Million Film
Insomniawas a remake of a Norwegian film of the same name with Stellan Skarsgård. Nolan reportedly watched the film twice and decided to remake it. It followed two police officers tasked with the case of a murder victim in Nightmute, Alaska. One of the officers accidentally kills his partner and pins it on the suspect, leading him to lose sleep due to guilt.
Nolan’s remake may have been more linear than his predecessorMemento, but it captured the delirium faced by Al Pacino’s character. With rapid cuts and interesting blocking, Nolan depicted the protagonist’s guilt-ridden insomnia. While it may rank lower among his other films,Insomniaremains one of his best works and set the stage for the auteur he came to be.
Christopher Nolan’sInsomniaRemake Even Impressed The Original Filmmaker
Despite being the only remake in his filmography so far, Christopher Nolan madeInsomniahis own. According to JoBlo, the filmmaker pitched WB his vision of the film as aHeat-esque take on the original Norwegian film’s story. He reportedly wanted to take the intimate premise of the original and increase the scale to Hollywood’s standards while still retaining the core.
Hence, the filmmaker even rewrote the script after Hillary Seitz had done more drafts of the screenplay. Though Seitz is credited as the sole writer, Nolan reportedly did some more work on the screenplay. He also took the suggestions and rehearsal work he did with Al Pacino and worked into the script.
Despite being a remake, Nolan’s iteration reportedly impressed the original film’s director. Filmmaker Erik Skjoldbjærg reportedly spoke about the remake and had no complaints about it (via JoBLo),
It was quite close, stylistically, to the original. I felt lucky that it’s such a well-crafted, smart film and that it had a really good director handling it, because as a remake I think it did really well, and it doesn’t hurt any original if a remake is well done.
Nolan reportedly also took stylistic inspiration from Jonathan Demme’sSilence of the Lambs, which was ironic considering Demme was reportedly the first choice to helm the remake.
Christopher Nolan Reportedly Learned A Lot Working With Al Pacino And Robin Williams
Al Pacinohas played a variety of roles in his career and he has played a cop in many of his classic films. However, the actor was a bit different in his approach towardsInsomnia. Christopher Nolan told Spliced Wire that he was initially taken aback by Pacino’s process and recounted that the actor wanted to know exactly what he was going to do with the material.
Nolan mentioned that there were times when he just had to trust the actor and let him do his thing, which he would later find out was the right choice. He said,
He would literally say to me, ‘You won’t see what I’ve done until you project it until you’ve seen what the camera photographed.’ And he was always right when he said that. More often than not, he was giving me everything I envisioned and offering me plenty more on top of that.
However, the filmmaker was reportedly most impressed withRobin Williams. A stark difference from his usually cheerful roles, Williams played the killer who knows and threatens Pacino’s character with the truth that he killed his partner (played by Martin Donovan). The actor played the deranged killer with such normalcy that it comes off as creepy.
Cast of Christopher Nolan’s Next Movie Revealed: 3 Actors from Previous Movies, 3 Fresh Faces and a Whole Lot of Mystery
Williams reportedly took inspiration from Jeffrey Dahmer’s interviews, particularly one where he would describe what he did with his victims’ bodies and the normal tone in which he would describe it. Nolan said of Williams’ performance,
I’ve seen his performance in this (movie), one way or another, thousands of times at this point, and it’s totally real. It absolutely stands up to multiple viewings. Most performances don’t. Most performances, after you’ve watched them and watched them and watched them, you start to see the tricks. It starts to get stale.
The filmmaker mentioned that his ordinariness is what made him so creepy and Williams played into it with perfection.
Christopher Nolan Himself FindsInsomniaHis Most Underrated Work
Christopher Nolan is currently working on his thirteenth film and it already seems to have a stacked cast. Actors like Matt Damon, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, and Charlize Theron have been confirmed to date without any clue about what the story is. The film is set to release in July 2026, which is Nolan’s usual month.
In the past twenty-five years, he has been in the industry, he has been celebrated by millions as one of the greatest filmmakers and is ranked among the greats like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, and more. Most of his films have been blockbusters. However,Insomniaremains one of his less-talked-about films despite its merits.
Christopher Nolan’s Next Movie Will Be About Vampires in the 1920s? We Hope the Rumors Are True
Nolan himself reportedly considers it underrated as he mentioned in the bookThe Noln Variations(viaX). He said,
I’m very proud of the film. I think, of all my films, it’s probably the most underrated. […] The reality is it’s one of my most personal films in terms of what it was to make it. It was a very vivid time in my life. It was my first studio film, I was on location, it was the first time I’d worked with huge movie stars.
He also mentioned that he loved to talk about the film with some of the aspiring filmmakers who came to him withInsomnia.
Insomniais available to stream on Paramount+.
Nishanth A
Senior Writer
Articles Published :2417
Nishanth A is a Senior Entertainment Writer at FandomWire, majorly focusing on TV shows with over 2,000 articles published. He has been an entertainment journalist for the past two years and a scriptwriter at various corporations before that, working on educational content. With a Communications, English Literature, and Psychology triple major, Nishanth usually covers news and analyses on Star Trek, particularly Strange New Worlds and The Next Generation; Doctor Who, the DCU, and more.A Nolan fan, Nishanth spends his time exploring the filmographies of various directors with an auteurial style or can be found making short movies of his own. He has also contributed as a feature writer for Film Companion, focusing on the South division.
