A ‘Tenet’ Review

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet isn’t just a wonderfully made globe trotting action film, it is more importantly the first time in two decades that Nolan has been this self aware and it seems that the machine has gained sentience.

In all sincerity, Christopher Nolan was the first filmmaker that I truly loved. I remember so vividly seeing Batman Begins in the theater at the age of eight, which I want to quickly shout out my dad for taking me to because he almost certainly SHOULDN’T have taken me to see it, but I digress. I had learned to love comic books and superheroes from my dad; we’d go to comic book shops, watch cartoons together, and we saw basically every superhero movie that came out from 2005 to 2015 together. I mention all of this because seeing Batman Begins was unlike any film I had seen up to that point. Bleak, violent, and cynical, Begins was an establishment of a kind of film I would become enamored by for many years. I didn’t have any real frame of reference for a filmmakers style. As mentioned in earlier posts, I’d probably seen Ocean’s Eleven twenty times by the time I went to see Batman, but I didn’t understand that it took just as much effort and panache to create a movie that was such a good hang as a movie that is so upsetting and visceral. It wasn’t until I saw The Dark Knight three years later that I learned the name Christopher Nolan and began to build the monument to him in my mind. If seeing Batman Begins was an awakening, The Dark Knight turned me into a zealot. I saw it three times in the theater as an 11-year-old who didn’t have any money and pestered my parents to give me money to go see it the first time, Dad and I saw it two weeks later. From the ages of 11 to 17, if you asked me what my favorite movie is, I probably would have told you The Dark Knight.

From that I learned who one of my favorite filmmakers was. I knew his name, I knew where he was from, I learned about his writing partnership with his brother Jonathan. I read about Nolan’s crime caper of the mind, Inception, before I even saw the trailer which was a real milestone for me as a young cinema nerd. Nolan movies became events and seeking out his back catalogue became required viewing. I spent almost 400 words describing my love for the movies of Christopher Nolan so that you know what I’m about to say comes from someone with the utmost admiration for him: Christopher Nolan movies don’t make sense and are some of the best examples of “auteur filmmaking” that don’t hold up to scrutiny. Watching a Christopher Nolan movie is like going to a nice restaurant and instead of having a delicious meal with a small dessert that leaves you satisfied, you are given an amuse bouche of themes and then a full sized Carvel ice cream cake for dessert. He inserts himself into every film he makes, he gives you a hint of a theme in each film that isn’t actualized or followed through, basically every protagonist he writes has a dead wife, he writes incredibly complex stories that are more like spiderwebs than the mazes that Ellen Page’s Ariadne in Inception would design. The only real exception to these criticisms is Dunkirk, which I would imagine comes from such a place of reverence for him that he didn’t care to make it something other than a beautiful tale of communal sacrifice and bravery.

Despite my own recognition of his failure to build a solid narrative foundation, I also recognize that he may be the greatest big budget visual filmmaker since Stanley Kubrick. I want to be self aware enough to know that I rarely care about a poorly designed MacGuffin or large plot hole because I am just taken by how the film looks and the motion taking place on screen. He designs incredible set pieces and couples those with such distinct static shots of his characters, utilizing a team of visual artists that he has surrounded himself with throughout his career. I am fully in on the Nolan style, despite all of its flaws.

I give you all of this to come here and say that Tenet is everything I could have dreamed of from Christopher Nolan. From the opening sequence to the final moments between John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, I was enthralled. I made mention of my dad bringing me to see Batman Begins and instilling in me a love of comics, but more than a love of absurd of caped crusaders, my father taught me to love stories about absurdly handsome men saving the world from absurd shadow figures in the form of the James Bond franchise. Christopher Nolan has said multiple times that he’d love to direct a Bond film, and one can draw clear lines between Tenet and the Bond films of the last 25 years or so. Nolan decided he could no longer wait for the Broccoli family to give him carte blanche over the franchise and took it into his own hands.

There’s a number of things one can expect from every Bond film with these five being at the top of the checklist: traveling around the globe to scenic locales, gorgeous people wearing beautiful clothes, a romantic interest who needs to be connected to our villain, a major plot device that makes no sense, and incredible, memorable set pieces. Tenet takes place on three continents and across seven countries, from the streets of Mumbai and London to the Amalfi coast in Italy; Nolan uses the visual medium to show us the most attractive things you could put on a screen at any time. There’s a reason why I used the still of John David Washington and Elizabeth Debicki on a speed boat in Italy because I genuinely couldn’t think of a more appealing image to use for any movie, frankly. There’s also just so much going on with the clothing in this film. Hats off to costume designer Jeffrey Kurland for putting Robert Pattison in so many wonderful suits that always have a touch of flamboyancy to them; along with the suits and scarves, I really want to say that wearing a polo under a coat can have serious dad at a wedding vibes, but the perfectly trim polos that John David Washington has on so frequently in the film are an incredible look. In keeping with Bond tradition, there is a stunning woman in the film that is connected to the big bad of the story, but there is a distinct difference in what we have come to expect from a film like this. I don’t view Elizabeth Debicki’s role as some subversion of the genre where she gets her moment to save the day, but rather as an opportunity to let a brilliant and charming performer be brilliant and charming. She does a superb job of using her face to speak for her at any given moment, showing us fear, desperation, guilt, anxiety, and contentment without speaking. Debicki is such a fascinating figure with a career that’s a microcosm of what you can expect from a talented, young actor in 2020. She’s got a role in the MCU, she has taken on starring roles working alongside directors with clear vision on smaller projects, portrayed a beloved and universally known icon, and now stepped in as the female lead on a massive blockbuster (or what would’ve been in any other year, I’m not here to litigate whether or not Nolan and Universal should have waited to release this film.)

Let’s get down to what manages to simultaneously make and break Tenet: the central plot device. I’ll be speaking mostly in general terms of the plot and trying not to reveal too much, but frankly the plot makes so little sense that it doesn’t matter. In as few words as possible, here’s the plot: John David Washington is an American operative that ends up entangled in a plot to save the world that is largely unexplained to him, but he is given a single word that will open all the necessary doors for him :”Tenet”. He’s joined by Robert Pattinson who assists him in preventing their annihilation at the hands of Kenneth Branagh’s character who is the linchpin in an effort to end all life on earth. There’s lots of reversing time and discussions on the do’s and don’ts of what amounts to time travel, but I want to use those do’s and don’ts as a way to express my feelings on the plot of the film. This is where it gets into difficult territory in terms of spoilers, so feel free to skip to the next paragraph, I won’t blame ya. I began this piece with a statement about Nolan becoming self aware and the “machine” gaining sentience and it’s in the plot of the film where that is most evident. Most Nolan films begin with a central premise that is multi-faceted with many moving parts and converging and diverging plot lines. He also rarely fulfills all the plot lines in his movie, almost always sets rules in place that are broken and not remarked upon, and consistently creates plot holes that are actually bad (I want to say that most people pointing out what is considered a “plot hole” is them thinking everything must be explained by a character and those people shouldn’t write dialogue for films, also CinemaSins is bad. Like really bad, and that version of film discourse is annoying). Tenet is constantly telling you what you can or cannot do when in reversed entropy and frequently breaks those rules, but I want to argue that is extremely intentional. The ins and outs of time travel are not easily explainable, I’ve read articles, listened to podcasts, and looked over infographics to try and figure out what would actually happen if one were to travel backward of forward in time. Back to the Future would have you believe you have full control over your own destiny when going back in time, Avengers: Endgame wants us to think that the future is destined to happen either way, with only minor difference in what can happen, and Primer is a good movie that hurts my head. Tenet tells you their supposed rules, but then puts a character like Neil in to go through the effort of explaining the Grandfather Paradox and then answer the question of its validity with “I don’t know”. I could be reading into it too much, I could be trying to push a narrative that isn’t there, I could be a delusional fan who wants to feel validated. It just seems to me that Christopher Nolan decided that he loved the idea and didn’t feel the need to go through the process of writing a much more boring film about what it takes to change one’s entropy and exact a temporal pincer movement. Along with that, he’s leaned fully into inserting himself into his films. He likes to have characters in his films that are an idyllic version of himself: handsome men in suits that are the smartest people in the room that have tragic relationships with the women in their life placed in the center of the frame. Cobb in Inception, Bruce Wayne in his Batman trilogy, Robert Angier in The Prestige are all Nolan avatars that are the heroes of their respective stories. In Tenet he goes as far as to create a character, Neil, that is simply the more handsome version of Nolan. A brilliant, handsome, tall physicist clad in beautiful suits and scarves with floppy blonde hair, Nolan simply inserted himself into the movie as a companion to our Protagonist.

While there’s much more to be discussed about the merits of Nolan’s newly found self-awareness and his efforts to make a Bond film, what we all want to see out of a film like this is an incredible set piece, and Tenet has those in spades. I know I’ve brought up Christopher Nolan far too many times in this review, but I am so impressed by his commitment to a crew of people that he trusts to accomplish his vision. Van Hoytema has taken over director of photography responsibilities for Nolan from Wally Pfister and does an excellent job of using the visual aspect of cinema as a pacing device and shoots action better than most working cinematographers. Linger on a piece of information no longer than is necessary to explain something and then keep pushing forward. Ludwig Göransson, best known for winning the Oscar for Original Score on Black Panther, handles his responsibility with care and joins a long line of great Nolan film scores, though I have mixed feelings on having a Travis Scott original song in the film. I don’t want to turn a discussion on how the film looks into me reiterating the credits, but I do want to applaud both long time Nolan collaborator and production designer Nathan Crowley, and editor Jennifer Lame, who has lent her talents to some recent favorites of mine, namely Midsommar, Marriage Story, and Frances Ha. These artists come together to produce what is a technical achievement in almost every facet. I can’t overstate my love for the opera house siege that opens the film. The camera stays in constant motion and only slows down to key us in on some vital information and then continues its path forward, couple that with Göransson’s soundtrack to match the pace and it is one of my favorite stretches of any Nolan film outside of the semi-truck flip in The Dark Knight. In keeping with protecting the viewing experience of others, I won’t spoil the chase scene in the middle of the film, but if the rest of the film was awful, it would still be worth everyone’s time to see it for that entire sequence. It manages to accomplish all of the things I look forward to in a set piece: tightly choreographed movement and action, distinct and novel visuals, and a moment or moments where you find yourself saying “I can’t believe this is happening right now”. That last point may be a better tagline for the film than “Time runs out”. My biggest gripe with the film is the audio mixing of the dialogue, during the set pieces that I genuinely adore, there’s an inexcusable amount of muffled and indiscernible speaking which I think will pull a lot of people out of the action because they want to hear what these characters are saying to one another and find themselves so focused on translating that they are missing on the chance to follow through with the mantra “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it”.

In a sentence, Tenet is an expertly created mess. The plot is one that seems to intentionally not give clear answers to questions and makes very little sense, 30 percent of the dialogue is basically gibberish, and the self aware nature of the film is either pretentious and stupid or a work of genius. And yet, I find myself wishing I had it on Blu-Ray already to watch it weekly. To make this analogy more on the nose, watching the film is like reading a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona, if the dials had all the numbers in the wrong order. It’s so tightly wound and expertly crafted, but the core purpose of these two products, the ability to read time and the plot of a film, is disheveled. Maybe there’s a pattern to be understood so the watch can be better read, or maybe the watch is an exquisite waste of money.

Let me know what you think of Tenet! If you’ve got a film you’d like to see me review or a theme to tackle, email them to middleofthebarrel@gmail.com.