What Tenet Means To World Cinema
By: Prashant Ranjan
Tags: Hollywood, Tenet, Time Traveling, Entertainment, Movies

Christopher Nolan new movie Tenet looks like to be one of the most mind bending sci fi presentation. Like most of his earlier movies where time traveling and reversal chronology of telling a story has been remained the main theme, tenet is no different except, introduction of new jargons from some real and some hypothetical world of physics. A spy thriller weaved on intricate and surreal concept of time bound entropy inversion for people and objects but not the existing world around them is what makes tenet over the mind experience for majority of audiences. You too would have undergone similar experience but if you watch it a couple of times and if you are familiar with some concepts of physics, you can emit those confusing timeline. I too watched the movie repeatedly for few times and then understood the story line up completely, though it was not an easy task due to multiple sequences of confusing timeline. However, if are familiar with some concepts of physics then watching two or three times with utter focus will help to understand the story and its flow towards the end.

Inverted Entropy

Entropy as we know is related with thermodynamics and disorientation of an object with time. It means as time goes by the entropy of a body unshaped it. For example, when a bomb is exploded, its innards disperse with normal time flow. However, in case of an inverted entropy, the materials of the bomb go back inside it. In this case, the heat is observed, so if someone is targeted with an inverted entropy object, its thermodynamical property reverts itself and so in an inverted car sequence, when an inverted sator tries to lit the protagonist, he undergoes hypothermic effect instead of getting him burnt. In another seen when protagonist meets the scientist where she shows him identical bullets with one from the future with inverted entropy. Here when he tries to lift the bullet, actually he’s dropping it from bullet point of view because it’s inverted. Subsequently when she asks him to aim on the wall and pulls the trigger, the bullet backs in the revolver because for an inverted entropy object, the time travels backward and not the world. Though it’s almost a hypothetical concept that entropy of an object can be inverted with existing technology and scientific knowledge but as we see in the movie, people from the future have developed a technology that can invert the entropy of objects and people who can move backward in time.

Turnstile

Turnstile is a machine which inverts objects and people and takes them back in time so when they move forward in their inverted past, they feel everything around them going backward but actually, the world is not inverted.

What happened has happened

Even in the world of time traveling, an event in past cannot be changed. In the climax, when Neel is hit by a bullet and dies, his inverted past is dead and cannot be revoked as he told the protagonist after their mission to capture the algorithm is over that what happened has happened.

Temporal Pincer movement

A military strategy has been adapted in time flow in which to attack the enemy, a troop is divided into two teams and who attack from both directions. In tenet, to find the algorithm, the protagonist team is divided into red and blue team. One team moves forward while the other team using the turnstile moves backward in time. The inverted past team then share the information with the forward moving team which helps them to find the location of algorithm and in capturing that. In another sequence, when sator chased the protagonist in an inverted car with a gun on his wife’s head to get a part of the algorithm from him, he used the temporal Pincer movement. He sent few of his men in the past who has already shared the information that the case, the protagonist carrying was empty. Already knowing this, when sator approaches the protagonist car lying upside down with his inverted past stuck inside, he told him that he knew the case was empty and tried to lit him but due to his being in inverted state, instead of burning, he underwent hypothermic effect.

Tenet is undoubtedly a masterpiece of today’s cinema and has opened a new world of next generation sci fi presentation. Hopefully, in coming years other movie makers of the world can get inspiration from it and make a movie which like tenet having innovative ideas based on science with freedom of writer’s creativity towards some hypothetical world as well, but whatever it be, if it puzzles the minds of moviegoers, the difference it makes will redefine the attraction of silver screen.