November 24: Following (1998 -- Christopher Nolan)

★★★★

This is a surprisingly fun little film, enjoyable in its own right and and a pleasure to see from our vantage point now much further into Nolan’s career. The director’s first outing, Following is a film shot in black-and-white and complete with a dark mood, pervasive corruption, high-key lighting and a femme fatale in the person of the Blonde.  It also borrows the trope of starting with a cop interrogating our main character, and as is often the case in this genre, the hero doesn't fare well in the film.  It’s easy to see Following’s film noir roots.

None of this is very far from The Dark Knight Rises.  Not completely black-and-white, the later film is nonetheless often monochrome, and there’s clearly the same oppressive dark mood in both, even heightened in Following.  There’s also a fair amount of darkness and contrast lighting in Dark Knight Rises, and it has both a penitent and a full-blown femme fatale in Catwoman and Miranda Tate, respectively.  The correspondences are uncanny; without seeing Following, I wouldn't have picked up on the film noir elements in The Dark Knight Rises.

Yet watching Following is more fun than watching Nolan’s latest Batman.  Following is taunt and its elements, purposeful; in fact, in the reversal at the end of the film, the viewer even reinterprets all that has come before.  Something as insignificant as signing a credit card turns out to have been important to the story, unlike the rambling in Dark Knight Rises that can dwell on elements that don’t resonate later.  Why did Bruce Wayne spend all that time in an underground prison?  There is no such sprawl in Following.  This film is economical rather than sprawling and fat; every detail, item and even gesture has purpose.

This movie also has narrative engagement and suspense, two things lacking in The Dark Knight Rises.  Nolan’s fractures the plot of Following into four periods and intercuts them for the story, but there are always clear markers to cue the viewer into the respective parts of the plot.  We find ourselves watching the film as something of a puzzle, but this story structure also engages us with questions about how these parts are connected.  Why did the Young Man get cleaned up?  How did he end up with the bruises?  This type of narrative is somewhat contrived, and though Nolan uses it just as effectively in the later Memento, it’s not technique that would bear frequent repetition.  Here, though, it pulls us into the story.

And Following has lots of squirm-inducing suspense.  The film’s basic concept of following a stranger for fun is creepy and raises fear in the audience of the consequences; the tense scene when Cobb confronts the Young Man gets its suspense from this setup.  There’s also an extremely suspenseful scene when the two break into an apartment and Cobb casually goes through the residents’ personal items, even having a glass of wine in their kitchen.  That suspense peaks when one of the residents returns home unexpectedly.  And in yet another scene, the Young Man has to tape cash to his body while in constant fear of being caught.  That scene is has an intensity lacking at any individual point in The Dark Knight Rises.

Following has originality, creativity, engagement and suspense.  Darkness pervades this little movie, but it’s a sharp, cutting darkness rather than the continuing thud of a club.  This debut makes us hope that Nolan is eventually able to make contact again with the deftness and precision of this early work.