The first movie that Christopher Nolan made for a big Hollywood studio is still the most underrated film of his career — and even the director himself agrees. Ever since his groundbreaking Batman reboot made him a household name, Nolan has practically been a franchise unto himself. Along with Quentin Tarantino, he’s one of the only filmmakers whose name alone can attract huge crowds to movie theaters. No one else could make a blockbuster out of a three-hour biopic of a physicist, but Oppenheimer became Nolan’s highest-grossing non-Batman movie (and third highest-grossing film overall).
Nolan is one of the only directors left who can command a nine-figure budget for an experimental original story. He earned enough trust with Warner Bros. to get them to commit as much money to movies like Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet as they would a reliable comic book movie. Nolan’s next film, a star-studded adaptation of The Odyssey, will reportedly cost a whopping $250 million. But long before Nolan was trusted with the Batman franchise, he proved he could make a great mid-budget noir with his first studio production.
Insomnia Was Christopher Nolan’s First Studio Movie
After Following & Memento, Nolan Finally Teamed Up With A Big Studio
Nolan’s first feature was a no-budget amateur indie production. Following was sH๏τ sparingly on 16mm film stock, using available light and unknown actors. That movie was met with a warm enough reception for Nolan to command a slightly bigger budget for his next movie, psychological thriller Memento. Memento has better production value, bigger stars, and more ambitious visuals than Following, but it was still a relatively small indie shoot financed by a privately owned production company.
Insomnia grossed $113.8 million on a $46 million budget.
Memento proved to be a big hit on the festival circuit and earned a cult following. This success allowed Nolan to finally break into studio filmmaking. In 2002, he teamed up with Warner Bros. to helm an English-language remake of the 1997 Norwegian thriller Insomnia. Set in chilly Alaska, Insomnia is a tense cat-and-mouse caper starring Al Pacino as a grizzled detective and Robin Williams cast against type as a sadistic killer. It remains Nolan’s most underappreciated movie, and Nolan himself agrees.
Why Nolan Thinks Insomnia Is His Most Underrated Film
“The Reality Is It’s One Of My Most Personal Films”
While there’s plenty of love for Dunkirk and The Dark Knight, Insomnia remains criminally underrated. In the book The Nolan Variations by author Tom Shone, Nolan himself said that Insomnia is his most underrated film: “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.” While Christopher Nolan doesn’t get a screenplay credit on Insomnia, he did contribute to the script — he wasn’t just a director-for-hire — so it has his indelible mark all over it.
