Following (Christopher Nolan, 1998)

An early indication of Nolan's greater interest in cinematic sleight-of-hand than anything resembling human interest. Begins with an actually pretty sublime premise: an out of work writer begins stalking random people he sees, getting a vicarious thrill out of following them and attempting to piece together the world that is their life. It's a premise with many thematic possibilities: obsession, voyeurism, detachment, the alienation of large cities, the tendency among people to, in a way, think of the other people on subways and in crowds, standing in lines at the store, as a kind of window dressing for the movie of their own life. It could go into the meta aspect that film as a medium has opened us up to thinking of our own lives as a kind of movie, and to regard who are the major players and who are simply extras -- then take that notion and turn it on its head a little bit. Explore that kind of narcissism. I saw Following once before (it was released on video with a big new label to capitalize on Memento's popularity), but when I read the description on Instant Watch I was shocked that I couldn't remember anything about the movie -- and that Nolan had come up with such a ripe concept.

The reason I couldn't remember is that Nolan all but abandons the concept as quickly as possible. The film opens with the main character telling his story to an unnamed other character and the actual titular "following" only takes up perhaps the first 7 minutes of a feature that runs a little over an hour. After that the main characters begin some other, more blatant forms of voyeurism (breaking into people's houses to gaze at their things -- and also steal stuff). Then it attempts to be a kind of film noir pseudo-parody, resting a hapless character as the mercy of larger machinations that unfold into a characteristic Nolan twist ending. But, while it uses these genre types knowingly, and with a slight wink, it really doesn't offer any explication of them and their relevance to our larger world, or even the world of film. They exist only to make cineastes feel smart for catching his references, and Nolan look smart for so slyly referencing them. Worse, neither the beginning following sequences, the house-breaking sequences, or anything else, really, has a feeling of genuine tension. Its low budget is obviously no excuse, as the film actually does the opposite of many low budget features, relying far too much on a diet of facial close-ups -- refusing to show us the space we're supposed to be existing in and, therefore, mostly denying its reality. So if we must exist in a fantasy of his concoction, shouldn't we then at least enjoy being in that fantasy? The amount that this can be enjoyed depends solely on how charmed one still is by time narrative jumps, by how much seeing something deliberately incongruous makes you think "Ah! I wonder how he got beat up/why he has a new haircut/why he's wearing a suit!" and how much satisfaction you gain from that wondering. For me, it is, as I have mentioned and, likely, as I will mention, practically nil.