Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

A Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh) is attempting to use technology from the future to bring an end to the world.

It falls to a shadowy secret agent (John David Washington) to stop him.

I did not catch Tenet in theatres (for obvious reasons).

I am not the biggest Nolan fan so I just never caught up with it.

I caught a recent IMAX re-release, and I am so glad I waited.

This is cinema on an epic scale, a scale we just do not get any more, in 2020 or 2024.

Just in terms of scope, this movie is incredible - the opera house, filled with extras, the plane crashing into the hanger, the catamaran race, the final battle, even Elisabeth Debicki using her huge frame to open the front door from the backseat.

Everything in this movie is so physically immense.

Nolan is famously fetishistic about using filming and favouring practical effects - this movie totally validates that position.

 

 A movie that is simultaneously aiming to be a crowd pleaser while acting as a complete rejection of contemporary trends among its contemporaries.

I will not be saying anything new, but if all of Nolan’s nods to James Bond, this feels the most evocative of 007’s globetrotting.He even managed to find some new, exotic locations - the freeport, the secret Russian city, even the offshore wind farm are all visually distinctive and different.

It is hard to not spend most of this review on the background and the scale.

Is John David Washington good? Or is it just that he sounds like his dad?

 

There are times where he works as a cool, professional spy (or the star of an action movie about such a character).

He handles the few one-liners well.

It might be a George Lazenby - he is not terrible but he cannot sustain or stretch outside a certain emotional bandwidth.

There are times where he comes across as effectively wry and detached - but in scenes requiring more open displays of emotion, of vulnerability, any scene with Debicki’s subplot.

He rings hollow.

He has better chemistry with Robert Pattinson.

Pattinson - getting to play the Protagonist’s accomplice - is a welcome dose of charisma. He is so charming and conveys such a bond with Washington that their final farewell.

Do the emotional stakes work? Kinda.

The Protagonist is a bit of a cypher.

The final reveal injects a movement of emotion - it does not quite have the emotional catharsis intended. 

I was so overwhelmed by the experience of the movie it did not matter in the theatre.

Watching it over four years after its release, Tenet hit like a splash of cold water.

Thanks to a lot of poorly integrated greenscreen and quickly-rendered CGI, so many blockbusters feel hermetically sealed.

Could I follow what was going on?

Kind of. 

Could I understand what people were saying? No, and I couldn't care less.

I loved watching this movie.

I find I never rewatch Christopher Nolan movies. I am completely sucked in watching them on the big screen.

They are meant to be viewed in a theatre on the biggest screen.

While I found the movie’s specifics start to fade, what lingered were the emotions: Pattinson’s sad smile as he farewells his friend; the nihilism of Branagh’s mission, overshadowed by death.

The movie does not have a powerful emotional motor, a cathartic final impact. It does not land what it believes it is aiming for.

But there is something there buried under the amazing stunts and photography:

A faith in human beings, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the lives of others.

It is an imperfect beast, and not exactly sure how to express what it wants to convey. 

But the attempt is still worth watching.

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