Tenet is Christopher Nolan at His Absolute Best… and Worst
By: Daniel Hassall
Tags: Christopher Nolan, Cinema, Action, Science Fiction, Tenet 2020

After months of waiting, delays, and uncertainty, Christopher Nolan’s newest high-concept blockbuster Tenet is finally out on VOD. The hype around this film could not have been greater. Going into 2020, Tenet was already considered the main event of the summer blockbuster season thanks to Nolan’s star power. Yet after COVID-19 and the indefinite closing of movie theaters to help combat the pandemic, it developed this perfect storm of excitement around the film. It went from an event to this universal signal of hope: that after COVID passed, we would all be able to return to the theater to see Tenet in IMAX, the way Nolan intended. While COVID has not gone away by any means, Tenet arrived in theaters briefly, and now is available on Blu-ray and VOD. Now that it is safely accessible, is Tenet the triumphant return to the cinema, or a disappointing reminder of the mundanity that plagues many summer blockbusters? The answer, much like the film itself, is complicated.

Christopher Nolan is as much a brand as he is a director at this point. His movies are so unique that no other filmmaker can replicate a similar style, and his aesthetic choices as an auteur are similarly distinctive. Only a handful of other directors such as Wes Anderson, David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, or Spike Lee are as idiosyncratic as Nolan. While I find many of his films to be flawed, I appreciate the distinctive and singular vision of his projects, and he makes blockbuster cinema as a whole a hell of a lot more interesting just by existing. He is one of the few filmmakers around who makes every film as grand of a cinematic experience as he can; the stunning IMAX visuals, dedication to practical visual effects, and booming scores always make his films an unforgettable theatrical experience. All that appreciation said I found Tenet to be Nolan’s pinnacle, for better and for worse.

The film is every single Nolan stereotype and storytelling tendency turned up to 11. The set-pieces are immaculately constructed, the visuals breathtaking, a score that will knock the wind out of your chest, an obsession with time and chronology, and utterly incomprehensible dialogue. It is perhaps Nolan at his most singular since he is the sole writer as well. Unfortunately, this means that it also suffers from a more extreme version of many of Nolan’s flaws as a storyteller, resulting in a narrative mess of a film more concerned with twisting its convoluted story in on itself like an ouroboros than in exploring his characters with any real nuance. It is an undeniably compelling and exciting watch, but ironically, I could only enjoy and engage with on a surface, visceral level. Of all the criticisms I have had of Nolan’s past films, this is the first that I have struggled with and found somewhat shallow.

We are thrown into the story in media res with John David Washington’s character, an unnamed CIA agent in a counterterrorism task force in the middle of a group attempting to stop a terrorist assassination plot at an opera in Kiev. Ludwig Goransson’s score immediately starts pounding, providing an immediate sense of tension and suspense to the set-piece. The visuals are sweeping, capturing every moment of action in all of its glory in IMAX, and providing a sense of geography and leaving the stunt work on full display. From the very beginning, there is a sense of narrative unease to the film. Much like J. J. Abrams, the mystery immediately sinks its hooks into the audience and grabs their attention as we watch Washington attempt to foil the terrorist plot and ends up way over his head. Picking up the pieces in the aftermath, he finds himself in a world of espionage he never knew existed, assigned to stop a cell of terrorists and arms dealers who have reversed their cells’ polarity to travel backward in time. He is given a new codename (which is the only name the audience ever knows him by), The Protagonist.

This is the kind of narrative shorthand that Nolan is attempting in the narrative. He turns his characters into archetypes to give adequate time to the enormous amount of exposition, twists, and set-pieces. The globe-trotting superspy obsessed with saving the world. The snarky tech guy who comes along for the ride and forms a bond with our hero (a role that Robert Pattinson finds ways to flesh out a great deal and make endearing with the smallest characterization choices). The woman in an abusive relationship who wants to get out from under the thumb from her abuser. The psychotic billionaire wants to wreak havoc for no other reason than he wants to (played with maximum sociopathic glee by Kenneth Branaugh channeling an unholy mix between Nicholas Cage and Tommy Wiseau). While each member of this all-star cast does their best to flesh out these characters, they are still sadly little more than cardboard cutouts. Nolan’s story is far more concerned with the central mystery machinations than with the actual motivations.

Aside from Kat (played by Elizabeth Debicki, who breathes a surprising level of emotion into a mostly thankless and cliched role), we go through the story, always unsure of the character’s motivations. Like the characters themselves, we are unsure what they know, what the characters want, or what is at stake if they fail. We dart from one high stakes scene to another while each time we are told that the situation is of the utmost importance while also remaining largely unsure what the stakes are from moment to moment or how it all connects in terms of stakes. The film’s final moments, where Washington and Pattinson get to reflect on their adventures after the dust has settled, are genuinely touching and one of the most poignant in Nolan’s career. This moment’s impact makes me wish that he would give that level of emotional clarity to the rest of the film.

It makes me truly appreciate the power and efficiency of something like Inception. While that narrative is complex and full of layers upon layers of dreams, the character’s internal motivations are always crystal clear. The power of Inception’s narrative isn’t its ambiguous conclusion, but the emotional impact of the story. The way Cobb’s guilt and his desire for his kids overshadow everything in his life, Saito’s need for closure (and it’s parallels with Cobb’s crippling guilt), and how Nolan hinges every interconnected plot thread and set-piece on those emotional character beats. It is a magnificent feat of writing, and the comparison highlights where Tenetfalters.

Beyond its cardboard cutout characters with unclear motivations, the dialogue is eye-rolling trite at times. At one point, a character yells, “he will destroy the entire world.” After a dramatic pause, another character chimes in “including my son!” literalizing the scene’s obvious subtext. Spy films as a genre are exposition machines. Still, characters recite it the same way you have heard dozens of other times and thrown at you a mile a minute, which is not helped by the fact that once again, Nolan has a problem with a good chunk of the dialogue being incomprehensibly sound mixed. Tenet’s story is complicated enough without also missing a third of the dialogue because it was so quiet and mumbled.

However, when you get beyond the scripting issues, Tenet is quite a fun ride. Ironically (since this film is perhaps his worst example of storytelling on a script level), Nolan’s visual storytelling is at an all-time best here, with plenty of small details giving hints to unsaid secrets for an attentive viewer. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s camerawork captures every scene’s emotionality, from the pervasive sense of dread of walking into an unknown threat to the sheer awe and tension of the battle sequences in the final act. Jennifer Lame’s edit of the film flows with a similar efficiency; despite the lengthy run-time and repeated visiting of sequences from different perspectives, it never feels bloated or repetitive.

Nolan has often been (accurately) accuses of being bad at filming action, particularly in his early career. The editing in something like Batman Begins is borderline incomprehensible. However, it is something he has evolved on as a filmmaker, particularly in Inception and Dunkirk, and Tenet is another strong example of his newfound talent for action. Each action beat is staged with incredible clarity, creativity, and a strong sense of rhythm. It is visceral and exciting, and when Nolan gives himself over to the excitement of the set-pieces, the film is at its most successful and engaging. As the film evolves and the set-pieces become more creative and complex, with multiple groups of people going in different directions through time at the same time, Nolan manages to stage the scenes with an interconnected clarity no matter how chaotic it gets. The action here is truly stunning and worth seeing on the biggest possible screen and format (if physically safe, of course).

Ultimately Tenet is a confounding experience. Perhaps the only Nolan film that I find to be a better experience the less you think about it; there are easter eggs and tidbits of information for an attentive viewer to pick up on with multiple viewings but the film is also most successful on a purely visceral level and gets out of its own way. Every actor is hugely talented. They play off the chemistry they have with each other, making even the most expository scene and wooden dialogue compelling to watch.

Meanwhile, Nolan’s precise clockwork craftsmanship and wildly creative action staging create some of his career’s most memorable set-pieces. However, all of this falls a bit flat; the convoluted story goes out of its way to obfuscate any character motivations or emotional impact. The story is also rife with contradictions and creates an endless string of questions, which is likely to infuriate Nolan’s fans’ more analytical subset. When I reflect on my expectations of Tenet, I certainly expected it to be of Nolan’s signature style, so it was no surprise when it featured every one of Nolan’s common storytelling features at all-time highs. What did surprise me was the combination of those things resulting in a supremely enjoyable film if you give yourself over to its roller coaster of thrills, but infuriating if you try to engage with it on an emotional or story level.