Directed by:
Christopher NolanScreenplay:
Christopher NolanCinematography:
Hoyte van HoytemaComposer:
Ludwig GöranssonCast:
John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Michael Caine, Clémence Poésy, Dimple Kapadia (more)VOD (3)
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Armed with only one word - Tenet - and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time. (Warner Bros. US)
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Reviews (24)
After my first viewing of Inception, I wrote about the film as a perfect toy for the enjoyment of its creator, but I was a decade ahead. It is Tenet that is a meticulously crafted construction set that works exactly as the author needs it to, right up to the last frame. This also means that Christopher Nolan himself plays with it the best and the audience can only watch over his shoulder, wondering how each mechanism works, thinking about how they wish they could play with it, too. He will probably allow them to, but only when they come to see it for the second or third time. I can't shake the feeling that with each new film, Nolan goes deeper into his mode of expression, not only in terms of the complexity of the screenplay, but also in relation to the viewer. With Inception, or even earlier with The Prestige, were able to present each twist or trick almost kindly and "narratively", even when it was a nerve-wracking twist. But in Interstellar, it became necessary to go more towards information, and in Tenet, you can only get answers through machine-gun dialogue or quick cuts. Despite the usual drawn-out running time, the film doesn't allow for a breather, and even in situations where the main characters rest or wait for something, more information, branching paths, or theories are thrust upon us, which could easily be a dead end – or conversely, the most crucial clue. This time, everything is subordinate to this approach, including the last vestiges of accommodating the viewer, the personalities of the characters (this time expressible without exception in two sentences) or visible emotions. Still, at the end, my heart jumped to unforeseen heights, and for that I am most grateful. For the fact that even though this latest Nolan film has surprisingly sharply divided the audience spectrum, it was worth every long minute to me, and its dirty and unusually aggressive world will thoroughly mature within me for a long time.
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This time Christopher Nolan got a little off the rails and became his own enemy. Tenet is of course a great piece, very fast paced and nice to watch, but unfortunately it disappoints in the very things that should elevate it above the classic summer blockbuster. Nolan may have announced that he's pretty much making his own Bond movie, and it looks like it for the first half, but it's more or less a classically conceived spy thriller clashing with his cool direction, where he keeps his distance from everything. And the audience has to go with him. Tenet then becomes a downright Nolan flick somewhere around the halfway point, but unlike Inception, which is the closest the film comes to it, here we don't discover the rules of the new world gradually, and no one explains them in breathtaking scenes. Nolan simply takes the characters and the audience and throws them into deep water, regardless of whether they can swim. What's going on? How does it work? What affects what? And who's to blame for it all? That's more or less dealt with on the fly here, and I reckon I missed half the stuff. I did end up enjoying a lot of the spectacular action, where things were a bit weird, but I didn't really care why. I reckon on a second viewing I would have been clear on it, kept track of everything and got everything in order. But for perhaps the first time ever with Nolan, I'm not sure I want to watch it a second time.
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Watching Tenet, I couldn't shake the feeling that while it's undeniably well-crafted, it still feels a bit like Nolan operating on autopilot. The film’s biggest selling point is its mind-bending take on inverted action sequences. I spent most of the movie trying to wrap my head around whether it all made sense, and honestly, I’m still not sure I did. But it’s shot with incredible precision and effectiveness — exactly what you’d expect from Nolan. The sound design is on point too, even without Hans Zimmer’s touch. Tenet is a fascinating experience, showcasing solid filmmaking with minimal reliance on digital effects, something Hollywood has been missing lately. It’s also a movie with a concept that captivates, but mainly because of that concept alone. After watching, I get why it leaves that impression. The unusual setting in Tallinn definitely adds to its appeal.
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For me, the best Nolan since Inception, i.e. in ten years, but with some “buts”. The most important of which is that the barrage is so relentless that it’s impossible to absorb. By this I don’t mean the big picture, which is pretty clear and sensible by the end, but the details during the journey. What was the role of several secondary characters in the story as a whole? What was the thought process that led the protagonists to choose the plans they choose in several parts of the story? How did they know where to go, etc. All the dialogues (and there are lots of them!) are simply reduced to the exchange of vital information, and there are so many that most people, myself included, are unable to remember them well enough, let alone connect them to all the other information that was given before and all the other information that is yet to be given, and I don’t think this is our mistake. If Tenet had the same amount of plot but was twice as long, I would have objectively enjoyed it more. As it is, I would have to watch it at least once more and hope to make sense of those smaller bits. Regardless, technically it’s awesome and the concept is brilliant. The scenes that mix events going forward and backward in time are unlike any other film and there where moments I thought my head would explode. This is exactly I want from Nolan, so I am very satisfied, though I understand people who aren’t or won’t be so, if only because Nolan doesn’t know how to work with female characters, that’s an objective fact. PS (Spoiler): If we consider the motivations of the “villains” (the invisible ones, not the Russian guy), shouldn’t we be actually rooting for them? :)
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What happened (didn't happen). The opening plays with the idea of Lipsky´s Happy End, Moffat´s saga about River Song, the third Harry Potter movie and the The Sensational Reverse Brothers. Yes, it is undeniably closest to “the palindromic Inception", but with a differently conceived disruption of reality and time. From filmmaking perspective, it is again an extremely well-worked-out blockbuster “with people in suits in the same way as in a Bond movie", which at the same time does not let the brain idle. And it's purely Nolan: cold, reserved, depersonalized, sophisticated, precise and almost procedural. Which, although not many see it, is not a disadvantage this time, but an advantage. Compared to Inception, the biggest difference, apart from the surprisingly frequent and scaled-up ideas of breathtaking action based on practical effects and stunts, is that it does not give the viewer any explanation. Where Inception gradually went over the rules and clarified them, Tenet recklessly jumps right into them (especially in the final third). However, the source of “mindfucking" is not so much in the incomprehensibility/abstraction of that concept, but rather in keeping track of all of the events. And that at the end, at such a furious pace (the sophisticated audiovisual excuses helping the viewer slowly disappear), there are so many levels and storylines that it overwhelms all senses and does not change the overall level of comprehensibility at all. PS: Nolan simply has to adapt Sweterlitsch's “The Gone World" and no one can change my mind about that.
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