'Tenet': Let's do the time warp again
You guys didn't want a 'Lisa Frankenstein' review so you're getting this instead
āTenetā is many things. A Christopher Nolan blockbuster released smack-dab in the middle of our first Pandemic summer. The bridge between, for all intents and purposes, two of his World War II movies. A heady sci-fi action-thriller. A feast for the eyes. A soup of auditory confusion for the ears. A name. A palindrome.
I HATED āTenetā when it was first released, truly hated it. Hereās what I posted on Letterboxd.com:
So when friend of the āStack Darren Franich (also fellow āStacker himself, who you can all follow at The Draftland Scene) asked if Iād care to see the recent āTenetā re-release on 70mm IMAXā¦ it was not an immediate yes. Actively re-expose myself to trauma? That canāt be to anyoneās mental health benefit.
Still, Iām a longtime advocate of revisiting shit that annoys the living hell out of you. Whateverās gotten under your skinā¦ I mean thatās worth examining, right? It moved you in some way1. It is not without some artistic thought that you arrived at the experience you had, however unpleasant! And so, much like John David Washingtonās Protagonist, I agreed to something I couldnāt possibly know in the moment might change my perspective forever.
Youāve already seen my barn-burning, two-likes Letterboxd review but it feels instructive to tell you more of what I didnāt like about āTenetā the first time I saw it. To wit:
The sound design
The performances
The hypocrisy of a movie telling me to ājust feel itā when in fact I definitely needed to think it
The way it retroactively made āWestworldā seem human by comparison, which in the battle of the Nolan brothers for āleast access to human emotionā is truly an impressive feat
That first ding, Iām forced to admit, was amplified by the fact that I was watching āTenetā at a (COVID-friendly) drive-in movie theater through the radio of a 2010 Honda Fit. Nolanās already wonky sound engineering never stood a chance! The rest are opinions I arrived at honestly, though years of filmmaker canonization probably had my H8r engine roaring at full-tilt. I wanted to dislike āTenetā, itās true, and I did.
CUT TO: a rainy afternoon at the famed Graumanās Chinese Theater, nearly four years later. Robert Pattinson and John David Washington are sharing their time-displaced, kinda homoerotic āCasablancaā ending. Iām sitting in my seat smiling. I no longer hate āTenetā.
Love would be a strong word for a movie that, charitably, only just attempts to depict the chemical process we call āemotional response.ā But I think I finally get āTenetā, a movie that is ultimately way dumber than I thought it was, and for the better.
Hereās the main thing you need to understand about āTenetā: itās a whole movie built around how cool it would be to see shit go backwards. Thatās it. Every set piece, every character, every line of dialogue either works in service of that idea or takes a backseat to it. Iām possibly taking something I once heard on a podcast as sacrosanct here, but I believe Nolanās gone on record as saying he first had the idea for this movie when he was a kid. Viewed through that lens, EVERYTHING in āTenetā makes more sense. Little boys love smashing cars together (ā ), they love making up nonsense words (ā ), they love pretending theyāre into girls when in fact all they want to do is bro down (ā ā ā ). This is not a movie for quantum physicists; this is a movie for five-year-olds rough-housing in a sandbox.
Actually, letās go even further: āTenetā is just classier āKingsmanā. HEAR ME OUT! A well-funded multi-national organization, spiritually if not actually based in the UK, enlists a non-traditional young agent to join their ranks and foil a possibly world-ending plot. They get him a well-tailored suit. Crucially, they talk about how important the quality of oneās suit is. Michael Caine enjoys some sort of senior role in the organization; he doesnāt leave his chair. Our young agent learns the ins and outs of spycraft in a world more complicated than he or we could have understood, eventually facing off against a villain with a silly accent and averting global disaster.
Iām being glib. But Iām also trying to make a point, I think, namely that Nolan is just as capable of fellow Brit Matthew Vaughn2 at going big and goofy, however little we reverent directorial devotees care to admit he can, or does. Have we forgotten āThe Prestigeā, and Hugh Jackman using Tesla magick to clone himself before every performance, all so he could best his life-long magic rival? Have we forgotten Leo screaming āMAAAALLLLL JESUS CHRIST!!ā at his just-suicided wife (Mal) in āInceptionā? Have we forgotten, like, BANE?
Nolan may look like the most self-serious oarsman on the Eton crew team, but really heās just a mischievous scamp who wants to impress you with his cool new movie trick. Bullet go backwards! Darren echoes as much as in his own review:
Reverse bullets are splendid nonsense. I adore the plane crash, the hijacked cargo freighter sloooooowly meandering toward a building. Catamarans do look better in IMAX. Aaron-Taylor Johnson, sometimes my kryptonite, makes the phrase āTemporal Pincerā sound boss. Branagh threatens to fill a manās cut throat with amputated testicles. Pattinson says one building is ābungee jumpable.ā Forget the heady reputation. Tenet is a goof.
Another movie this unexpectedly draws to mind (and also one I struggled with on first watch): āInherent Viceā. The main critique of PT Andersonās 2014 Pynchon adaptation wasā¦ it didnāt make any sense. The mystery, I mean. Clues amounted to nothing. Doc Sportello meandered through a hazy post- Summer of Love Los Angeles with little intention, a Yogi Bear stoner led by his nose to the next high. What was it all for? Call this a cop-out butā¦ vibes, man.Ā Once you accept the actual plot of the movie as just a vibes delivery system, thatās when you know the shit is hitting.
Read every Reddit thread, every Vox explainer for āTenetā and not only will none of them actually make sense, none of them will uncover some deeper truth about the movie which, again, is a 150 minute meditation on how cool it is to watch shit go backwards. That doctor in that one scene whoās ultimately not important was right ā you DO just have to āfeel it,ā all of it. Asking why Kenneth Branagh wants to end the world (an explanation garbled through sound design that, even in 70mm IMAX, still might as well be radio static), or why fire creates ice under inverted conditions, but not every time ā you might as well be asking why Elizabeth Debicki is so tall. She just is!
Maybe itās getting older3, maybe itās too many years spent in the MCU trenches, but more than ever these days I find myself drawn to ā Harry Styles voice ā myoovies, ones that for whatever their flaws (and rest assured āTenetā has many! Like, Iām sorry, āI need to save my sonā here is a stakes non-starter), maintain a steadfast devotion to justifying their projection onto a screen. They donāt even have to be big (though āTenetā, and of course āOppenheimerā, are), justā¦ excited to exist? Eager to share something? Itās what I think Iāve gotten wrong about Nolan in the past, but wonāt let his tailored suits distract me from in the future. Or maybe I will, only to invert time and try again.
āeven if it was to the toilet!ā says Henning the Insult Comic Dog
whose latest film āArgylleā, had Bryce Dallas Howard figure skating over a room-wide oil slick as she PG-13 machine-gunned 75 to 100 henchmen
Iāll be 30 this year!