Tenet
warner brosFollowing months of anxiety, induced by multiple delays and Covid-related uncertainty surrounding its release, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet has finally landed in select international markets to deliver a life-saving electrical shock to the arrested heart of the blockbuster season. But, is it possible that the prophecies could have over-egged the pudding and the promised messiah has arrived completely unequipped to save the world?
It is nigh on impossible to discuss Tenet without possibly divulging some elements of its story that are best kept secret. This is not because the plot of this high-concept espionage thriller, resting on a handful of mind-boggling concepts lifted from a university physics course, is the most interesting thing about it, but rather because there isn’t much else in there to discuss at all. This criticism can be levelled at the vast majority of films Christopher Nolan ever wrote and directed. It is true he has been predominantly obsessed with the structure of his narratives and, therefore, could be accused of neglecting the characters and focusing on using such singular concepts as relative dilation of time (Inception) or the relationship between gravity and time (Interstellar) as crutches in service of set piece construction. This isn’t inherently a flaw, so long as the set pieces in question can carry the burden of visual storytelling. Sadly, Tenet shows perfectly what happens when the scale, audacity and visual opulence of set pieces is no longer enough to do that.
In fact, it may be best to invoke the example of Inception – one of Nolan's stronger works – as a useful comparative example, because the two films share a lot of DNA. Their narratives rely on outlandish high concepts and tremendously grandiose dramatic set pieces as weight-carrying pillars, thus relegating their characters to being pawns in their respective structure-obsessed games puppeteered by the filmmaker. Consequently, the fundamental mechanics pertaining to their central conceit – dilation of time experienced while dreaming in Inception and the seemingly paradoxical relationship between entropy and time in Tenet – required Nolan to use the characters as delivery vehicles for exposition if the viewer were to even stand a chance of comprehending what’s going on. After all, the last thing the filmmakers wanted was to alienate the audiences and risk losing eye-watering amounts of money invested in this production.
Unfortunately, this leaves little to no room for them to do anything else and renders them completely one-dimensional, thus impossible to latch onto. Despite the fact the actors playing the lead roles in Tenet – John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki and Kenneth Branagh (who also performs with a half-convincing yet occasionally hilariously cartoonish Russian accent) – carried a lot of their own personal charisma and organic charm into their roles, the requirement for them to constantly explain what happened or what is going to happen completely assassinated any semblance of chemistry between them. They are merely sock puppets operated by Christopher Nolan, reciting exceedingly written lines peppered with jargon lifted from Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time and describing in minute detail what the next dramatic set piece is going to entail. It just goes to show that characters need space and room to breathe in order to develop relationships with one another, which Tenet simply fails to provide.
This drawback has profound consequences, which ripple all throughout the experience of watching the film. Because the narrative is heavily peppered with expository dialogue and scenes, designed purely in service of the central conceit as opposed to developing characters, Tenet is disjointed and – quite frankly – frustrating to sit through at times. Although its main set pieces are astounding in scale, ambition, choreography of events and technical execution, they offer only momentary opportunities to lose oneself in the magic of cinema Nolan has been consistently known for conjuring. It is absolutely true he designed this film with very specific concepts and scenes in mind, and they all work splendidly in the moment by intimidating the viewer with the oomph of their visual audacity, bolstered by a relentless and oppressive score by Ludwig Göransson. However, the charm dissipates immediately every time the characters open their mouths because all they do is undermine the tactile magic of the spectacle.
Therefore, Tenet proves that Christopher Nolan drank the Kool-Aid and bought into his own untouchability as the filmmaker working today, as alleged by his growing and increasingly zealous fan-base. He wanted to craft the perfect cinematic puzzle box for the audiences to obsess over, discuss at coffee breaks and hypothesize ad infinitum on numerous sub-reddit fora. Unfortunately, what he ended up accomplishing is a thematically vacuous and intellectually patronizing spiritual successor to Inception turned up a few notches in every department but completely void of a dramatic through-line, which could stand a chance of grounding the experience in any form of tangible relatability.
Christopher Nolan’s latest effort falls short of expectations and may not be the saviour of cinematic experience the industry so desperately needs. Nevertheless, it will definitely appeal to his core fan-base purely on the basis of the visual ambition of its set pieces, as well as the perceived impenetrability of its narrative rooted in shallow intellectual posturing and cloaked in academic verbiage. To inject a modicum of provocation, Tenet may be this year’s equivalent of Joker, as it might bamboozle the audience intimidated by arcane jargon much the same way Todd Phillips’s film carried itself as deep and thought-provoking to those who never saw Taxi Driver or The King Of Comedy. It’s official: Tenet might be heretofore referred to as the time when Christopher Nolan finally jumped the shark.
