Critics reviews

The most remarkable aspect of Nolan's debut feature, Following, is that it retains the same themes Nolan returns to repeatedly throughout his filmography. That's oddly encouraging because even as the budgets of his movies have ballooned... Nolan appears transfixed on the intersection of time and identity.

Shot in black-and-white and on location, but also on a very strict budget, Following is necessarily unrefined, but it already showed signs of one distinctive cinematic vision and the director’s trademark affinity for complex, non-linear narratives.

[Following] served as a prototype for the themes that the films of Christopher Nolan would tackle for the rest of his career... [The film] is undoubtedly raw, but it moves with the same clock-like precision as Nolan’s later works. Every gear was custom-made to fit.

[Following] gave a taste of [Nolan's] knack for cinematic discombobulation... [playing] fast and loose with chronology.

Let's talk about something it does very well and the reason I watched it as a chaser to The Invader: its evocative use of real crowds and busy streets. The condition under which the film was shot—again, guerrilla-style over a year's worth of weekends, with no real crew and a handheld camera—puts it in conversation with its themes. It isn't a very sophisticated film, but it is very self-reflexive, in the way that its limited means reflect both the misdirection and the voyeurism of the plot.

You can certainly see the seeds of Christopher Nolan’s later work in his 1998 debut feature “Following"... [his] affinity for convoluted chronological structure and the final twist, in which all the jigsaw plot pieces snap into place... You may wonder just how necessary/integral they are, but they help make the film fun to watch, even if they don’t necessarily add up to a whole lot.

Following is that rare debut in which a formidable creative personality seems to have sprung upon the scene fully developed. All of Nolan's abiding obsessions are in evidence: the boldly nonlinear chronology, the liquid sense of identity, the involuntary spasms of memory.

...Following has been rigorously constructed on every level, but there's an illusion of improvised spontaneity that's usually not present in the director's work. Objects, which are always imbued with multiple portentous meanings in Nolan's films, are cannily used in Following to keep us apprised of the shifting chronologies as well as to assert the nameless man's metaphorical longing for a life that's permanent and tangible, a life he ironically pursues by wandering the streets.

Without being bombastic, Following takes itself damn seriously, and its relationship to Nolan's later movies is unmissable; it's a real treat to see the biggest studio director of today whittled down to novella-size. The movie is less "claustrophobic" for its lo-fi synths and black-and-white 16mm than for the perverse thrill you get from knowing its conceptualizer-in-chief is the guy walking (often, running) with the camera.

The generic pay off is a little disappointing after the edgy, character based scenes of exposition, but [Following] is acted and directed confidently enough to work well as a wry mystery thriller.

Nothing is more important to Nolan than ideas and the human psyche, showing that even with his debut he was tasteful enough to structure his pictures round storytelling while delving into the human mind... Chris Nolan’s first is immature, but involving nonetheless and a worthwhile start to a career worth, ahem, following.

Nolan's first feature is by no means without promise, even though the film tries to run before it can walk with regard to its ambitious, noir-like narrative, a tortuous, convoluted melange of flashbacks and fast-forwards that come on like Nic Roeg to the power of eight.