Following (1998)

For some reason I had always thought Memento was Christopher Nolan's first movie, and I was all set and prepared to watch it again.  Then I found out his first was a small, minimal-budget noir film that barely makes it to the feature movie length called Following.  Since his success with the Batman trilogy his movies have largely been big-budget affairs, full of CGI and practical effects, with big stars and lots of money invested.  Memento was the only one I could remember that was not, so I figured it would be interesting to see what he could do when he had to keep things simple.

The Young Man (Jeremy Theobald) is an unemployed writer who begins to follow random people to see where they go.  Originally making sure he only follows people once, his curiosity gets the best of him and he starts repeatedly following a man with a bag.  That man turns out to be Cobb (Alex Haw), a burglar who is more in it for the voyeurism than for the valuables, although he still makes sure he makes money off what he can.  Cobb begins showing the Young Man the ropes.

During this time the Young Man meets the Blonde (Lucy Russell), a lady who claiming to be blackmailed by her former lover (Dick Bradsell) who also happens to be a mobster.  She talks the Young Man into breaking into her ex's club to steal some pictures of her from his safe so she can break free, but unfortunately there is a much more elaborate plan at work against him. 

While largely it is a simple story with a twist at the end, even at this stage Nolan can't resist shaking things up.  Instead of presenting the story as a linear narrative it jumps around to different times in the  before bringing tying the story up in the end.  While this may seem needlessly complicated, playing with time has become pretty much a Nolan trademark, and what he does in Following is pretty much a dry run for Memento.

The acting isn't too bad, the cast is kept to a minimum and there is just a handful of shooting locations.  That is more surprising than seeing the unconventional story telling, but it does show that he already had a sense of how to do things even if, unlike a number of other directors, he didn't come from as much of a film background.  He also heavily rehearsed with the actors what was going to happen, getting better performances and limiting the number of takes they would have to do.

While Memento does work much better at telling a mystery story with an unconventional timeline this is still interesting to see.  Jeremy Theobald and Lucy Russell were also able to use this movie to springboard into further acting in both movies and television, as well as occasionally making cameos in some of Nolan's later films.  While Following may occasionally seem more complex than it really needs to be, it's still interesting, even if most of that interest is curiosity to see what one of the biggest modern directors was up to at the beginning. 

Following (1998)

Time: 69 minutes

Starring: Jeremy Theobald, Alex Haw, Lucy Russell

Director: Christopher Nolan