Following (1998)

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What does it feel like following random people from the road? A stranger, someone whom you won't be following the next day. This is how the film starts with presenting our guy Bill, addressed as The Young Man. It was said that he does these for his writing, he wants to be a writer. With this first scene, I dived into the story. After all, it's from Cristopher Nolan with which he made his debut.

While the runtime was progressing we got one of his targets, a well-suited handsome guy but somehow he understood that he had been followed and came face to face with Bill, obviously he didn't expect this coming. Surprisingly, he turned out to be a burglar, he breaks into people's apartments and takes away their personal stuff. Ah, his name is Cobb, so with his first impression I was like, "Another strange character, who finds pleasure while making people realize 'what they had after taking them away' that's what his motto was."

Both of them broke into a few houses and seemed to be having fun with this new thing. Bill had strict rules to follow, one of them was that he doesn't follow anyone twice but he broke that rule first, he even mentioned this while narrating. One of their break-ins was a Blonde woman's apartment, he fell into a relationship with her. One moment, you would see Cobb being angry at Bill's approach to that woman because they shouldn't get in touch with the people they just robbed.

So far things seem pretty straightforward and then it starts unfolding its layers one by one. A black and white film, showing different scenes with different characteristics, together they would start to unite with some twists that would surely turn the tables in front of you. I could clearly see the maze Nolan created for us and solved in the end leaving us perplexed. So from a would-be writer who just follows people to gather experience for his writing would lead him to make his hands dirty with crimes and leave in a great trap with no probable escape. More than enough to describe the movie without spoiling the fun of watching.

I was watching a conversation from Christopher Nolan at Vice on Youtube, in which he mentioned how he managed Following with a very low budget and some serious cost-cutting. He made this black and white movie with the lack of a good camera, problems with the lighting system, he pointed out to us that in various scenes they used the lights from the window so they had to perform by the windows. Even though he couldn't introduce guns for his action scenes, he managed with a hammer, was that a drawback? Nope, even he fantastically managed the story centering the hammer. With a low budget, he offered us this one where someone may point out many production drawbacks but still it was good enough to applause. And after that, we all saw what he delivered one after another, no shortage of budget, no equipment lackings, and the masterpieces on our way.

Personally, I would like to rate it 7.5 out of 10. I guess everyone has watched it already. If you haven't and you are Nolan's fan then you should go for it. Happy Watching.