Don’t bother with ‘ Tenet’ — unless you go in the theater
Editor’s note: The Chronicle’s longtime movie critic, Mick LaSalle, like many others throughout the country during the pandemic, has been sheltering in place and staying out of indoor movie theaters. Chronicle staff writer G. Allen Johnson, however, ventured back into a local cineplex — at least during the brief time theaters were operating a few months ago — to catch “Tenet,” the highly anticipated 2020 blockbuster directed by Christopher Nolan. With the scifi action film now available on Bluray, DVD and video on demand, the two are ready to compare notes ( LaSalle in regular type, Johnson in italic) on their different viewing experiences.
First of all, if you’re one of the people who waited to see “Tenet” — who didn’t take the risk of going to a movie theater in a pandemic — consider your choice vindicated. It is now available to stream so you can watch it safely in your home. You could watch it 10 times in a row, if you like, and by the eighth or ninth viewing, you might even get halfway toward figuring out the plot.
Johnson: I went to see “Tenet” on Oct. 12 at the Century at Tanforan on a weekday afternoon, the first ( and so far, only time) I have been to a theater since the first week of March. I’m glad I did, a highly enjoyable experience. Nolan does make films for the big screen, and I enjoy his work ( my cofavorites are “Memento” and “Inception”).
Because you can buy tickets online ( I downloaded the Cinemark app to my phone) and look at the seating chart and see which seats have been sold, my strategy was to check 30 minutes before showtime to see what the crowd would be like. This day was my third attempt at seeing the film; my first two tries, I aborted the mission when I decided too many seats had been sold. At this particular screening time, there were two tickets sold, near the front, in Tanforan’s biggest theater. I bought one near the back and drove to the theater.
The cashier was masked, as all employees were, of course, and behind plexiglass. I scanned my ticket from my phone as the cashier observed. Encouraged, I made a snap decision to get popcorn. I had planned not to remove my mask, but given the low crowd count, and that the concessions crew seemed happy to see me, I went for it. And like all transactions, it was contactless.
Inside the theater, I felt practically alone. I was about 60 to 70 feet away from my two movie companions, and had to lean forward to see the tops of their heads. I kept my mask on but slid it under my chin every so often to munch popcorn.
Better yet, you can just not bother. This is a bad film by a good filmmaker. It has the veneer of substantiality, but it’s unsubstantial. It is the product of sincere conviction and artistic confidence, but both were misguided. Every filmmaker needs to take the occasional chance, as Christopher Nolan did with “Tenet.” Not all chances pay off.
Because it’s a Nolan film, you may spend some time wondering if the problem is you. You might ask yourself, “Why don’t I understand this? Why am I finding this boring? Why, despite the fact that characters are throwing around the magic word ‘ algorithm,’ does the whole enterprise seem kinda sort of dumb? There must be something wrong with me!”
No, there isn’t. You’re just not into “Tenet,” and that’s OK. Yes, it’s conscientiously made. It’s intentional in all its aspects, but it’s still a colossal failure and a 2 ½ hour chore.
Johnson: As for the movie experience itself, “Tenet” is indeed impressive, although I gave up trying to follow the plot. Because of Nolan’s name and the controversy surrounding the film over its theatricalonly release, there’s a weight of expectations surrounding it that I would encourage you to ignore. It’s not going to change the direction of cinema. It probably won’t be selected for preservation by the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry, as Nolan’s 2008 “The Dark Knight” was this week. But it’s a slambang action adventure that pretty much answers the question,
“What if Christopher Nolan made a James Bond film?”
It takes place in a near future in which evidence has been discovered indicating that the future is attacking the present. There are artifacts, such as bullets that go backward, that tell us that the world is in serious trouble. The threat is worse than nuclear. It’s possible that the whole world and everything that has ever happened or existed will disappear. Which would be lousy.
John David Washington plays some kind of government agent. He’s called “the Protagonist.” It becomes his responsibility to meet a man named Sator ( Kenneth Branagh), an arms dealer who has some kind of access to the future. Sator is married to Kat ( Elizabeth Debicki), who is very unhappy. The Protagonist involves himself in their lives and, here and there, there’s an action scene that seems to have something to do with something.
Is this all clear? Johnson: Although I was not able to see it on film, the way Nolan shot it and prefers you see it ( the theatrical projection, like home video and streaming, is a digital transfer of the film), I admired the “bigness” of the film and the tactile feeling of it.
The problem with Marvel movies, for example, is that they look big and impressive, but there’s an undeniable fakeness to it: Everyone knows that most of it was generated by computers. But Nolan famously eschews special effects whenever possible, preferring to shoot “incamera”; many of his “Tenet” effects are accomplished by expert staging and the old run-the-film-backward trick perfected by silent film comedians like Chaplin and Keaton. So “Tenet” is globetrotting escapism in a real world, and absorbing in that way. I imagine people would have fun watching it on home video, but seeing it in a theater was awesome.
The unique attraction of “Tenet” is the concept of inverted time. For example, the Protagonist can himself become inverted and visit the future — or the past, for that matter. But he will see everything as though it were going backward, though actually he will be going backward, because he’s the one who’s inverted. Get it?
“Tenet” is difficult to understand, but even worse, it inspires little desire to understand it. It’s a cold piece that is strangely without a rooting interest. If a building were on fire, and the Protagonist’s assigned task was to run in and save a child, that would be something an audience could wrap its mind around. But a struggle to prevent Branagh’s character from using an algorithm to kill every single person and wipe out everything that has ever happened in all of human history, that’s a threat at once too big and too absurd.
It doesn’t help that the Protagonist is a blank character, nor that Washington gets blown off the screen by the other actors, who have better roles and are more experienced.
Robert Pattinson brings some arresting ambiguity to his role as Washington’s partner. Dimple Kapadia is interesting as a refined gang leader; Branagh is Branagh, and Debicki gets to play an enraged and abused wife.
Washington, by contrast, doesn’t seem to be playing anything other than an attempt to be cool. His default is to withdraw and nod sagely as the other characters talk. All the humor he brought to “BlacKkKlansman” is nowhere in evidence. Either we’re seeing an actor come up against his limits or an actor being abandoned by his director. Perhaps both. In either case, “Tenet” needed a strong center and doesn’t have one.
But even with another Protagonist, “Tenet” was bound to fail. It’s 150 minutes that has less actual content than a 22minute “Twilight Zone” episode.
I should add, however, that I saw “Tenet” on a Bluray as projected onto an 8foot screen, with sound coming out of my home stereo system.
For me, I know this made no difference, but your experience may be different.
Johnson: Here’s the biggest advantage of seeing the movie in a theater: the incredible sound presentation by San Francisco’s Dolby Laboratories ( in nonImax theaters; it has a different system for Imax). Many people have incredible home video sound systems — I don’t, my neighbors would never allow it — and I’m sure Nolan’s mix for home video is impressive.
However, I can’t imagine any home system replicating the immersive, pulsepounding mix of what I heard, which is one of the most underrated reasons why you should see movies in theaters if possible.