“Insomnia” (1997)
Anticipating the international explosion in popularity of Scandinavian noir by a decade or so (Stieg Larsson‘s “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” first appeared in English translation in 2008), Erik Skjoldbjærg’s “Insomnia” is now better known stateside in its remake form, directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Al Pacino. But while the Norwegian original doesn’t have the same stylistic sheen, it’s perhaps even better than Nolan’s very good remake, especially in terms of a truly extraordinary central performance from Stellan Skarsgard that somehow suits the material better for being unclouded by the star vehicle baggage that’s inevitable when you cast Pacino (and an against-type Robin Williams). As the Swedish cop sent above the Arctic circle in Norway to investigate the murder of a teenage girl, Skarsgard is brilliantly ambivalent, a character who seems more interesting for being almost calculatedly complicit in his own moral degradation after he accidentally kills his partner and then lies to cover it up. As our hero is drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with the girl’s killer (the only one who knows the true circumstances of the partner’s death), Skjoldbjærg keeps the aesthetics unobtrusive, but the creeping sense of madness-level exhaustion and the almost malevolent power of the inescapable daylight burns constantly in the background throughout. It’s a twisty, very noir plot given a modern edge of believability by the unadorned style, which further helps other subthemes bubble to the surface, like the Scandi-noir staple of how, despite the region’s reputation as a progressive culture, it’s a society that represses rather than addresses a virulent strain of misogyny that can explode into violence at any moment.
“The Beat That My Heart Skipped” (2005)
It’s since been overshadowed by the director’s subsequent work —such as cult classic “A Prophet,” the starry “Rust & Bone” and Palme D’Or winner “Dheepan”— but “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” might still stand as Jacques Audiard’s finest work a decade on. As Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol and co. had done with classic American gangster films, Audiard here tips his hat to ’70s crime cinema, with the film serving as a loose remake of James Toback’s 1978 Harvey Keitel starrer “Fingers.” Here, it’s Romain Duris who has the lead as Thomas, a young man working as a low-level criminal having followed his father into shady business territory, but who starts to consider the possibility of a different life when he finds an opportunity to return to his one-time dream of being a concert pianist. There’s as much of Dassin or Melville in Audiard’s film as there is of Toback’s original, with a taut take on the crime genre that straddles pulp and realism neatly. Niels Arestrup (who’d also star in “A Prophet”) does very fine work as Duris’ father, and there are terrific supporting turns from, among others, Jonathan Zaccaï and Linh Dan Pham (keep an eye out for a young Mélanie Laurent too). But it becomes much more, with the film driven entirely by the internal crisis within its lead, a cultured bruiser whose sensitive inner soul can’t be entirely dampened down. Audiard sometimes makes it a little too convenient —of course Thomas’ mother was a pianist too, setting up a kind of “Mother. Father. Always you wrestle inside me” dynamic— but there’s such thematic rigorousness, such immense feeling, tenderness and brutality within Duris’ performance, and such muscularity and smarts in Audiard’s direction, that it doesn’t matter if you know where it’s going.