Friday, June 19, 2015

The Following - Movie Review

This is Christopher Nolan's debut film, funded from his salary (budget $6000), made in 1998. Its shot in black and white (definitely not color). 'The Following' is listed as a neo-noir drama thriller - I have no clue what it means.

A young aspiring writer in London follows people randomly to get some inspiration for a story. One of the many people he follows turns around and confronts him. Writer finds that this fellow is a burglar - a sophisticated one at that. Not for him normal burglaries, he enjoys drinking wine, sifting through the material at hand, placing some mischievous items etc. The idea 'you take it away and show them what they had.' Anyway the writer gets inspired - not to write books - but to commit sophisticated burglaries. A blonde woman comes into the scheme, with bald bad man, this and that and suddenly we find writer has burgled the bad man's safe, killed a man etc and is the perfect set up to take on practically all the crimes that happened that year. It's all been a huge set up my dear. You've been had!

Moral of the story, stick to your original aspirations - like writing. Burgling and killing will land you behind bars. As for Mr. Nolan, he gave early indications of the kind of stuff he was going to make. I had to see this twice, read about it twice to even get some understanding of the movie. Just as I continue to with his other movies. So why watch - ah, that's why this man's a genius. I still feel compelled to watch.

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