Following (Christopher Nolan Film)

As a fan of all of the Christopher Nolan films I have seen, from the Batman series to movies like Inception, I was excited to watch another film of his this week. I was most interested in watching Following, The Prestige, and Insomnia. I decided on Following. As is typical of Nolan films, this movie featured an abnormal way of telling a story. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I am a person who usually enjoys movies when I see them, but I am often hesitant to watch them because they are so long and I do not want to use 2-3 hours of my day on a film I might not like. Following was perfect however, as it is just a seventy minute film. I was never uninterested in the movie, and my attention was kept for the entirety of the film. Of course, without the additional time, this means that the movie must focus mainly on plot and leave little extraneous information. Occam's Razor was taken to this film, and where it lacked in some scenes that may appeal to larger audiences, it made up for in its original and intelligent plot. As one of Nolan's earliest films, and I believe the first one he directed, it looks to be a very low-budget movie. It is in black-and-white (perhaps unrelated to the budget), the sound quality was surprisingly bad, and there were only 4 or 5 real actors. It reminded a bit of a short story that Nolan wrote and decided would make a great short film. I was left in suspense the entire film, and I enjoyed every second of it.
         Besides just the plot, there are always other aspects of film to look at. As far as content goes, one of my favorite things about this film were the interesting characters. Seeing into the mind of a thief through Cobb was one of the most intriguing aspects of the film. The way he went about his thievery and played mind games with those whom he burgled were perplexing. He does things like let them know he reads their diaries because he thinks that deep down that is what all people want. Besides just this, the characters in this film have an extraordinary level of confidence that left an impression on me. They all speak with ease and seeming honesty, pry into each other's lives, and get out of trouble easily. The plot and the characters were definitely the most memorable parts of the film. The only big downsides to this film were the audio and visual qualities. The audio in this movie often sounded very muffled, and mixed with English accents and quick speaking, it was often hard to understand what characters said, especially at pivotal moments in the film. In things like fight scenes, punch noises or slams were either very fake sounding or totally absent. The visual quality also did not impress me. It was in black-and-white, which did not bother me much, but the movie looked to be shot on a low quality camera. Both of these problems, however, also could have been due to the fact that I was watching this on a shady streaming website. Besides all this, I really enjoyed this film and recommend that you see it. It is a memorable film in the classic style of Nolan, but much shorter. I would give it 8.5 hammered fingers out of 10.