Review of Following (1999) by Nick O — 13 May 2010

Logistics aside, Following is an extremely well-crafted noir thriller. Chris Nolan's second official movie accomplishes the basic task of making you think. The man has made a name of himself by perfecting (and I love this word) mindfucks. No better way to describe it. Memento blew a character study out of proportion. Following deprives humanity from one.

Jeremy Theobald and Nolan are good pals, Theobald appearing in Nolan's Doodlebug, Larceny, and a small cameo in the famous Dark Knight. Here he headlines as the "Young Man", a writer with a habit of following random people in a shameless attempt to understand them. Not in a stalker way, or a manner expected to lead somewhere. He's a curious man. This takes a turn for the worse after the young man meets expert thief Cobb (Alex Haw), who claims his actions will never cause him trouble.

The movie is a planted seed trapped inside an enclosed dome. Its branches and leaves grow to ballast height and begin to overlap one another. Their paths unwillingly cross. Nolan's sense of unsettling conventionalism and understanding of the mind are what made his Batman movies as well as his "smaller" flicks (after Batman I should probably put "smaller" in quotes) so powerfully raw. Stripped from all elements, Following seems to benefit from it.

It explores the secret lives of everyday people, which is the main reason Following is a disturbing paranoia. What's nearly perfect, inside and out, is Nolan's continued investigation at civilization in general. What can be defined as human? Following is more an endless question than it is a present verb.