Following (1998)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by Christopher Nolan
Starring Jeremy Theobald, Alex Haw
Release Date April 24th, 1998
Published December 10th, 2001
Christopher Nolan's Memento, starring Guy Pearce and Carrie Ann Moss, is a time-twisting, mind-bending, spellbinding ride of genre busting film history and by far the best film of 2001. Now, Nolan's first film, 1998's Following is available to American audiences and like Memento it's a trip. British actor Jeremy Theobold plays the unnamed lead, listed in the end credits as the young man, a writer who while struggling with writer's block begins an unusual search for inspiration.
The young man begins following random people on the street, just watching them go wherever they go shopping, for lunch, or home. At first it's a minor fascination but it soon grows to an uncontrollable obsession. The young man however is able to rationalize his actions with rules like never follow anyone more than once or never involve yourself in the subject's life. These rules are of course broken, and eventually he's not just breaking the rules, he's breaking into his subject's lives with help of one of his subjects named Cobb. Cobb caught the young man following him and invites him to follow even closer as Cobb breaks into homes not necessarily to rob them but more to paint himself a portrait of the people's lives.
Following, like Memento is not a slave to linear storytelling like most movies. Instead, the film flashes forward and backward and tells its story with little visual clues. Cuts and bruises of an unknown origin foreshadow a fight. Unknown until we are shown later in the film where they came from. To say anymore about the film's plot is to giveaway too much. Following is full of great surprises that should not and will not be ruined by this reviewer.
The performances by British actors Jeremy Theobold and Alex Haw are brilliant, with Haw especially effective as the sly charismatic thief whose justification for his breaking and entering are so enticing you might want to try it yourself. Following is a brilliant con game that you willingly fall for not because your stupid but because it's so enticing, you want to fall for it.
With Following and Memento, we can see the evolution of Christopher Nolan as an auteur who may be the next Scorsese or Coppola, a risky artist whose films can't be classified simply by genre. The kind of artistic filmmaker who respects his audience's intelligence and plays to it and that is all too rare in this day and age.
