Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Director: Christopher Nolan
As the end credits rolled, my husband mused, “I think it’s impossible for human beings to comprehend…”
And I broke in, “This movie?” Then I laughed heartily at my own joke.
We all know Christopher Nolan likes to craft mindbenders about altered perception, but he outdoes himself with Tenet. It’s on the verge of being too clever by half. Even if you’re attentive (and watching at home with the captions on) the plot is pretty hard to follow. Well, I mean, it is not hard to understand what is happening from one scene to the next. But the mechanism driving the story is unusually complicated and hard to wrap your mind around. People who disliked the convoluted ending of Interstellar should hate this!
But for me, just the idea of watching Tenet opened up dreams of parallel realities. As the movie started, I couldn’t help daydreaming of a world in which this surefire summer hit opened big in theaters as planned. Everybody turned out in droves, bought plenty of popcorn, packed into the crowded auditoriums. COVID-19 didn’t exist. The summer went on as expected. My mother was alive. Lots of people’s dead mothers were alive. Everything was normal. That’s how it could have (and arguably should have) been.
Tenet is not exactly the perfect movie. It’s kind of like Inception, except it has nothing to do with dreams, and it makes less sense. But it is the first movie I’ve seen in a long time that looks like it was made to screen in a movie theater. And I miss movie theaters. I miss going there without worrying about catching something awful. (Actually I always worried about that since I’m a bit of an agoraphobic germaphobe. But now my fears are founded, and I don’t like that at all.)
Of course the pandemic might have worked in this film’s favor. Compared to Nolan’s other work, Tenet isn’t great. But for a long time, it was the only new movie playing in theaters worth seeing. And now people too cautious to venture to the theater are highly likely to pay to see it at home. Any unusual box office performance can be blamed on the pandemic. That’s probably a blessing in disguise for this movie. In any other year, this movie would probably get a lot of negative reviews and bad word of mouth. But this entire year gets negative reviews and bad word of mouth from everyone, so the flaws of one movie pass relatively unnoticed.
I mean don’t get me wrong. When we bought this movie, I was perfectly aware that it already did get pretty bad reviews from the people who actually did see it in theaters. But I was inclined to pretend like none of that had ever happened. I wanted to see it for myself and imagine I was experiencing it on the biggest screen in the movie theater at the height of an otherwise ordinary summer. Now that I have seen it, I think the movie came out at the perfect time, under circumstances least likely to embarrass Christopher Nolan.
The Good:
This movie is frustrating in a number of ways, but (especially if you like Nolan’s other work) Tenet is definitely worth watching. In fact, if you care enough to see it once, I’d recommend seeing it twice. At least, I intend to because I’m sure I missed things (and I was watching with captions on and the ability to pause and discuss with my husband!)
The sleek look and intense sound of Tenet‘s theatrical trailers made me excited to see it months and months ago, even though I essentially had no idea what it was about (as was made painfully obvious when I tried to explain the movie to my mother).
I do applaud the person who made the trailers. They incorporate so many key lines of dialogue without revealing the context of any of these conversations. So unless you read up on the film, you go in almost completely blind. (After watching the earliest trailers, I came away with the wrong idea about the plot.)
I have to say, I was impressed with the film’s premise. I have no clue if Nolan’s idea is completely original, but it is certainly not over-used. Brilliant, too, is his explanation of where this danger is coming from. I mean, it’s a highly convenient way of introducing a mysterious thing while by-passing a lot of tough-to-answer questions. Late in the film, when we finally learn the devious scheme driving the actions of the antagonists, I immediately wondered, “Why?” And then my husband and I watched for the next several minutes asking ourselves and each other, “Yeah, but why? Why would they want to do a thing like that?” For a long time, I worried that no reason would ever be given. But when the antagonists’ motives are finally revealed, they turn out to be simple and elegant. This is my long-winded way of saying that the premise of the film actually makes a lot more sense than I initially feared it would.
One slight caveat, watching with the closed captioning on may give you a clue to what could be considered a plot twist. Certainly, it made me highly aware of something that I probably would not have noticed otherwise.
As always with Nolan films, the movie looks and sounds fantastic. I’ve become a fan of Hoyte Van Hoytema’s cinematography in general. And Ludwig Göranssen’s score is one of the strongest elements of the film. To be brutally honest, I found Black Panther‘s Oscar winning score totally unremarkable, but I’ve recently discovered I love Göranssen’s other work. The theme from The Mandalorian is practically my favorite part of the show, and the music here is distinctive and exceptional. I have a question about one aspect of the score, but I can’t mention it here without spoilers.
The performances in this film are pretty strong. Kenneth Branagh is a standout as one of the film’s villains. His work is a bit over-the-top. He plays the character like an old school Bond villain, but I liked both his vicious intensity and the surprising note of pathos he brings to a guy you’d never initially suspect deserves our sympathy. I’ve loved Elizabeth Debicki since first seeing her in The Great Gatsby, so I’m always thrilled when she gets cast in a movie that looks like it won’t be either a critical or commercial failure. Her mix of vulnerability and frustration makes her character work better than it should. (I have some serious questions about the way this character is written, but Debicki’s performance is good.)
Also fun to watch is Robert Pattinson, almost restrained here compared to the way he’s been chewing scenery in a lot of films recently. (Someday I should finish that review of The Devil All the Time.) Pattinson is beginning to remind me of Johnny Depp twenty to thirty years ago. His character here is delightful but hard to trust.
I spent much of the movie trying to place Dimple Kapadia. Turns out I’ve never seen her in anything before, though I swear she looks familiar. Maybe I have a future in her past. Who knows! She’s good in a small but significant role. And Michael Caine also has a cameo in a scene that’s clearly important for one big reason. Without it, Michael Caine wouldn’t be in the movie!
As the lead, John David Washington is not his father. I liked Washington in BlacKkKlansman, and I’m weirdly invested in his career success because he’s the son Denzel Washington, and I just love successful acting dynasties! But in this movie, I feel like something is missing from his performance. He’s got plenty of charisma, but I wish we saw a bit more depth. (The issue might simply be the way the part is written. The character is so deliberately mysterious that he seems less fleshed out than he could.) Washington does make a solid lead. His father is so gifted, though. I wish the part gave us more an idea of what the younger Washington is capable of. He is great with humor.
Some of the ideas Nolan toys with in Tenet are fun to kick around in your head. Sometimes I wonder if Nolan is actually trapped in some reality of altered or scrambled time, and his body of work is a desperate cry for help.
Best Action Sequence/Best Scene Visually:
The hand-to-hand combat in the airport vault is riveting to watch. Even at that early point, I was beginning to question the soundness of Nolan’s story and the efficacy of his delivery method. But I said to my husband, “This looks incredibly cool. I’ll give him that.” The gunshots even sound cool, and the struggle in the corridor is choreographed in such a captivating way. It reminds me a bit of that scene where Joseph Gordon Levitt dances all over the walls in Inception. Not only is this the best action scene in Tenet, but it’s the best action scene I’ve watched so far in 2020. And it almost made me cry, missing the movie theater.
Best Scene:
I think the short sequence on the train tracks near the beginning of the film is extremely significant. That’s all I’ll say.
Scene I Most Need to Re-Watch:
The opening scene at the opera house will probably look different on a second viewing of the film.
Best Partially Backwards Car Chase:
Just watch the film and decide for yourself.
The Negatives:
As I said, the film’s premise is more coherent than I expected, but Tenet stumbles in execution. Its pacing seems off, and while the basic concept is pretty cool, the actual plot quickly becomes convoluted.
I’m not sure this is a story that works well on the screen. As my husband noted, all of the most essential plot points take place off camera. I think I would like the movie better if it gave us a more stereotypical “twist ending” final sequence, even if that turned out to be a bit of a cliché. You know how the end of The Prestige is very much like, “Aha! But you never knew all of this information, and now you see the story is totally different than you thought on a first watch! Now let’s quickly look at all of these scenes again!” Granted that film is about magic, so not revealing how it was all done until the end is artistically effective, not just convenient.
But this movie merely alludes to the twist ending. It doesn’t really show us anything. We get to the end, and Tenet is like, “Aha! But you never knew this!” And I’m like, “Yes, actually, I guessed that almost immediately, but you still haven’t shown us why or how that worked.” We gain new appreciation for what some characters have actually been up to all along, but in the case of others, far too much remains a mystery. (Far too much!)
Nolan definitely has some thought provoking ideas, but to be honest, they’re a bit too thought provoking. As the story progresses, he gradually opens a big Pandora’s box of concepts, and there’s no way to stuff them all back in. Once he’s introduced all of these conceptual possibilities, the audience must contend with them. At one point, we start to hear about paralellel realities and multiple timelines. And that’s when I started wondering if the whole thing wouldn’t make more sense if this is all some kind of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” scenario. Working only with what we are actually shown, I honestly feel like this is the most plausible scenario, though I’m not sure that’s what Nolan intends. But think about that early scene on the train tracks, please, and tell me that every single element of the movie that follows is not present there. (If Nolan did intend this, he would probably say so more clearly. But I know from reading imdb forums 10-15 years ago that this theory would highly appeal to many of Nolan’s most devoted fans.) I find thinking too hard about any of Nolan’s films often leads me down a rabbit hole like this. You know how in Inception, Saito and Mal say incredibly similar things, prompting the fan theory that the characters are actually the same person? But then it’s impossible to know if Nolan’s work is really that intricate, or if he’s just kind of vague when writing and repeats things a lot because he feels like it.
If this isn’t meant to be like “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” then I ask you–what exactly is going on in that scene on the railroad tracks? Will a second viewing make this more clear to me?
Despite not being bowled over by this film, I would 100 percent for sure watch a sequel. Maybe I would get some of my answers then. The trouble is, as I conceptualize it, a sequel to Tenet would actually be a prequel, and I think that the material that would naturally be in such a prequel belongs in this movie to make it more accessible. I mean, yes, I get the idea. And yes, I can imagine earlier events for myself. But wouldn’t it be better if you showed them to me, Christopher Nolan? Then I would know what you actually intended and not just what I can create in my own imagination based on the material you’ve given me.
The ultimate villain’s objective is clear and makes a kind of sense. The intermediary antagonist’s goals and behavior are equally comprehensible (if melodramatic and extreme). But what is the protagonist actually up to? That’s the part that’s a bit murky to me. I need some backstory, even if it’s given to me as it happens to him. Possibly when I watch the first scenes of the film again, I will understand them in a different way. (Already, I remember a lot of significant details which were harder to recognize as significant as I watched them.) If it turns out that this film must be viewed multiple times, or in unusual ways in order to be fully appreciated, then its genius will rise in my estimation. But the fact remains that it’s a bit inaccessible on a first viewing.
Many times in my life, people have told me, “You have to watch this film really closely. It’s hard to follow.” Then I watch and don’t find it at all hard to follow. More often than not, that’s what happens.
Tenet is hard to follow. In that aspect, it’s like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or maybe one or the more intricately plotted Bond films. If you pay attention, though, the plot does make sense and is comprehensible. My big complaint is that none of the questions about set up and origins ever properly gets answered. We learn how these things could possibly have been set up, never specifically how they were.
“I’m not sure these ideas work best as a movie,” I said to my husband. “The story seems a bit convoluted for the screen.”
“It might be better as a book,” he suggested.
“Yes,” I said, “but then he’d be forced to answer all the questions he keeps putting off for another time.”
Also, given something that Kat knows initially that the audience doesn’t, I’m confused about why she is upset about her situation to the degree that she is when we first meet her. Granted, something she learns later makes the situation even more awful, but she does not know that when first voicing her complaints.
The more I think about the movie, the more I like both the concept and the story. But the actual execution needs work. The story could be told more effectively. Material belongs in the film that simply is not there. And many conversations that are in the film do not necessarily belong. Michael Caine’s part isn’t even actually needed. It seems mainly there to give Michael Caine a part. I’m always glad to see him, so great, but I’m just saying the screenplay could have been reworked a bit to improve the movie’s accessibility and impact on the audience.
Overall:
As usual, Christopher Nolan’s latest film is extremely cool, cool concept, cool visuals, cool score, cool actors. The concepts are fun to think about, and some images conjured are breathtaking to behold, but the story does not advance on screen in the most effective way. I will watch it again, personally, but people wouldn’t be entirely wrong to skip it the first time.