Review of Following (1999) by Brett S — 29 Sep 2013

There's a scene in Christopher Nolan's debut film Following in which the main character, Bill, and his friend Cobb enter Bill's apartment. On the door is a sticker of the Batman logo. In hindsight, it seems to foreshadow Nolan's future career aspirations with his award-winning Dark Knight trilogy. In this first film of Nolan's, Bill begins by talking to an older man, whom we learn later is a policeman. Bill has been picking people out of the crowd on the street and following them around London. The problem comes when he follows a man named Cobb (the name of Leonardo DiCaprio's protagonist in Nolan's later film, Inception, interestingly enough) who teaches him the finer points of breaking and entering. After following a woman, robbing her apartment when she's not home, and changing his appearance, Bill begins to have a relationship with this woman, complicating his relationship with Cobb. The catch is that the policeman from the beginning knows something that Bill doesn't.

With an estimated budget of just $6,000 (according to IMDB), Following succeeds in telling a tight, compelling narrative, never giving away its plot twists at first, despite its low budget. It boasts some surprisingly convincing acting from relative unknowns, and being shot in black and white, holds up well to more contemporary views of the film. It's quite obvious that from the start, Nolan was a writer/director dual threat, and his subsequent films share the style of narrative that Following utilizes, with nonlinear storytelling and plot twists that will make one's head spin. Following is a movie that is best viewed multiple times, and despite its age, it still holds up well.