Before Oppenheimer | Overlooked highlights of Nolan's debut film “Following”

Nolan's fans, myself included, are eagerly awaiting the release of Oppenheimer in July. This biopic will mark the renowned director's first foray into this genre, following his previous works that covered a broad spectrum from dark crime to science fiction and action, including Following, Memento, The Prestige, Dunkirk, and Tenet, all of which incorporated innovative narrative techniques.

It's hard to predict the narrative style changes in Oppenheimer, so it's better to wait patiently for the surprise.

As we wait, let's take a look back at Nolan's timeless works. I'll be writing a series of analytical features on overlooked elements in his films until Oppenheimer's release. Follow me and join the conversation.

To kick off this series, we'll begin with Nolan's first film "Following".

6000 Dollars

Born on July 30, 1970, in London, Christopher Nolan started filming at age 7 with his father's camera. While studying literature at a London university, he co-founded the "16mm" club with friends who shared his interests.

In 1997, at the age of 27, Nolan and his friends made their first true film, "Following," with an incredibly low budget of only $6,000.

The participants were full-time employees and could only meet on Saturdays to shoot for 15 minutes. Consequently, it took them a complete year to finish the movie.

Following，Nolan's first film, which he personally oversaw every aspect of from lighting to editing, garnered notice at the Toronto International Film Festival. His fresh narrative and filming approaches prompted him to leave behind his newcomer status and rise to prominence.

Mysterious loneliness

“More of an accout of what happened.I'd been on my own for a while and getting kind of lonely and bored. Nothing to do all day,And that’s when I started following.”

At the start of "Following," our protagonist Bill, who gives off the impression of a struggling artist, confesses to a police officer about his loneliness . The majority of the film's narrative is presented in this way, except the final moments. Viewers derive their primary pleasure from hearing individuals recount their personal lives.

Bill lives in a dirty apartment alone, without a job and spends his time reading Plato. Despite his dreams of becoming a writer, Bill lacks the courage to pursue it and instead fantasizes about blond beauties like Marilyn Monroe, whose poster hangs above his bed. As his loneliness becomes unbearable, Bill starts following strangers and observing their work and lives, finding pleasure in unexpected discoveries. This behavior borders on being psychologically abnormal.

Before the plot even began to unfold, I saw the young man as a character straight out of one of Dostoevsky's writings. When his thieving partner appeared, it was easy for me to connect him to the protagonist in Pickpocket, as both films share the theme of a lonely youth committing crimes for emotional reasons, guided by someone else. Although not as deeply philosophical as the leads in Crime and Punishment and Pickpocket, the young man in Following shares similarities with Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," descending into psychological turmoil due to extreme solitude.

The depth of human nature in a complex story

Critics often neglect the themes of "Following" due to its unique and Nolan-esque narrative style.However, there are embodiments of Nolan’s worldview and perspective on humanity throughout the film, elevating its exploration of human nature beyond that of mediocre works.

Bill told the police he followed people for inspiration as a writer, but the director provided another answer with rough visuals: Bill is a lonely young man who has been rejected by life and isolated himself. Following people has become his way of participating in life.

Bill recognized that he was close to going mad and tried to keep himself in check by setting logical guidelines, such as not following specific objectives, restricting the duration , and avoiding following women when it was dark outside.“when it stopped being random, that’s when it started to go wrong.”

Cobb's appearance disrupted the randomness. Bill had been following Cobb, but Cobb was aware of it all along and it turned out to be part of his calculated plan. When they met, they found that they both shared an interest in people despite their different methods.

Cobb and Bill had a passion for breaking into houses and stealing personal belongings such as CDs, journals, and undergarments. Their main goal was not money, but the excitement of disturbing people's normal lives. One of Cobb's tactics was to find each person's "box," where they kept their most cherished and valuable items. For Cobb, every item in the box had a hidden story about its owner, making it a coveted treasure to take.

Once, Bill purposely brought Cobb to his house to steal something. However, Cobb quickly realized that the owner of the house was a "twenty-something-year-old jobless wanderer who believed he was a writer" and left the place furiously without taking anything. Later, it emerged that Cobb had been following Bill secretly as part of his well-planned plot and must have been aware that the house belonged to Bill.

Under Cobb's plan, Bill follows a charming blonde woman and steals personal items from her home. As Bill gets to know her, he falls in love and confesses their theft to her. She tells Bill that she is being blackmailed with private photos, which are kept in a safe at an underground bar. Bill volunteers to retrieve them, but is caught and ends up harming a guard. Finally，He becomes the scapegoat for Cobb and the woman, and takes the blame for their crime.

This is a complex plan involving illegal bars, robbery, brutality, and mental illness. Nolan incorporates sufficient dark elements to create a style that falls somewhere between Tarantino and the Coen Brothers. Nolan's characters have greater literary complexity than those in their films, potentially because of his English literature major, and his storytelling approach is more stylized.

Integrating literary techniques into film narration

The time fragments in "Following" fluctuate like memories, appearing and disappearing without a discernible pattern, occasionally causing doubt about their authenticity.This actually comes from the “Defamiliarization” in literary theory.

The Russian Formalists’ concept of “Defamiliarization”, proposed by Viktor Shklovsky in his Art as Technique, refers to the literary device whereby language is used in such a way that ordinary and familiar objects are made to look different. It is a process of transformation where language asserts its power to affect our perception.

Defamiliarization emphasizes the significance of viewing and depicting things as if they are being witnessed for the first time. Nolan aims to accomplish this in his films. Prior to Nolan's movies， narration had been stagnant since Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon .

In "Following," Bill tells his story of his experiences when he turns himself in. Nolan views memory as fragmented and unpredictable, with questionable truthfulness. In the final shot, recorded objectively, Cobb, the mastermind behind the plot, is seen standing among the passing crowd, but disappears when a pedestrian blocks the camera.

Nolan believes this represents how events are captured on film, revealing the essence of things as they appear and disappear irregularly.

Nolan's originality both defines and confines him. Art is a unity of form and content, yet Nolan's works seem to focus more on the former in storytelling, and so do critics when discussing about Nolan. This problem is even more evident in his second film “Memento”.

Stay tuned for my next article where I will discuss this further.