Christopher Nolan's TENET is his 2020 action thriller / science fiction film about an unnamed CIA agent, "The Protagonist" played by John David Washington, who enters a world where they can reverse the flow of time, known as "inversion," in order to stop the end of the world.
The title itself is a palindrome - the same forwards as it is reversed. This is a metaphor for the film as a whole, which narratively has scenes that fold in on itself, moving forwards and backwards. And it's a metaphor for time inverted scenes. If this sounds complicated, it's because it is.
Tenet is the name of a secret organization which employs The Protagonist to track down technology which can “invert” entropy, and allow bullets and people to move backwards through time. This technology uses “Turnstiles” which you can enter, and reverse the flow of time. Because this changes the physics of the world, one has to wear breathing masks, to prevent suffocation.
Russian weapons dealer Andrei Sator, played by Keneth Branagh collects artifacts, which when combined, will create an “algorithm” capable of catastrophically inverting the entire world, and thus, destroy it. He has a death wish, but also believes that by destroying this world, he’ll create a new one.
Tenet is also a name, coupled with a secret gesture, (much like in Freemasonry) which secret agents respond to. Further tricks of the secret agents and elite are revealed through lines like, "ignorance is our ammunition,” and "lying is standard operating procedure."
For all the visual spectacle the third act delivers upon and clever narrative devices, it can at times be a bit too clever for its own good.
That leads me to the greatest weakness of the film, too much exposition. TENET wastes too much time ironically explaining the mechanics of the world building and how everything works, when all we really want is to see cool action scenes in reverse and forward motion. I summarized the gist of the films plot (or presentation of events) and story (what happens) above, but while watching the film, it isn’t really presented in a coherent way, to the films detriment.
Cinephiles will rejoice in Nolans use of reverse motion, which hasn’t been seen like this before. And not since French New Wave auteur Jean Cocteau have we seen it this much.
Films like LOOPER and TIME CRIMES play with time inversion concepts, and in TENET we get to see the very clever premise elevated, with the same action scene twice, where we unknowingly fight our future or past selves.
In addition to a stellar performance by John David Washington (BLACKKKLANSMAN, MALCOM X), the music by Ludwig Grandson is a standout.
Layers of symptomatic meaning in the film for the wish fulfillment to change time are abundant here, with the implied desire to create multiple realities and universes.
Nolan’s most recurring theme in his work is time. All of his films "have had some odd relationship with time, usually in just a structural sense, in that I have always been interested in the subjectivity of time,” he says.
Predictably, it’s running time is long, at two and a half hours, and you feel it.
It may take subsequent viewings to truly appreciate the work Nolan has created here. But if you are itching to get the hell out of your house because of the pandemic, go to your nearest drive in theatre, and safely enjoy.
Comments