Tenet (2020) ***
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Written by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Aaron-Tayler Johnson, and Kenneth Branagh with Michael Cain
Runtime: 150 minutes
Rated PG-13
Christopher Nolan should be praised for many things, but chief among them would be his fearlessness. He’s never been afraid to present complex ideas to a big-budget multi-plex crowd and he’s become incredibly popular for it. Complicated, oft-avoided subjects like memory, dreams, physics and now, in Tenet, he tackles time. That’s about as much as you can know about it, otherwise something may slip and ruin the whole thing for you. Suffice it to say, the film will require multiple viewings (like most of Nolan’s films) to really be able to piece everything together, but the first time gets you enough information to enjoy it (if you pay attention).
The story itself is fascinating, with John David Washington as The Protagonist (he’s never given any other name) is conscripted to save the world. He’s given unlimited resources by unnamed backers and he has to figure out how to……well, there’s a lot there that would give away too much while simultaneously rendering it inexplicable. Simply put, Tenet is every inch a Christopher Nolan puzzle picture, take that as you will.
Nolan’s script is, as many of his are, a masterclass in lightning-fast exposition that is still followable, if not completely retainable. He has developed a unique style that allows his characters to say paragraph after paragraph of convoluted dialogue that attempts to tell the audience everything (EVERYTHING) they need to follow the movie in a few scenes, allowing the story to develop without it having to be explained in the moment. It’s a bold style and not one easily employed, but Nolan has found a way to frequently use it and only have his popularity grow. This film is no exception, using extremely advanced understandings of how time and the timestream works, if/how it can be traversed and the rules surrounding it. There are many similarities to the German television drama Dark in the way time is understood (though here there are fewer…genetic complications) and some Matrix philosophy (you can’t change a decision that’s already been made) but largely it’s a unique look at how to manipulate time and circumstance to avoid universal destruction. Like his other high-concept puzzles, the focus is not really on the story but how the story can be taking place. The saving of the world is Nolan’s Macguffin, the thing that everyone in the movie cares totally about but that ultimately doesn’t matter to the audience. It’s Cobb’s marriage in Inception or Interstellar’s Cooper and his relationship to his kids. They matter because they spur the action, but it’s how things can happen in Nolan’s films that are the focus, not really what happens. That’s why Dunkirk feels flat for Nolan, it’s all very straightforward and that undermines his emotional action because there is no simultaneous mental exertion that confuses and amplifies the emotions.
But a complex script is nothing but gobbledygook if your actors can’t handle it, and thankfully Nolan has built a great reputation and can get the best actors of the day to say his gobbledygook convincingly. Tenet is no exception, though it is interesting to note that only Branagh and Cain have worked with Nolan before, because he has cultivated quite the cast of recurring players in his films and to have only Cain as his lucky charm (Cain has been in every Nolan film since Batman Begins except Dunkirk) is an odd but welcome change. Knowing that more than a core of 10 people can say his dialogue well is encouraging. That brings us to the phenomenal John David Washington. This man is a gift that keeps on giving. Washington is forging his own way, without relying on his immeasurably talented father, Denzel. Listening to Washington, you can hear some of his father’s speech patterns but you can tell he just picked it up over the years, not because he’s trying to emulate. His performance is assured and cool, his face blank to emotion, but not unemotive. His character is impacted by his emotions and in many instances driven by them, but he doesn’t let them show, even when he allows them to dictate his actions. Like all of Nolan’s protagonists, he is single-minded in his mission, yet Washington manages to not let the situation consume him, as DiCaprio’s Cobb did in Inception. That’s not to say The Protagonist never screws up, he just doesn’t sit in a chair nuzzling a gun when he does. The other key performance in the film is from Robert Pattinson, who like everyone else who broke out due to Twilight, has proven that those films should not be looked upon as any kind of talent determination. Pattinson gives a very nuanced performance that always seems to know more than he lets on, but never anything that can be specified and discussed. He’s never cagey about it though, and never undermines The Protagonist. Pattinson plays off Washington perfectly and their chemistry is that of trust and friendship. The performance that will draw the most attention, however, is Branagh’s. He chews the scenery like a newly hatched caterpillar, raging with a unique Russian accent that never really sounds convincing yet never really sounds off either. He goes so over-the-top that he laps himself in some scenes, but he never quite lowers his intensity below the top. He’s either at his most or transcending it, coming out of it looking like an Easter ham. But that works for the character, oddly. It’s not off-putting like Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever, but it is not a selling point for the picture either.
To add to the level of difficulty for Nolan in the director’s chair, he developed a concept that allowed him to shoot the same action scenes from different perspectives, filming one going forwards and another going backwards and placing them at different parts of the film, tying them together while making them wholly unique. It’s there that Nolan shines as a director. His scripts are usually the focal point for his films, though without his visuals and action sensibilities, his films wouldn’t make any sense at all. Just think of the café scene in Inception. If the whole city block didn’t fold in on itself during Cobb’s explanation, none of what he says would make sense. That’s what makes Nolan such a great director. He ties his visuals to his words in a way that one without the other just can’t work. It’s the difference between watching a Woody Allen or Kevin Smith film vs. a Kubrick or a Spielberg film. Remove the video track from an Allen or Smith film and you have a really entertaining radio special that makes full sense because neither rely on visuals to communicate their stories. Kubrick or Spielberg films need that visual element or they won’t make sense (and in some cases would just be dead air). He’s the wordiest visual director working today (possibly ever) and that makes him unique. The level that he goes to here, showing set pieces that the action has already taken place in, then showing what that action was without flashing back. Then there are the elaborate stunt sequences, which have become as much a hallmark of his work as his complex plots. Here, because of the intricate nature of time displayed, Nolan filmed many sequences twice, once forward and once backward, and both were employed at different times in the film and everything was shot practically (according to IMdB, there are only 280 VFX shots and no green screens were employed). These fight scenes are beautifully choreographed by fight coordinator Jackson Spidell and stunt coordinator Amar Shetty and incredibly performed by a great stunt team as well as Washington, who did many of his own stunts, as did Pattinson (though Washington does not have a stunt double credited).
Tenet is a wildly ambitious film that never quite takes off in the ways The Prestige, Inception and Interstellar do in that by suppressing the emotions of the lead, we’re held at arm’s length (more so than in his other films) and that connection to the story is lost a bit. That doesn’t undermine the quality of the filmmaking or the performances but it does bring it down to a more mental exercise than a full film. Perhaps multiple viewings will alleviate this feeling, but even if it doesn’t, Tenet is more than worth the effort and is a pleasure to try and figure out.