Before Batman

Before superheroes, magicians, police men who can’t sleep and even before the insurance investigator with memory problems Christopher Nolan made an independent film called Following.  Shot in stark black and white and coming in at just over an hour it was the directors feature début.  Shot during free time around the cast and crew’s day jobs the film took over a year to film and was made for a tiny budget believed to be less than £6,000.

A young man who is an aspiring but unemployed writer starts following people in the street looking for inspiration until one day he is confronted by a person he is following.  The man calling himself Cobb explains that he is a thief.  The man starts going with Cobb when he breaks into houses.  Things get complicated when he starts a relationship with a young women whose house they have burgled.  But are things as they seem to be?  Of course not this is a film and a Christopher Nolan film at that!

The acting can be a little forced and amateurish at times *(see note on actors at the end) but the photography is suitably moody making it an interesting little film.  The film is not put together in linear order helping to keep the viewer interested as the story is revealed.  A technique that has since been used in films like 21 Grams as well as Nolan’s Memento.  The film ends with a good twist that is clearly signposted for the viewer letting us revel in the protagonists misfortune as the inevitable unfolds.  I am not overstating it when I say ending is reminiscent of Hitchcock in its delivery.  A good début film that shows signs of the director’s future brilliance.

*(Since the film was made over a decade ago Jeremy Theobald (The Young Man) has made an appearance in The Bill and had a tiny part in Nolan’s Batman Begins.  It is Alex Haw’s (Cobb) only known screen job.  Lucy Russell (The Blonde) has made a decent career regularly appearing in film and on television.)

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