“Tenet” is the newest film directed by Christopher Nolan, starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Kenneth Branagh. The film was originally set to release on July 17 but was delayed to July 31, then Aug. 12, until finally being set to release on Sept. 3. The string of delays were due to, you guessed it, theaters shutting down for COVID-19.
Nolan’s films are pretty hit or miss for me. I have seen just about all of his movies except for “Following” and “Insomnia.” I love most of the films I’ve seen from him, but films like “Interstellar” and “The Dark Knight Rises,” are a little ‘meh.’ However, I was still really excited to see “Tenet” because, if nothing else, Nolan makes exciting and thoughtful thrillers.
“Tenet” was not that thing I just wrote.
I’m not sure if I would go out on a limb and say it was awful, but I don’t think it was very good. Full disclosure, I think I need to see it again. I’m not sure if it was the theater I was in or the film itself, but I could not for the life of me hear what the characters are saying (The more I think about it, the more I think it might be the film because “Dunkirk” had a similar issue, but the dialogue did not matter as much in that film.)
“Tenet” is about our main character, played by John David Washington (his character has a name, but I’m not sure if it is a spoiler or not, so I’m just going to refer to him as Washington). Washington is a CIA agent that discovers a material that is running backwards through time, called inverted material. Washington goes on a hunt trying to find the origin of this material with his friend “Neil,” played by Robert Pattinson, and ends up following it back to a Russian oligarch named “Sator,” played by Kenneth Branagh. The rabbit hole leads to Washington discovering a way to invert himself through time and carry out missions while going backward through time and already knowing what happens.
Hijinks ensue.
I was immediately confused after watching this movie, and I think part of it, again, is due to the sound. Since I wasn’t able to hear most of the dialogue, I had basically no idea what was going on in the film. To me, characters were just going places and blowing stuff up, and I am not the only one who thinks this. If you look up ‘Tenet sound,’ you will find a lot of articles that write about the same issue. The concept and plot is already complicated enough, so making the dialogue impossible to hear makes it even more confusing. There is a line in the film where a character says, “Don’t try to understand it, feel it.” The line certainly felt like Nolan trying to communicate that same sentiment to the audience about the film itself. However, the issue with that idea is that since I have no idea who these characters are or what they are doing, it makes it nearly impossible to connect or “feel” with the film. It made me want to just throw my hands up in the air and say, “you win, Nolan! I guess I don’t need to think about your high concept film and just ‘feel’ Washington walk around in nice clothing and talk to random people.”
Which leads me to my next point.
The characters in this film are kind of duds. Washington’s performance doesn’t give me enough to work with in order to care about him or even be invested in what he is doing. Pattinson gives a pretty good performance, but he seemingly jumps in and out of the plot at will, which leaves us with not-so-interesting-to-watch Washington.
It would be like watching “Inception” except without Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance and his character’s family drama at the center of the film. The concept is cool, but if there are no personal stakes with the characters, why would I care about Cobb getting out of Limbo at the end?
The dialogue I could hear, however, was pretty heavy-handed. One of the main themes the film deals with is fate vs. free will. If a world with what is essentially time travel exists, how can free will exist? Everything that has happened has already happened, and there is nothing the characters in the film can do to change that fact. Nolan, for the most part, strikes a balance between this message and giving his characters enough agency to be somewhat engaging, but there are a lot of conversations about how time works and how everything is determined to be, so how can we truly be free and stop thinking about time as linear yada yada etcetera, etcetera. It’s not that I find the theme itself boring (far from it actually). It’s more like I just don’t care about the film already, and the messaging within the film doesn’t help it be any more engaging.
“Tenet” is not the most engaging film in Nolan’s catalogue, but if you like cool sci-fi concepts put to action/thrillers, then I suggest giving it a shot. This new Christopher Nolan film is more like a Christopher NO-lan film.
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