Yesterday I had a chance to see Christopher Nolan's film from 1998, "Following". It is a film noir exercise where the audience is placed in the role of the detective, trying to understand the twists and turns of this film. As a puzzle it is meant to be engaging, but somehow, it give one the sense of a movie that is simply an exercise in problem solving and not a truly engaging film with a deeper plot.
Perhaps it would be possible to highlight the characters, in particular, the lonely loser who goes around randomly following others in a desire to breach the gap between himself and the rest of humanity. Or, we could focus on the debonair thief who looks like a stock broker but who in reality dedicates himself to breaking and entering into apartments to steal and, as a side venture, wreck havoc by selectively implanting or removing items. (Yes, we all have a private box that we consider the repository of our most meaningful items, and that we perversely hide while wishing to reveal it to others, but this conceit does not sustain a film.)
The female femme fatale character is one who is supposed to reveal a dual nature, dangerous but also vulnerable. This seems to be a stock character but, somehow, this femme fatale doesn't have the looks nor the persona to fill this role. It may be just my personal preference, but a frumpy blonde with a British accent is not exotic and, if anything, is even more conventional and off-putting than that of a New Jersey housewife. There are no sexual sparks in this film, no dynamism, and the obsession of one of the characters for this woman never rings true.
There are twists and turns and we see an evolving relationship between the two thieves, but things are never as they appear. There are certain non-linear elements to this film, a trademark for Nolan, who will anticipate and insert future scenes at various moments, offering tantalizing glimpses into the future. We can anticipate, for example, that the two improbable friends will have a falling out, and at the same time we can see that the woman will move from supposed victim to a more threatening character. But I can't escape the feeling that the characters are lacking in depth and that, instead, they are just chest pieces being moved around to further the aims of a plot that will be revealed to have a more conventional denoument, an instance in this case of unveiling as it is revealed that the innocent thief has been maneouvered into a cage from which he can't escape. It was all an elaborate set-up.
It didn't convince me. Was this all a frame-up to get the innocent voyeur/stalker to take the blame for a murder that was to be committed? It seems all to convenient, and it is difficult to believe that in real life all the actions can be orchestrated so smoothly. There is much more disorder, much more chance in real life, and this is part of the reason why, when I became an adult, I became disenchanted with Sherlock Holmes as a sleuth (but not as a character). One may rely on deduction and on the correct interpretation of clues, but deduction is not infallible, and it always seemed to me that sleuths of this type who relied on the correct interpretation of physical clues were on flimsy ground. The best clues are provided by human motives, and it is a truism that our motives can be sordid, greedy, predatory but also, occasionally, uplifting. There are characters that persist, roles that persist and that form part of our biological substrate. We all crave comfort and familiarity and security.
Ultimately, we may be predictable, but we aren't that predictable. Jungian archetypes may form part of the stock characters who populate our conscious (and unconscious) beings, but in this case, while there are certainly deceptive and predatory individuals, no thief nor psychologist nor sociopath is as masterful as the one portrayed in this film. It seems too elaborate, too smooth and, ultimately, too convenient. It would involve imposing certainty on a chaotic system, for while human motives run along familiar channels, they are still subject to the intervention and influence of dynamic systems. That is part of the nature of life in our modern-day societies.
We are perhaps too fascinated as a culture by individuals who seem to be amoral, and seem to have a surfeit of deviousness and intellect that are applied to the service of inscrutable motives. That is part of the appeal of these characters, the source of delicious anxiety as we reflect on the villain who is smarter than the rest of us, the financier who manipulates Wall Street, the politician who successfully coopts a cause and furthers his or her aims, the serial killer who taunts the police in the course of his or hers (usually his) predations. These characters work to achieve their hidden aims by manipulating others seamlessly and undetectibly. They have a charisma and charm that seduces others, but this is also something that can be fatal precisely because it is deceptive and because it is always uncovered. There is a weakness, a vulnerability, an Achilles heel or a fatal flaw that, by continuing my reference to Greek concepts, will reveal itself and lead to an instance of recognition that will doom the character. (At least we would like to think so, although I am reasonably certain that many of these manipulators are able to get away with their acts because nine tenths of them are never caught. However, this matters not for the aims of catharthis, where is is enough that one case be presented in a public fashion to show how tragedy but also the necessity of social sanction are demonstrated and fulfilled.) Perhaps that is the meaning of the motif that is investigated in this film, that of the hidden box that reveals one's true character.
However, this film ultimately seems like an empty, mechanical exercise. It is possible to have a wonderful, memorable film with great characters and little plot, but not the reverse. We have plot, we have shifts, but I care not a whit for the characters who don't convince me at all. Perhaps this film was the necessary prelude to Nolan's other films, for the haunting characters one finds in "Memento" and, especially, in his "Batman" films. In this case, the contents of the box proved to be inconsequential because it is the box that usurps the heart of this film.
Copyrights ORomero 2011
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