Christopher Nolan’s Most Underrated Movie Is Insomnia, According To The Director

For years, Christopher Nolan has been among the most discussed, praised, and fiercely debated directors in Hollywood. He’s the filmmaker with the most movies in IMDb’s top 250, he’s navigated the industry by tackling an impressive mix of original projects and intellectual property, one of his biggest movies arguably singlehandedly changed the Academy Awards forever, and every new film of his feels like a proper event. (You’ve likely seen the hype around his recently announced adaptation of “The Odyssey” coming next year.) His filmography has been combed over and argued about wherever cinephiles gather, and members of his passionate, almost cult-like fan base are willing to go to bat for any of his features.

While I don’t know if Nolan himself has weighed in about what his best movie is, the director has gone on the record about what he thinks his most underrated film is, which provides a fascinating glimpse into the way he views his own work.

In Tom Shone’s 2020 book “The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan,” Shone was able to spend a significant amount of time with the director over many years to talk in depth about each one of his movies, and Nolan pinpointed one of his earliest feature films as a project that may be the most unfairly dismissed movie in his entire body of work.

“I think, of all my films, [“Insomnia” is] probably the most underrated,” Nolan says in “The Nolan Variations.” He also provides a potential reason for why audiences may not engage with it on the same level as his other movies, and a reason why, for him, that couldn’t be further from the truth:

“People will say stuff like, ‘Oh, this isn’t as interesting, or personalized, as Memento,’ but there’s a reason for that. It’s from a script somebody else wrote. It’s a remake of another film. The reality is it’s one of my most personal films in terms of what it was to make it […] Of all the films I’ve made, it sits the most squarely or comfortably within the genre that I was trying to make it in. It doesn’t really challenge the genre, and that’s what people have come to expect from the other films I’ve made. But I think the film holds up very well. That’s not really for me to say, but every now and again I meet a filmmaker and that’s actually the film that they’re interested in or what to talk about. Yeah, very proud of the film.”

Three years before Nolan called “Insomnia” the most underrated of his movies, we at /Film came to that very same conclusion and wrote about our own reasons why we think that’s the case. I encourage you to check out that piece, and if you haven’t rewatched “Insomnia” in a while, give it another look. The film may not turn the crime thriller genre on its head, but it does feature absolutely top-tier work from Oscar winners Al Pacino and Robin Williams in a cat-and-mouse game that takes place in one heck of an atmospheric setting. If absolutely nothing else, it’ll make you appreciate the power of a good night’s sleep.