TENET MOVIE REVIEW

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet tells the story, as I try to explain it, of The Protagonist (played by John David Washington) as he navigates as an agent of espionage and is brought into a mission that gets him involved in the likes of questionable allies, Neil (played by Robert Pattinson), and through the complications of what is revealed to be not time travel, but ‘inversion’ as the film describes it.

Luckily, like many others, I got to see Tenet in a cinema when it came out and is looking to arrive on streaming and physical media in December. The film had made a splash in the press for a while during the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic as we are all still living in as it was being headlined as the film that would “save cinema” or “revive the theatrical experience”. And while there were signs that may have proved otherwise, the film, for lack of better word, flopped. It had managed to pull an admittedly surprising number in $350 million. However, against a budget of over $200 million, this would be and has been to some considered a failure across the board.

With the high stakes being pushed for this film, and being a Christopher Nolan fan, I was morbidly curious to see what this has to offer for mainstream audiences and for those like myself.

Firstly, in terms of a creative endeavor, nothing comes close to this as being Nolan’s most ambitious idea crafted. It’s incredibly challenging and uses its concept in some parts to enhance its story and speak certain ideas that upon further discussion and viewings are fascinating. I’ll speak more on this in a minute.

The performances are all fun and engaging and it’s made very clear that each of the performers are all having fun with what they’re doing even if they have no idea what it is they’re doing. To say that they had an interesting time doing press for this film would be a complete understatement.

The true star of Tenet lies in its score, which is extremely slick, stylish and infectious to the point where you can’t get the sounds and reversal of said sounds out of your mind as it is a creatively and holy original score. At times, the composer Ludwig Goransson, whose credits also include Creed and Black Panther (which he won his Oscar for), does try to replicate the vibes of Hans Zimmer as Zimmer is a frequent collaborator of Nolan’s films and those moments I wasn’t as thrilled by but did not at all sour my experience in just listening to the wonderful score created.

After watching it with my good friend Dylan, we both sat in his car and discussed it at length in trying to comprehend what it is we just both experienced. And after that discussion and thinking about it for a few days, I finally understood what my problem with the film was.

The problem with the film is that the idea of Tenet speaks more as a fun trick than a fundamental and important part of the story. There’s a great thing I heard about filmmaking that perfectly describes my problem withTenet. A professor had once told a film major student when you are cutting your film, it is important to take what it is you love about your piece and remove it and see if it still works without it. In the case of Tenet, if one were to remove the gimmick that is of ‘inversion’, what you’re left with is a hollow and by the numbers thriller that acts more James Bond than it has any right to be. It is only that the film is covered by the appealing element that is ‘inversion’ that makes it all the more interesting and yet for me anyway it just doesn’t. It makes me wish it had a higher purpose as opposed to just being a neat little trick. It’s like going to see a magic show. It only becomes a matter of time when the tricks become old and we wish to see more. And with magicians, all they got is the magic. Tenet really feels like a magician in that it only has one or two offerings of tricks and thrills and nothing else beneath it.

To add to that, while the trick is flashy and fun to see play out, the true art of being a magician is the illusion and the satisfaction to that illusion. For Tenet, it understands half of this. The other half of it is where the issues are. For most of the film, I just kept saying to myself “why is it that each time I get an idea the film decides to throw me around?” It’s like the film never wants you to figure it out. And when you can’t put your finger to something, it can be quite interesting but eventually when there is no rational understanding of such a thing, you just find yourself distancing yourself from it and moving on to something else. Basically, it’s greatest flaw is its inability to become tangible and comprehensible in some form or another. The richness is there but the explanations are buried so deeply that it’s harder for audiences to dig them up or find a reason to care.

Because beyond that, characterization is almost non-existent as I could not tell you anything about The Protagonist or Neil or anybody else besides their titles within the world they inhabit. One’s a spy, one’s a good guy, and one’s a bad guy. Elizabeth Debicki is given the most meat to the bone for her own character but not enough to create much satisfaction.

More importantly, in a film of which every line spoken is of significance to the plot, it is inexcusable how hard it is to hear this film. It’s extremely low-pitched and low-leveled to the point where, I’m not joking, a good fourth of the film I literally couldn’t understand from both a visual medium and from a spoken medium. This issue has become apparent in many of Nolan’s previous work as he had trouble with getting Bane’s voice to be heard properly in The Dark Knight Rises to give an example. But in that instance, this trouble was found in a screening of just a segment of the film and Nolan had the chance to go and fix this problem. Here, what we’re watching is final and being released worldwide (or in areas where it can be released). Clearly, Nolan needed to do what he did before and have this problem addressed then because it completely butchered the viewing experience almost entirely and made it even more harder to comprehend a plot that is already having a hard time becoming accessible to its audience to begin with.

So, while Tenet is technical-wise brilliant minus its sound design and holds creative ideas inside, its problem is that it loses itself within its own world and becomes all about itself and never allows the audience in and try to comprehend the actions and rules of this world. It’s like testing someone on a book about physics and they haven’t read the book yet. Tenet never allows us to read its book and that’s why we fail in trying to understand it and ultimately trying to make sense of what appears on screen even if it’s composed stylishly and visually fascinating. Being complex means to have more on your mind and Tenet is definitely complex but for all the wrong reasons. Anytime you feel you have some form of comprehension, the film takes it away from you. And that's not what complexity or ambiguity should do. If you have an idea, the film should allow that idea to blossom in whatever form it takes and have it become sense for that viewer. Tenet, at the end of it, just cares more about itself than anyone else and that is where storytelling just isn't fun anymore. There's fun to be had with Tenet but loads of frustration afterwards.

Grade: C+