A few people had told me watching Tenet was a waste of time. It was too hard to follow. It didn’t make sense. Or simply: it was boring. I don’t have a problem with films which are difficult to understand, even after repeated viewings. There’s something enjoyable in sitting back and letting a film wash over you, appreciating the form even if the content is confusing. Tenet is not such a film. The action set pieces are too convoluted to be enjoyed for their own sake, and are stitched together by tiresome and confusing exposition, without a truly compelling story.
This is an action film in which we’re never quite sure what’s going on. Whatever the stakes are, we are repeatedly assured they are very high. It could the end of the world… or worse. The future is sending technology back to the present, which allows time to be “inverted” by reversing the process of entropy. Bullets are caught by guns, cars reverse at terrifying speed and explosions cause hypothermia. John David Washington stars as a CIA agent who encounters this technology during an operation at a Kiev opera house, where a masked operative “unfires” a bullet through a hostile gunman. Later, he is recruited by the mysterious Tenet organisation, set up to prevent a future cataclysm caused by the new technology.
Washington’s character, known only as the Protagonist, tracks the inverted bullets to Andrei Sator, a Russian arms dealer, played by Kenneth Branagh. Sator is being used as an intermediary by an unknown entity in the future, but his personal motivations are unclear. The only way to get to him is through his estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), who unknowingly sold Sator a forged Goya drawing. “His painting is his hold over me” Kat tells the Protagonist. Obviously the issue is not that Sator controls Kat’s access to their son, it’s the drawing.
We’re really here for the action, which in Nolan films often provokes head scratching as well as excitement. There is a high-tech heist at Oslo airport involving crashing a plane into a hangar, where a masked gunman, moving in reverse, attacks the Protagonist. It’s one of the film’s best moments, thanks in part to a pulsating and original score. Both men tumble about in different directions and grapple over a gun that flies about as if it has a mind of it’s own. There are other sequences, such as a car chase in Estonia, where Nolan keeps it simple (by his standards) and the results are a joy to watch.
Unfortunately, most of the film gets tangled up in it’s own logic, the time dynamic serving to obfuscate the action rather than excite. Early on the Protagonist is advised “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it”, which feels like Nolan telling the audience to go with the flow. But the film feels cold. Where Interstellar was able to overcome it’s reliance on ponderous exposition through emotional melodrama, Tenet is disorientating to the point of frustration. The tension never rises because the mechanics at play are too complex, which seems to miss the point entirely of what is essentially a spy film.
The Protagonist is accompanied by an agent named Neil, played by a wonderfully droll Robert Pattinson. There are glimmers of great chemistry between the two men, although this is hampered by jargon-filled dialogue – something Nolan is prone too. As a result the character interactions feel clumsy and awkward. Quips intended to undercut the seriousness don’t quite land, although I did enjoy a line about high-vis vests which reminded me of a certain Australian cartoon.* Clichés abound, from the gruff cockney soldier (think Gaz from COD 4), to the sinister Russian trying to destroy the world. On that note, Branagh’s best moments are not when he growls about nuclear warheads, but with the disdain and violence he displays towards Kat. The characters pop up in a variety of exotic locations, but some scenes feel like they were cut from an advert for M&S’s summer collection.
Throughout the action, we are never sure who is pulling the strings of Tenet. There is a twist to the end which redefines all the events we’ve been watching – the idea is to invite repeat viewings, but the film is too much hard work for that and lacks an emotional core. Scores of films use time travel as a plot device or thematic centre, but there is none of the desperate fatalism of Twelve Monkeys or the sheer fun of Avengers: Endgame. When Neil mentions his master’s in physics, the Protagonist tells him to “try and keep up” with what’s going on. Clearly this is a “big brain” film. But to quote Roger Ebert “To the degree that I do understand, I don’t care.”
*one Nolan paying tribute to another?
Mark It Zero 