Christopher Nolan has been among the most discussed, praised and hotly debated directors in Hollywood for years. He is the director with the most films in the IMDb top 250he moves through the industry handling an impressive mix of original projects and intellectual property, one of his greatest films arguably single-handedly changed the Academy Awards foreverand each of his new films feels like a proper event. (You've probably seen the excitement around his recently released adaptation of The Odyssey coming next year.) His filmography is combed and debated wherever cinephiles congregate, and members of his passionate, almost cult-like fan base are willing to go to bat for any of his features.

Although I don't know if Nolan himself has thought about what his best film is, the director has spoken about what he thinks most about it. underestimated is a film that gives a fascinating look at the way he sees his own work.

In Tom Shawn's 2020 book The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Wonders of Christopher Nolan Sean was able to spend considerable time with the director over many years to talk in depth about each of his films, and Nolan pointed to one of his earliest features as a project that may be the most unfairly dismissed film in his entire filmography. body of work.

"I think, of all my movies, ('Insomnia' is) probably the most underrated," Nolan says in The Nolan Variations. He also gives a potential reason why audiences might not engage with it on the same level as his other films, and a reason why, for him, that couldn't be further from the truth:

"People will say things like, 'Oh, this isn't as interesting or as personalized as Memento,' but there's a reason for that." It's from a script that someone else wrote. It is a remake of another movie. The reality is that it's one of my most personal films in terms of what it was to make (...) Of all the films I've made, it's the most concrete or comfortable in the genre I've tried It doesn't really challenge the genre, and that's what people have come to expect from other films that I have made over and over again I meet a filmmaker and it is actually the movie they are interested in or talking about. Yes, very proud of the film."

Three years before Nolan called Insomnia the most underrated of his films, we at /Film came to the same conclusion and wrote about our own reasons why we think so. I encourage you to watch that piece, and if you haven't seen Insomnia in a while, watch it again. The film may not turn the crime thriller genre on its head, but it features absolutely top-notch work from Oscar winners Al Pacino and Robin Williams in a cat-and-mouse game that takes place in a beautifully atmospheric setting. If nothing else, it will make you appreciate the power of a good night's sleep.