Throughout his career thus far, Christopher Nolan has constantly been hounding himself within the shadow of the James Bond franchise. Long rumored to take over the reins on 007, so much of his action-based oeuvre has comported itself within the confines of that hallowed property’s formula. One can easily find where his Batman films map themselves to the familiar Bond trappings, and his Best Picture nominated Inception is in no small degree a tribute to the globe trotting adventure of On Her Majesties’ Secret Service, particularly in its third snow-capped act. His work even directly inspired actual Bond films, as Sam Mendes’ Skyfall takes several cues from The Dark Knight directly. So, it should come as no surprise that Tenet, his latest outing, is once again slathering itself with the DNA of his favorite secret agent, but as with those aforementioned films it comes with a defining science fiction twist.
Tenet centers on the unnamed Protagonist (John David Washington, the script making some pains to have this anonymity make sense for the viewer), who after getting into a near death experience from crossing Russian intelligence, becomes embroiled in a top-secret organization called “Tenet”. Their mission: to investigate the importation and origin of technology that allows one to invert objects, such as weaponry, allowing them to travel backward through time. At the center of this plot is a Russian oligarch and weapons dealer named Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), and the likelihood that he may very well hold the power to ignite a destruction on a global scale with this tech in his possession. In his global travails, the Protagonist will ally himself with another agent named Neil (Robert Pattinson, making his first big budget re-emergence ahead of becoming Batman himself), and Sator’s estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), an art auctioneer whose role in the grand scheme of things grows as the running time ticks along.
Time has long been another running fascination in Nolan’s filmography, from Inception’s elegant use of time dilation in its various dream levels, to Interstellar’s own approach to time as a construct through theoretical physics, and the effortless way in which three different POVs separated by timing structure are melded together in his masterful Dunkirk. Even his initial breakthrough, Memento, plays with time and chronology and the viewer experience in how it parlays Leonard’s memories. As it stands, Tenet is Nolan’s most outright usage of time of a storytelling mechanic to the point where it is the actual mcguffin on which the narrative completely rests. And as a progenitor for thrilling action set-pieces, it produces some of Nolan’s best work in that arena. Between a real decommissioned jet being crashed into a freeport, car chases on roads where vehicles are both driving backwards and forwards at the same time, and hand to hand combat where the participants are fighting in opposite ends of their respective chronologies, the action staging and choreography being done here is a massive level-up for a director who is often tagged for lack of clarity.
Though what is gained in wow factor is lost in immediately storytelling comprehension. The mechanics of Tenet, explained early on, come in a cavalcade of exposition, and this pattern repeats itself multiple times as the movie stops between set-pieces to give a rundown of where things currently stand. The problem with this approach is, even though the plot and conflict itself is relatively straightforward to a degree, the underlying methods to get from point A to point B find a viewer trying to wrap their heads around what exactly is happening in a given moment. It’s as if you’re trying to solve a math problem while cars crash around you and there’s a variable you’re constantly missing. That important information in the dialogue is often obscured by Ludwig Göransson’s pounding score and another questionable Nolan audio mix, does not help matters. There are certainly extremely clever aspects to this screenplay, particularly when its palindrome structure comes to bear, but when a movie starts to feel like homework, it is a problem.
Of course, if the emotional investment gets viewers through the day, a little bit of plot-fudgery can be handwaved away. This, again, is where Tenet falls a bit short. Nolan gets a bit of a bad rap as a “cold” filmmaker, when it’s really more that he relies on the audience meeting him halfway through some the primacy of certain emotions and his narrative shorthands. And frankly, a movie as sincere as Interstellar or one as driven by national pride as Dunkirk, can hardly be called cold in any way. But even so, Tenet leaves a little too much on the table regarding its characters. Washington is quite charming as a spin on the suave spy archetype (there’s a scene with Michael Caine where he learns that in this business, Brooks Brothers isn’t going to cut it) and provides a unique catalyst for the film to revolve around. But it is hard to say we know anything about him beyond what is happening on screen. The same goes for just about anyone else that enters his orbit, as much of the cast exists to deliver further information to him, but never expand into fully-fledged characters of their own. In a world that is shaped by the fourth dimension, everyone feels like they have been crafted in the second. Debicki’s Kat and Branagh’s Sator being the exceptions, as Nolan enters an emotional tenor of an abusive relationship that is altogether new for him, and their scenes together, while utterly uncomfortable to bear are also a bit refreshing, in an odd way. Branagh does some of his most intense on-screen work in years here, and Debicki is the beating heart of the whole enterprise. Another notable change of pace for the filmmaker.
It’s curious to think about, but three years ago when Dunkirk was released, it was a clear honing and perfection of so many of his natural instincts as a storyteller. And with Tenet, there is a sense that so many of his interests and ideas that he wanted to play with and left to languish in that previous much more straightforward effort, were all blended together here. The result makes for an interesting peek inside the creative process, but as a source of entertainment, one mostly comes away befuddled.
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