2020 In Review: Tenet
"Don't try to understand it. Feel it"
The most Nolany Nolan movie ever made
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Like a cunning ruse to outsmart any cinema snob who might dream of claiming that Inception wasn't that complex, Christopher Nolan outdoes his own filmography and delivers his most complicated film yet: a time-bending web of contradicting plots more difficult to follow than those in Donnie Darko, and a mind-boggling theatrical experience that hasn't felt this violating since Southland Tales (hey, maybe Nolan's just a Richard Kelley fan).
With Tenet, there are no actual words that can surmise Nolan's latest efforts to so egregiously confuse his audience while simultaneously entertaining them. Being no stranger to the concept of time (let alone finding new ways to manipulate it), the acclaimed Memento director thrusts his audience into the middle of the action right from the adrenaline-fueled opening scene (an elaborate FBI raid during an elegant opera), and with the reveal of a bullet being reverse-fired back into the barrel of a gun, Nolan presents us with secret operative unit Tenet: The super secret group which operates around things moving backward in time, but also happening in real time in order to prevent the end of the world, or something like that.
Like living out the most ambitious 007 movie since Moonraker, Nolan's characters are all spies moving at break-neck pace like mysterious Chess pieces without motive. John David Washington plays nameless FBI agent dubbed "The Protagonist," while Robert Pattinson plays Neil; an elegant, suite-and-tie hybrid of both Leo DiCaprio in Inception and Nolan himself in terms of playing the manifestation of "the rules." Like Inception, Tenet has many rules; rules against the very concept of time and how to maneuver within it, be it forward or backward; rules which for obvious reasons can never be broken, or it will result in the undoing of the existence of the universe, or something like that (it's better to try and not keep up).
Tenet genuinely hurts to watch because the film tries to fit more complex, time-jumping narratives into two-and-a-half hours than the entire fifth season of LOST, and trying to make sense of it all is about as good as philosophizing with a baked potato. That said, there is a catch to Tenet's legitimate brilliance (bear with me for a sec), and it lies within the acceptance of the film's sheer and utter lunacy, entirely at face value.
Keep in mind this is the same movie that masquerades itself as a globetrotting spy movie which becomes National Treasure for a moment, but not before actually crashing a legitimate plane into an airport (Nolan loves his authentic stunts), then becoming a reverse car chase movie where characters are un-killed in backwards time, all the while a bunch of beefy military guys chase each other in the desert in time moving both forward and backward adjacently in order to steal some desert artifact before all of mankind implodes upon itself, or something like that (it's very extra). The film becomes so wrapped up in its own mind-boggling plot that it's ultimately best left to keep it simple. Good guys need to stop a bad guy in order to prevent the end of the world, and that's pretty much all it boils down to. Nothing else truly matters because despite the intricate details buried beneath all the time-bending exposition, Tenet is still Nolan's James Bond flick where Kenneth Branagh chews up the scenery as a Russian bad guy who bludgeons people with gold bars. Ultimately, what's not to love?
Do not mistake the contradicting time warp of a plot for poor filmmaking (even if the writing is shoddy and the sound design is inaudible). The film is certainly smart, just perhaps a little too smart for its own good. Nolan's got an extraordinarily unique premise on his hands, he just doesn't know how to entirely explain it in a palpable way for audiences to grasp, or worse, care. This is why it's best to focus on what works: The spectacular production. Aside from the pulsating score (where Ludwig Goransson profoundly follows in Hans Zimmer's footsteps), the sheer amount of wide-spectacle action sequences alone, especially the ones happening entirely in reverse, makes for some of the most visually arresting imagery this side of action movies has ever witnessed.
In fact, the set design and practical effects are so insanely good that it almost entirely makes up for the fact that Tenet is probably Nolan's worst non-Batman movie, and for the movie to feel like a hell of a roller coaster that can't quite be explained to others without experiencing it for themselves, Tenet potentially being Nolan's worst non-Batman film doesn't mean it's not also perhaps his most entertaining.
Nolan to points 10*
Grade: B
