Movie Review : Tenet (2020)

Christopher Nolan is the most beloved mainstream film director working today. It’s easy to understand why: he makes people feel intelligent for liking his movies. They are smart, original and incredibly rewarding if you give them enough attention and effort. It’s hard not to love someone who thinks you’re smart and that you can figure it out. The only accolade missing to his resume was making a truly groundbreaking film. One that would change cinema history.

I’m not 100% sure, but Tenet might be this movie. It will either be Nolan’s most hated movie or the one that forever changed our relationship to cinema.

The plot of Tenet is insanely complicated. An unnamed CIA agent (a MAGNETIC John David Washington) is captured by Russian operatives after an extraction mission went wrong. Instead of ratting out his colleagues, he decides to swallow a cyanide pill like a boss. Only problem, the pill was fake and the mission was only a test to recruit him for another mission, which involved artifacts from the future that could theoretically cause the apocalypse. I think.

Several people warned me going into Tenet: you’re not going to understand what the fuck is going on, Ben. This is a slick-looking fiasco. They were kind of right. I followed the plot of Tenet for seventy-five minutes or so. I completely lost the wheel after that, but it felt like something that was supposed to happen. I don’t think any human being is equipped to handle the sheer amount of information this movie delivers in the utmost spectacular way over two and a half hours.

The first thing I did after seeing Tenet is to read the plot on Wikipedia. It instantly made the movie better. I also slightly suspect that a second viewing would make it even better afterwards. That got me thinking. What if it was the point? What if Tenet was the ultimate non-disposable movie? A prism through which your interpretation grows and evolves over multiple viewings. Because right now no one in the world has an accurate opinion on it. Not even me.

Tenet doesn’t feel like a movie that is poorly written or willingly confusing. It just feels like there’s too much into it to humanly take in a single viewing. There are things I like already, but they are superficial. John David Washington is a revelation. He feels dangerous without even saying anything. The sweeping scope is also a lot of fun. Espionage thrillers tend to be shot on a series of crowded streets and remote mansions. Tenet is more creative than that.

There’s a terrorist attempt at a opera house in the opening scene. Wind mills in the middle of the sea. An airport in Oslo. A weird desert in the middle of nowhere. Locations constantly alternate between the familiar and unfamiliar, which gives Tenet kinetic power even without the going-backwards stuff. When a scene latches on to knowledge it shares with you (like the functioning of an airport runway), it fucks with you sense of security in a good way.

But none of the things I liked about Tenet are related to what the movie is about. Because I’m not exactly sure what the movie is about.

Of course, I’ve read the plot. Tenet is about a spy trying to prevent the end of the world. Even if you don’t understand anything, you’ll understand that. The visual storytelling of Tenet follows the conventions of espionage thrillers. There’s a man who attempt to retrieve something in order to stop a disaster from happening. I got the basic direction of the movie, but I was so emotionally and kinetically overwhelmed that I did not look for anything else.

I believe Christopher Nolan might’ve cracked the code. He made a movie that you actually have to watch multiple times in order to fully enjoy that is not obtuse or self-consciously difficult. It’s just too full for the human brain to absorb in one sitting. I highly suspect that I will watch Tenet at least five or six times and that I’ll enjoy it increasingly more each time and that I’ll never feel that I was coerced into it. It’s a bizarre, but weirdly enthralling experience.

I might be wrong. Tenet might be a slick-ass fiasco. Beautiful white noise that overstays its welcome by forty-five minutes or so. But I don’t think so. I was defeated by Tenet, but I wanted to see it again right out of the theater. The product doesn’t feel too different from what Christopher Nolan usually does, but the execution does. Don’t be surprised if there’s a part II and a part II to this review in the future. It never happened before, but it feels appropriate.

8.1/10