Christopher Nolan
Following

The majority of self-proclaimed aficionados of Christofer Nylon, when they gush about their favorite films, complete with backstories and nerdy conjectures (Nolan's fans are as charming as the niche fanatics of progressive rock, they belong to the same evolutionary branch), never, absolutely never mention Following, his first feature-length film (70 minutes is enough). More than that, many of them don't even know it.
It must be a masterpiece - I think.
Much like when I encounter "fanatics" of Pink Floyd who don't know the first two albums, there is an unsettling number of them. From a purely logarithmic perspective, according to which the sum of the two factors is irrelevant compared to the sustainable rate proportional to the hydraulic factor, whose description of the major semi-axes of the vector transits directly to any internal alternation (considering the terms of electromagnetically stable conditions, one could take advantage of the constant dividend, although it sometimes leads to an influential temporal axis), a good 78% of fervent PF admirers only and impudently listen to the post-Barrett era.
Incidentally, on Debiase, the film wasn't even listed among the works of the (well-known) director, so I had to add it for the occasion.

Enough chit-chat.

The case of Lesson No.1 applies a bit here: it's the stylistic/conceptual practice work that precedes the masterpiece, which in this case is Memento (not even this film receives the praise it deserves, quite the opposite). "Practice" is a term used only in relation to the 2000 film: this is an above-average film in its own right and, for me, the director's second best, quite ahead of the others (often clichéd Americanisms with annoying acting akin to "look how poised I am," and gratuitous pomposity rampant, smug and arrogant; I don't know what happened to him after 2000, maybe money, excessive secretion of chorionic gonadotropins...).

There's this guy: unemployed, aspiring writer, scruffy, living in a dump, who at some point develops the mania of following random people on the street, without any specific purpose, simply empathizing and letting himself be carried away by their lives for a short period of time. He justifies this by saying he wants to find an interesting subject for his typewriter, but in truth, it's mainly boredom that drives him.

Between one stalking and another, the young man "encounters" a young, elegant, very self-assured thief named Cobb (the only character in the film with a proper name [...]), who convinces him to join in committing small robberies without profit motive in the homes of the people he follows. The young man is enchanted by Cobb's methods, his calculating actions, and his "philosophy," and he begins proceeding practically under his "spiritual guidance," finally starting to type on his machine.
I won't go further as the narrative structure makes everything practically a "revelation," not that I would have gone further otherwise.

The first thing that catches the eye is the aesthetics. A grainy black and white that leaves you enchanted, with a relaxing low brightness compensated by a sharp contrast that makes it incredibly "cool," almost Caravaggesque. I would watch the film on repeat just to be delighted by the cinematography; every frame could be a poster. The black and white then perfectly suits every aspect of the film: whether it's the urban settings, the noir atmosphere, the sharp dialogues (often seasoned with subtle yet piercing humor), the characters' appearances, their "low profile".
The direction is relatively simple, movements and shots are not particularly "sophisticated", but their rawness and effectiveness are.
Everything is focused on achieving maximum results with minimum effort (starting from a budget close to zero), just enough to not miss (almost) anything, and without sacrificing anything from a formal point of view: the work is meticulous, the result flawless.

Stylistically and aesthetically, the film can be summed up as a slightly more sophisticated Jim Jarmusch: very indie, dry, and minimal in editing and dialogues (not an extra line, a tirade, a wasted shot), fast-paced, sharp, clever, yet very refined: at times, it felt like watching a Godard film, especially in close-ups and during dialogues. [A mention also for the very natural acting. (Each scene could be shot a maximum of two takes to save on film, so at the start of shooting, the actors had already been through many rehearsals)].

As the film progresses, an increasingly gloomy, Lynchian, almost surreal atmosphere begins to emerge (enhanced by an ambient and ethereal musical score), with the story spiraling into significantly more "dramatic" tones, leading to a finale where the oppression physically disturbs the viewer: absolutely Kafkaesque. This involvement is partly due to the unique way in which the story is told which, just like in Memento, on one hand helps to nurture our curiosity, and on the other makes us empathize more with the difficulties and disorientation experienced by the protagonist.

Conversely, from a screenwriting point of view, the film may seem a bit too contrived and unclear at the end. By not wanting to be didactic, it leaves reasonable room for interpretation without committing significant logical or writing errors. Something creaks in this sense, but the more than legitimate "allegorical" reading of the film suspends any disbelief.

Returning to the "way the story is told," Nolan's methodical temporal deconstruction, presented here in a radical form as no one else had done before, is already perfectly realized, with segments of the future and present interchanging, unraveling the puzzle that we, just like the protagonist, will have to piece back together.

The temporal diversity of the various fragments, however, would be indistinguishable to the viewer without a visual device, which Nolan finds in the change of the character's (not just aesthetic) appearance, capable of being useful in this sense but also not being purposeless, indeed decisive, in the story. The film, despite being brief, manages to develop even a character evolution of the aforementioned character, which makes him at least more self-assured, thanks to the theft partner who indirectly acts as a "pace-setter" for him.

This is one of the elements demonstrating how the director went beyond mere attention to detail care.

The highly subjective sensation that this "representation" of time elicits, setting aside the narrative and the author's intentions, is that there is no before or after: time is not a vector but a point, without dimensions; everything, past, present, and future, happens always, at every moment, and this "every moment" is actually a single, infinite moment. We experience time, but in reality, given its relativity (for example, inside a black hole it doesn't flow), we could very well imagine that all existence is a single instant. Perhaps not entirely a far-fetched interpretation of the poetics given the themes of his subsequent Interstellar.

Conceptually, along with Memento and The Prestige more than others, Following could form a trilogy of "doubt," meaning the appearance that conceals unsuspected truths, the paranoia sadistically instilled by society in people, who, subdued, end up doubting everything, becoming increasingly suspicious, cold, inhuman, to the point of madness. Thus culminating in a deeply pessimistic conception of man (and therefore of society, of social living), driven solely by self-interest and willing to resort to all sorts of exploitation to achieve it. Alongside this "negative" theme there is a "positive" theme, a true cult for Nolan, which is the praise of control: the ability of the individual to calculate and control their life and that of others, man's ability to manipulate nature, the repudiation of chaos, the obsessive quest for 'universal' order, ultimately, the praise of the "mind".
And it is precisely this component that virtually inhibits the presence of feelings in almost all of Nolan's films.
This is also the key theme that (after watching it) will make us see Following from the right perspective: we will approach the film "on the downbeat" but we will realize it is "on the upbeat".

It is nevertheless remarkable how Nolan, from his very first work - certainly deepened and expanded later - had his own distinctive and well-defined poetics which, for better or worse, has made him one of the most unique and recognizable authors in the history of cinema.

The difference between the two characters will ultimately be emblematic: a low-tier aspiring (intransitive) writer, insecure, somewhat naive, seeking "stories," passively living, so much so that they experience (from the outside) other people's lives and a thief, cold and calculating, creator of stories (they live, participate actively in their own and others' lives, modifying, shaping).
The thief tells his "story," mockingly, to the writer.

Inspiration. It's the term I feel like associating with this debut. The inspiration of the young talent brimming with ideas, combined with resourcefulness from a lack of means, and the carefree freedom of the first work (as Nolan himself partially recounted in an interview).
In conclusion, I would describe it as a Memento without the perfect and unique form/substance union, with the form only partially serving the narrative, where the characters and the story are more a pretext for carrying out a cubist operation on the narrative framework.