Note: Some mild spoilers for Tenet follow, including a brief explanation of something hinted at by the trailers. There's a sequence at the beginning of 2010's Inception that explains everything you need to know to understand the rest of the movie. It teaches you that extractors have the ability to enter dreams, to steal secrets. We also learn that it is possible to introduce dreams into dreams. If you die in a sleep layer, you will wake up in the layer above. We learn that these dream diapers are made by an architect. Lots of details are packed into one short heist, giving you the information you need to enjoy the next two hours. In Tenet, the full movie is the equivalent of this section. You won't really understand what's going on in this movie until it's finished, and even then, you'll probably need to do some more reading. Without getting too close to the heart of the film's plot, Tenet talks about time "reversal"—that is, the notion of going back and forth in time, using technology that allows you to change direction. The Tenet trailers hint at this by showing what happens if you fire a gun that has been 'reversed': the bullet returns to the chamber and the act is called off. Really though, this is just the hint of how the film explores the reversal of time. I am not going to explain it to you in more detail, surely you are reading this with the possible intention of seeing the movie. All you need to know is that a Russian crime lord named Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) intends to use this technology to destroy the world, and the protagonist (John David Washington) works for an organization. named Tenet, who wants to stop him. It's all wrapped up in a Bond-infused action movie, albeit an extremely confused one for much of its length.
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(Image credit: Melinda Sue Gordon)
More confusing than the origin
The protagonist teams up with another Tenet agent, Neil (Robert Pattinson), to stop Sator before the end of his apocalyptic plan. The hilarious relationship between Washington and Pattinson is a highlight of the film and a part of the film that can be enjoyed unannounced, like the cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema (who worked on Interstellar and Ad Astra), and most of the excellent. action scenes. Tenet is a smart movie in many ways, but it's also extremely complicated for a blockbuster that cost $200 million to make. It's hard to see mainstream audiences doing it the way they did with Inception; it's a little too confusing at first glance to really connect like Nolan's previous movies did, and the basic idea of it isn't all that imaginative. hook as Inception. When Nolan has played with the notion of time before, in Memento, for example, where events are told backwards, or in Interstellar, where relativity means the main character's children are older than him, that's done elegantly. Every moving part is explained, one way or another. In Tenet, it's only in a chase sequence deep within the film that the fundamental notion of "inversion" begins to be properly pieced together. And that's a weakness of the film: It means that the first act of the film is full of distractions from the plot, especially those involving the character of Elizabeth Debicki, Sator's abused wife.
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(Image credit: Melinda Sue Gordon)
All in the details
Nolan ends up paying for it all: But I'd argue that large parts of Tenet aren't satisfying to watch, just because Nolan puts coins on the table without telling you enough about what's going on. It's not a question of intelligence as a viewer: the film simply withholds too much information. You have to absorb a lot of detail before Tenet gives you the context to unravel it all; it's too much work to make the movie entirely likable at first glance. In fact, I would even argue that Nolan purposefully created this movie to be more satisfying in later viewings, which is bold, but asks too much of viewers. The premise is exciting, yet it's like a twist on James Bond tropes. He's having fun riffing on the kinds of scenes you'd expect from a Bond movie: Q explaining his gadgets, M explaining the mission, meeting informants in a dangerous environment, he even has a 'Bond girl', well she's not by any means. traditional. Everything that exists under the umbrella of a fancy, intricate sci-fi movie is great. Between that and Inception, which includes riffs on Her Majesty's Secret Service's latest raid on the base of Blofeld Mountain, maybe Nolan finally got Bond out of his system. It's impressive that Nolan is the only filmmaker who can raise a budget of €200 million to make his big spy action movie, and he's definitely using that money to show you some things you've never seen before. on the big screen. But while Nolan's other movies have managed to be both superstardom and crowd-pleaser, I'm not sure Tenet does. You have to work a little too hard to fully enjoy it. Tenet is now available in the UK and select US cities starting September 3.