Moving Backwards: Christopher Nolan’s Tenet
Since 1998’s Following, Christopher Nolan has crafted an impressive career by way of intelligent blockbusters—as the grandeur of his visions expands, the intricacies of his ideas twist and tighten, demanding real thought from audiences. Throughout his decades of work, he’s effectively shaped moviegoers’ taste, growing a desire in audiences for something weighteir from Friday night spectacles. His oeuvre, in the process, has carved a broader path for similarly thoughtful directors like Denis Villeneuve to take on massive projects and become household names.
But with Tenet, Nolan succumbs to some of the worst impulses of blockbusters: “Don’t think about it, just feel it.” This isn’t meant to be a film dissected and understood. Which is alright, except that the entire film is weighed down with exposition for the sake of its mind-warping conceit. But those two forces of mindless thrill and mazelike structure fail to coalesce; in the end, the high-minded conceit is little more than a facade.
Tenet follows (or leads?) John David Washington’s Protagonist as he’s recruited into a mysterious cabal of time warriors seeking to prevent a future war—or, rather, trying to prevent a present war being fought by the future. Powerful, desperate enemies from the not yet have found a way to “invert” the entropy of objects, sending weapons and even people ricocheting backwards in time, putting the present at risk.
As he stumbles from inexplicable encounter to the next, Protagonist meets Neil (Robert Pattinson), who shifts between partner and mentor; Sator (Kenneth Branagh), a domineering Russian with a death wish; and Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), captive wife of Sator. The characters tangle with each other and time itself, but the script doesn’t provide them enough to work with. Washington, so charismatic in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, is given dialogue best described as “blunt object.” Debicki’s character is reduced to maternal concern for a child we never spend any time with. Pattinson’s the only one who gets to have any fun or any real nuance. (It’d be great to see him in more roles like this.)
Nolan’s previous films—Inception, The Prestige, and Memento, in particular—drew viewers into greater awe and appreciation the more they reflected on the intricate layers and blind turns of the plot. Revelation led to revelation, unpacking subtle character arcs and revising our emotional responses. Tenet is found wanting in this test. The uncertainties don’t seem to have answers laying deep within, waiting to be unlocked, but rather arise out of a messy, blundering script and choppy editing.
But where Tenet fizzles in narrative, it stuns in visual skill and inventiveness. When the characters begin moving backward in time, the imagery makes the audience feel the wrongness of it. It’s a sensual shock that few blockbusters would be willing to attempt, and which few directors could effectively pull off. Afterward, I wasn’t wondering how the time mechanics worked, but I was definitely thinking, “How did they pull off that fight!?”
Nolan’s strength also comes through in his commitment to practical effects over CGI, giving Tenet a feeling of reality even as reality itself begins to feel suspect.
In the end, Tenet isn’t a movie that will reward the same discussions and reflections as Nolan’s best; but as far as action oriented blockbusters go, there are few directors making anything as sensually surprising or grounded as Nolan.
