Following (1998)

September 12, 1998 (Toronto); November 5, 1999 (United Kingdom) release date

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Screenplay by Christopher Nolan

Music by David Julyan

Edited by Gareth Heal and Christopher Nolan

Cinematography by Christopher Nolan

Jeremy Theobald as the young man [Bill/Daniel (“Danny”) Lloyd]

Alex Haw as Cobb

Lucy Russell as the blonde

John Nolan as the police officer

Dick Bradsell as the bald guy

Gillian El-Kadi as the homeowner

Jennifer Angel as the waitress

Nicolas Carlotti as the bartender

Darren Ormandy as the accountant

Guy Greenway as heavy #1

Tassos Stevens as heavy #2

Tristan Martin as the man at the bar

Rebecca James as the woman at bar

Paul Mason as the homeowner’s friend

David Bovill as the homeowner’s husband

Produced by Next Wave Films

Distributed by Momentum Pictures

The director Christopher Nolan used only ambient lighting for Following, which adds to the dark, intense mood. He may have chosen black-and-white film for budgetary reasons, but this was also true for many classic films noir, and it works here just as well. The low budget, the black-and-white cinematography, and the urban landscape of London give the film its noir ambience. It almost seemed like a film shot in the 1960s (but not the 1940s), with the black-and-white cinematography and the suits and ties that Bill and Cobb wore.

Following has a structure that loops back on itself. It creates confusion for the viewer, which mimics the confusion experienced by the main character Bill. The whole story, except for the last sequence, is told in flashback, but the flashback is also nonlinear. The nonlinear narration forces the viewer to attend to clues about the story.

(This blog post about Following contains spoilers.)

The premise of the story (following people out of boredom and/or to get fiction ideas) is really stalking by another name. So the premise of the film is a crime, and the stalking leads to more crime—burglary, assault, murder. Bill follows other people because he’s lonely and bored. He admits as much to the police officer at the beginning of the film. His loneliness makes him especially vulnerable to Cobb’s machinations, and Cobb is all about manipulation. Cobb manipulates everyone, not just Bill, to get what he wants. In some ways, he’s the loneliest character, even lonelier than Bill, because he couldn’t care less about the few people in his life.

Bill made rules for following other people (don’t follow anyone if you find out where they live or work; don’t follow the same person twice), but he broke them anyway. The most important rule was the latter, but that was the rule that Bill broke first. He just couldn’t resist the lure of his own game. He created the game, but once he starts playing, he is lured from one bad decision to the next, as though he cannot resist what fate offered to him. Bill meets Cobb as a result of following random people, but he never realizes that Cobb is a walking time bomb. The moment in the film that Cobb shakes a beer can before handing it to Bill, I knew Bill was in trouble. The beer can incident was like a small psychological test that went Cobb’s way: Bill opened the can without thinking and sprayed beer all over. Cobb found out what he needed to know about Bill; he started small and ended big.

The final shot in Following is fantastic: Cobb, in medium shot, stands in a crowd on a busy London street. Pedestrians pass in front of the camera so close up that they are fuzzy. When the picture clears, Cobb is gone. And in the cut back to the police officer’s interview with Bill, viewers discover that Bill is alone again. The scene brings the film back to the beginning, when Bill is explaining why he follows strangers on the street and the camera shows pedestrians in the city walking in slow motion. The scene also adds to Bill’s angst—and to the viewers’, too. Viewers see the story from Bill’s perspective. Because of that perspective, I found his final predicament to be so unsettling.

All the main characters are betraying one another for various reasons. It’s a small dismal world in which no one can trust anyone else, much like many classic films noir. I don’t think there’s a single main character that doesn’t have dirt and/or blood on his or her hands in Following. There wasn’t anyone in the film who seemed the least bit sympathetic or relatable. It made it very difficult to root for anyone, although I was really dismayed by the predicament that Bill finally realized he was in while he is questioned by the police detective. The film put me in his situation, even though I was sure I didn’t want to be there. And yet I still didn’t want to see Bill have to be the fall guy. Following is one of those noirs that leaves the viewer unsettled, which I count as one of its successes.