12. Following (1998)
Excluding his shorts, like the surreal Doodlebug, you’ll not find Christopher Nolan in a rawer state than his 1998 film Following. An impressive debut from an artist still finding his voice, Following centers on a nameless writer (Jeremy Theobald) whose habit of following strangers in London gets him dragged into a serial robber’s schemes. It is a lean and mean 70-minute neo-noir, one that “represents the peak” of what he could do “using [my] own resources,” according to Nolan in a 2014 VICE interview
Following sees Nolan as his own cinematographer, relying on natural lighting and employing an abundance of close-ups and vérité movement – techniques evocative of the French New Wave than the studio formalism he’ll come to have. Following may not blow anyone away with the power of a thousand suns, but it’s undeniably the work of a storyteller already assured in themselves to draw in attention.
