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Tenet (
There’s lot riding on Christopher Nolan’s latest shrouded- in- mystery blockbuster. As someone who has dedicated his career to preserving the big screen experience, it’s hardly surprising he’s been positioned as the saviour of cinemas. His own obstinacy has been mirrored in the way Tenet has remained stubbornly on the release schedule, hovering Batman- like in the shadowy recesses of the future, protecting an idea of cinema while the rest of the industry cowers in fear.
What’s surprising about this sci- fi espionage thriller – about a nameless protagonist ( played by John David Washington) who’s recruited to prevent a future war using technology from that war – is how attuned to the current moment it sometimes feels, not just in its futuristic prognostications ( maskwearing, a ruthlessly narcissistic villain), but also in its grimly ironic thematic obsession with humanity’s unwillingness to prepare for a future it can see coming but can’t quite imagine happening ( not for nothing does Nolan anchor part of the film off the coast of Pompeii).
At the same time, Tenet feels like a film from another age, the allguns- blazing, globetrotting likes of which we might not see again for a long time once the current slate of big budget movies awaiting release are finally out in the world. Tenet’s own breathlessly executed opening sequence, for instance, takes place in a packed auditorium during a classical music concert; the sheer busyness of a scene filled with extras watching a cultural event stands in marked contrast to the socially distanced way anyone seeing this in a cinema over the next few weeks will experience it.
But if the terrorist attack that interrupts this performance – decimating the audience in the process – feels oddly symbolic, Nolan wastes no time plunging us into a world in which the old escapist pleasures of the big screen are readily apparent. For action fans especially, Tenet offers a cornucopia of high
stakes set- pieces, upping the tickingclock tension of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible series and riffing on James Bond by casting Washington as a sort of ultra- athletic, ultra- suave super spy who even has his own “M” in the form of Nolan regular Michael Caine.
The plot, which is at times so impenetrable it’s almost impossible to spoil, pinballs Washington around the world as he tries to get close to a Russian arms dealer ( Kenneth Branagh) rumoured to be behind the sudden proliferation of a new class of weaponry that fires bullets backwards and may bring about a “temporal” Cold War. Elizabeth Dubecki co- stars as Saitor’s abused wife, who’s forced to stay in the marriage on threat of losing her son. And Robert Pattinson livens up proceedings immeasurably as a raffish, mysterious British spy who helps Washington infiltrate this moneyed world.
If Nolan makes the most of his mega budget to create exotic scenarios in which to dump the endless seeming exposition necessary to set everything up, he also risks audience disengagement by making much of this dialogue incomprehensible. All his movies, though, function as metaphors for his own creative process and, as the film outlines the concept of “inversion” with talk of entropy and quantum mechanics and grandfather paradoxes, Washington’s character is told he shouldn’t even try to understand it. “Tenet”, someone tells him, is a key that will unlock doors and it’s not long before its hinted- at palindromic significance manifests itself in the structure of the film, with dazzling action sequences that simultaneously play out in forward and reverse motion. Ironically, though, for all its complexity, some of the big plot twists are so obvious it’s hard not to get ahead of the film, even on a first viewing. Though even this may be intentional: a ruse on Nolan’s part designed to distract from the real twist, a final shot penny drop that suggests rewatching the movie with this information may prove equally enervating. And maddening. ■