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The Best of British Cinema: ‘Following’ (1998)
Christopher Nolan’s slippery neo-noir debut captures his huge potential in its stylistic flourishes and intelligent form
Let’s be clear — a director as famous and acclaimed as Christopher Nolan simply doesn’t require the sort of lengthy introduction I often give to lesser known filmmakers. It would be a waste of both my time and yours to tell you about his huge blockbuster successes, their formal strength and their narrative ambition (unless we were talking about the fiercely energetic Tenet, a film I still would say is majorly overlooked), so we will skip all of that here today. Instead, this review will focus in detail on Following, Christopher Nolan’s debut film, and will reach into its production, Nolan’s early career and more while referring at times to Tom Shone’s terrific Nolan biography The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries and Marvels of Christopher Nolan, a book I have recommended before and continued to bring up as a great read for any fans of Nolan’s work. Everything discussed, really, will come from before Nolan became the Christopher Nolan whose name we readily recognise attached to some of the most culturally significant films of the 21st century so far — from before Memento sky-rocketed his career towards Hollywood super-stardom.