Tenet

If 2020 is remem­bered as the year the earth stood still, then one film will be immor­talised for spark­ing a moviego­ing rev­o­lu­tion. Future crit­ics will refer to this par­a­digm shift in epochal terms, des­ig­nat­ing a new set of abbre­vi­a­tions – BT and AT – to explain how the enter­tain­ment indus­try was fun­da­men­tal­ly and irre­versibly reshaped by it. And while cul­tur­al com­men­ta­tors and schol­ars will debate its exact cause and effect, every­one will agree that for bet­ter or worse, this was a gen­uine game changer.

But enough about Trolls World Tour.

You may have noticed there’s been anoth­er major motion pic­ture hog­ging the head­lines recent­ly. Christo­pher Nolan’s eleventh fea­ture has cer­tain­ly felt like a long time com­ing, hav­ing ini­tial­ly been slat­ed for release on 17 July before Warn­er Bros were forced to push it back three times due to the ongo­ing COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. As a result it will final­ly arrive in North Amer­i­ca on 3 Sep­tem­ber, three years, one month and 14 days after Dunkirk. There has nev­er been a big­ger gap between Nolan films.

Time, of course, is rel­a­tive in the Nolan­verse. In Tenet, the director’s long-stand­ing obses­sion with the philo­soph­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic prin­ci­ples which under­pin this abstract con­cept reach­es its log­i­cal apoth­e­o­sis – although that palin­dromic title is some­thing of a red her­ring, a qua­si-mys­ti­cal code­word that’s vague­ly defined and then almost imme­di­ate­ly dis­card­ed. Giv­en this is a film appar­ent­ly so con­cep­tu­al­ly knot­ty that not even its prin­ci­pal cast seem to have the faintest clue what it’s about, maybe it’s best we don’t ven­ture too far down that par­tic­u­lar wormhole.

As it turns out, Tenet is remark­ably easy to fol­low. No, real­ly. Nolan may con­struct a lofty premise around a galaxy-brain-lev­el the­o­rem while throw­ing around com­plex-sound­ing ideas like entropy, inver­sion algo­rithms and ​“tem­po­ral pin­cers” (band name!), but the film’s basic chronol­o­gy and struc­ture are fair­ly straight­for­ward. The fun with Tenet lies not in try­ing to deci­pher the whats or the whys but in sim­ply admir­ing the how.

If Nolan has out-Nolaned him­self, it’s in the action set-pieces which, despite being of head-scram­bling tech­ni­cal intri­ca­cy, are sharp­er than Occam’s razor and car­ried off with aston­ish­ing econ­o­my. He may be stuck in a the­mat­ic loop, but Nolan con­tin­ues to push the craft of in-cam­era spe­cial effects for­ward, once again engi­neer­ing immer­sive, seat-shak­ing spec­ta­cle in crisp 70mm widescreen. Most cru­cial­ly, the exper­i­men­tal film­ing tech­niques employed here are always in ser­vice of the story.

Tenet isn’t just a show­case for Nolan’s for­mal swag­ger. John David Wash­ing­ton is rock sol­id in the lead role, play­ing a man with no name or past whose eager­ness to be the hero threat­ens to pre­vent him achiev­ing just that. Robert Pat­tin­son brings his A‑game as an eru­dite British intel­li­gence agent who might be in over his head (or is it some­one else’s?). Eliz­a­beth Debic­ki gives a good per­for­mance as a scorned moll whose love for her young son unfor­tu­nate­ly over­pow­ers any oth­er per­son­al­i­ty trait she might pos­sess. Michael Caine eats a plate of chips.

And then there’s Ken­neth Branagh’s Russ­ian vil­lainaire, Andrei Sator, who holds the key to unlock­ing the film’s cen­tral mys­tery and whose socio­path­ic inten­tions are sig­nalled by the alarm­ing fre­quen­cy with which he checks his Fit­bit. When we first meet Sator aboard his megay­acht, he open­ly brags about tor­tur­ing a for­mer adver­sary by stuff­ing the poor sod’s tes­ti­cles down his throat. Indeed, talk­ing bol­locks is a recur­ring fea­ture of Tenet – not just the con­tents of the dia­logue but the often muf­fled man­ner in which it’s delivered.

Nolan falls into the famil­iar trap – let’s call it The Tom Hardy Para­dox – of hav­ing his A‑list cast attempt to com­mu­ni­cate to us and each oth­er while wear­ing a vari­ety of face cov­er­ings, some­times simul­ta­ne­ous­ly over fuzzy radio chan­nels, or drowned out by Lud­wig Göransson’s cacoph­o­nous score. It doesn’t help that this is an exces­sive­ly wordy film. Char­ac­ters spend a good chunk of the 150-minute run­time walk­ing and talk­ing, stand­ing and talk­ing, sit­ting and talk­ing; they talk and talk and talk, occa­sion­al­ly paus­ing to emp­ty a few bul­let clips before get­ting right back to the urgent busi­ness of talking.

There are scenes where there is so much infor­ma­tion being parsed out, so much expo­si­tion­al heavy-lift­ing hap­pen­ing all at once, that the words start to lose mean­ing. Or could this all be part of Nolan’s mas­ter­plan: you may miss a cru­cial detail the first time around, so be sure to book your­self in for a sec­ond and third watch. Per­son­al­ly, I’m not con­vinced repeat view­ings will reap sig­nif­i­cant rewards in this case, even though it is enter­tain­ing in the moment.

Back on the sub­ject of trolls, the Nolan truthers will no doubt seek to smear him as a glo­ri­fied smoke and mir­rors mer­chant, a pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al who favours nar­ra­tive sub­terfuge over real sub­stance. The argu­ment is that he’s too flashy, more a styl­ist than a nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller; M Night Shya­malan for peo­ple who still trade Bit­coin. Oth­ers may cite Tenet as fur­ther proof that, artis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, Nolan has been on pret­ty much the same lat­er­al tra­jec­to­ry since The Dark Knight launched him into Hollywood’s upper stratos­phere 12 years ago. But that in itself is a noble feat.

If the per­cep­tion of Nolan at this stage is of a con­sum­mate show­man who is oper­at­ing with­in his com­fort zone, it’s worth not­ing that this is only his fourth orig­i­nal screen­play as a solo writer (he says the script took five years to com­plete) fol­low­ing, well, Fol­low­ing, Incep­tion and Dunkirk. The tru­ly remark­able thing about Nolan is the fact he’s still pour­ing all of his cre­ative ener­gy into his own projects in his fourth decade as a direc­tor. He’s still shoot­ing on film, still mount­ing ambi­tious pro­duc­tions cal­i­brat­ed for the cin­e­ma expe­ri­ence. He’s a box office auteur who makes per­son­al event movies on a $200m bud­get. Take it or leave it.

There will also be those quick to point out that Tenet is emblem­at­ic both of Hollywood’s inflat­ed sense of self-worth and of a deep-lying fault in the sys­tem. The tra­di­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el for com­mer­cial jug­ger­nauts like Tenet is such that at a time like this its suc­cess is far from guar­an­teed. Yet while there are clear­ly more impor­tant things hap­pen­ing in the world right now, as far as the film world is con­cerned Tenet’s sig­nif­i­cance should not be down­played, because its delayed, stag­gered roll out is like­ly to have far-reach­ing impli­ca­tions for both the main­stream and inde­pen­dent mar­kets, not just for the remain­der of this year but prob­a­bly well into next.

Yes, there are plen­ty of small­er new and upcom­ing releas­es which are equal­ly deserv­ing of the atten­tion Nolan’s films rou­tine­ly receive. But there’s a rea­son his kind of movies are called ​‘tent­poles’. Per­haps the prob­lem is that stu­dios, exhibitors and media out­lets have lent on them too heav­i­ly for too long.