Let’s have a mind and raise flowers.

Christopher Nolan’s 2002 modern crime classic “Insomnia” is one of my favorite neo-noir/crime thrillers of recent years.

The themes of the film are familiar to viewers of Nolan’s work and I’ll just go over some of the major ideas I picked up on the film.

Like most detective stories, this one follows the mythic theme of Oedipus: he searched for the origin of the curse upon Thebes but it was he all along that had caused it. This is the heart of “Insomnia” and many ‘anti-hero’ type tales.
The detective themselves must journey through the trial/gauntlet/case to confront and defeat their own fault.

In “Insomnia” we see this played out in the way Dormer and Fitch mirror each other and it is Dormer who ultimately confronts himself and succeeds in his inner-conflict.
We have a scene at the end where Dormer reveals his ‘first transgression’ to the Hotel owner in a type of confession speech, then he confesses to Burr in Fitch’s lake home, before he finally confronts Fitch (his shadow/mirror).
It is no mistake that as Dormer defeats Fitch, Fitch falls into the waters of the subconscious and slowly fades away. The demon has been exorcised.

Let’s just take a look at names in the film real quick:
Dormer: of course from the Latin ‘to sleep.’ Unfortunately for Dormer he only ‘sleeps’ at the end of the film–after six days without sleep. Fitch says this period of sleeplessness “beat his record” and we can presume that Dormer gets to “rest” on the Seventh Day echoing the week of creation.
Burr: Of course Swank’s “Nancy Drew” character of pure heart is the “burr under the saddle” of Dormer, who compels him to overcome his personal demons. She is the nagging conscience, the student who adores Dormer and in her innocence can perhaps live up to a higher standard of justice than Dormer.
Rachel Clement: The Hotel operator who gives shelter to Dormer is named after ‘clemency,’ or ‘pardon, forgiveness.’ She
appears throughout with a Christian cross on her necklace. It is Clement who oversees Dormer’s first confession and adds: “I’m not in the position to judge.”

There are a few uses of image to convey a thought:
Water of course is often used as an image of the unconscious and “Insomnia” is no different. It is the final resting place of Fitch, as I mentioned earlier and it is also where Dormer almost dies when he first clearly sees Fitch. In the mythos of doppelgangers it is storied commonly in German folklore that you will die shortly after seeing your double. It is true in the case of this film, but the interest is to see how he uses the time between seeing his doppelganger and his final demise. When he falls into the water among the timber, he is almost trapped there to sleep his last and eternal sleep but he emerges awake/alive albeit with his fate sealed.
“As a dog returns to its vomit” from Proverbs 26:11 is an image used to show Dormer is stuck in his old ways. After lying about the shooting of his partner Hap, Dormer vomits in an alley where there is a dead dog. Dormer returns to the same alley to further his web of lies.
The tell tale heart is alluded to when Dormer hides the incriminating pistol in the floorboard of his room.

The story follows the theme of Doppelganger also. The story of the ‘double’ or ‘id’ of the detective is common and in
“Insomnia” the idea is given to us in a number of ways.
To start, Doppelganger is a German word and we have other German names in the film (Hap Eckhart and Randy Stetz).
I have spoke of other allusions to this theme already but I will also note that in the last confrontation of Dormer and his Doppelganger Fitch at the lake house, Fitch says “Thank God you have me taking care of us.” to which Dormer says “There is no us don’t talk to me about us.”
This to me sounds very much like the ‘melding/synthesis/combining/combating’ that occurs in one of my favorite Doppelganger stories, Nabokov’s “Lolita.”
There Nabokov writes of the combat/melding of Humbert and Quilty:
“We fell to wrestling again. We rolled all over the floor, in each other’s arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us.“
I will also point out that at one point, Dormer holds his gun to the same spot on Fitch’s neck that he himself has a scar and it would be likely that if Dormer were to have shot Fitch at that angle and spot, a similar wound would have occurred.

Of course there is much to be said about motivation’s role in guilt and ends that justify means, but I will leave that to other
analyses of this great film.