Insomnia
Christopher Nolan’s remake of the 1997 Norwegian film Insomnia was made back in a time where remakes were rare and actually worth watching. It also gave us something we hadn’t seen much in movies at that point: Robin Williams as a bad guy. But perhaps labeling his character of crime writer Walter Finch as a bad guy is a little too simplistic.
Williams plays Walter as someone who is not completely evil, but rather as a person who loses their moral compass after killing Kay Connell, a 17-year-old girl who rejected his advances. What results is one of the scariest and most haunting performances of the actor’s long career.
Now, this is a role where Williams could have gone all Hannibal Lecter on us, but instead he portrays Walter Finch as an ordinary man who is nothing extraordinary. This is just a guy who, if you passed him on the street, you wouldn’t take notice of, and that in part allows him to get away with murder.
Williams shows how Walter inhabits a morally gray area, and this becomes even more apparent as he plays a cat and mouse game with Detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino in one of his best performances in recent years). Williams and Pacino work brilliantly off each other, and their characters serve as mirror images for one another; they both know what it’s like to kill someone, and they feel justified in their actions even if those actions go against their own belief system.
Williams’ performance in Insomnia served as one of those constant reminders that he was an actor who became a comedian, not a comedian who became an actor. It also allowed him to go against type, something any actor would jump at the opportunity to do, and it showed just how wide a range he had.
While people tend to bring up Good Will Hunting and Awakenings as prime examples of his work as a dramatic actor, Insomnia shows him taking more risks than almost any other role we’ve seen him in, and it’s a performance I’ll never forget.
-Ben Kenber