TENNETUS
It has been a few days since I saw Tenet on one of the best IMAX screens in the world. One thing has remained with me for the last few days from that screening, the ringing sensation in my ears. The moment I think about Christopher Nolan’s time-bending spy thriller I hear it, the screeching of wheels, the loud gunshots and I remember the one thing I couldn’t hear, the dialogue.
Tenet, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, follows The Protagonist, a CIA operative armed with only one word – Tenet – The Protagonist must master understand the power of time inversion to stop a Russian oligarch named Andrei Sator from ending the world. That is Tenet in its simplest explanation and even still it is difficult to write up an original plot synopsis for the film.
Tenet is about time inversion and the idea that you may be able to create machines and materials that can travel backwards in time. Whether that be something as simple as picking up a gun backwards or two teams of agents completing a scenario at the same but different times is really all up to the imagination of Christopher Nolan.
I would describe myself as a Nolan fan, as someone who certainly believes that if anyone is going to make a great movie Christopher Nolan would easily be a top candidate. I have been thinking over time that since The Dark Knight Rises something has changed with Nolan and his filmmaking and Tenet has proven that to me.
To understand a key component of Tenet we have to look back at The Dark Knight Rises and the lead up to it. The discussion from the first trailers was based around the voice of Tom Hardy’s Bane. When he spoke in the trailers many viewers couldn’t understand what he was saying. When The Dark Knight Rises was released Bane’s voice hadn’t changed much and it is still a little hard to understand. This was repeated with Interstellar where the dialogue was mixed with loud explosions and rattling but mixed well with Hans Zimmer’s brilliant score.
This brings us to Tenet, Tenet is a confusing film, it definitely requires multiple viewings to understand it’s complex time inversion centre. While the idea of rewatch-ability is great and getting to watch a film and seeing parts you may have missed in previous viewings is exciting it may not have needed to be like that.
The first hour flies past you as you try to pick up on what on earth is going on because the sound effects and score are covering up any dialogue. At the very start of the film, most characters are wearing masks so it is already hard to understand what they are saying, and this is something that continues and throughout the entire film, it’s like Bane to the max.
Sound is absolutely crucial to every film, one wrong sound effect can ruin an entire moment. In terms of Tenet, the sound ruined the entire film. Trying to listen to the dialogue or even the score, which on its own Ludwig Goransson has made a great score, is ruined by moments like cars screeching louder than they should and you’ll wonder if someone has just recorded a cat scratching a blackboard.
I saw Tenet in an IMAX theatre that Christopher Nolan actually goes to, I know because I used to work there. I have always been in the mindset of seeing a film in IMAX whenever possible, it is the best way to watch a film but unfortunately, this is the worst film I’ve ever seen in IMAX. I would go as far as to say that from an audio perspective its one of the worst cinema-going experiences I’ve ever had.
Christopher Nolan films are big films, in fact now more than ever they are big cinema experiences. However, as the acclaimed director has progressed throughout his career his films have become bigger and bigger and it makes you long for his better and smaller films like Memento and The Prestige.
Tenet is too big of a film and that is coming from a James Bond fan. Why do I mention this you ask? Well, Nolan is known to be a fan of Bond and he is long rumoured to be connected to a future Bond film. Tenet is his Bond film and I’m thankful for that because now we know his big film attitude is even too much for a franchise like James Bond, a franchise that specialises in most films being about a spy saving the world.
Tenet is soulless is most parts, the only emotional moments coming from Elizabeth Debicki’s strong performance as Kat in a film featuring very few strong purposeful roles for female actors. Just looking at the IMDB cast list for the film says it all, the main list is 15 actors with 4 female actors. When you read that Nolan has been thinking of the film for six years its clearly obvious that yes those ratios probably worked six years ago but we live in a different, ironically, time now.
It is important to note that yes this is the highest budget for a film with a person of colour as the lead. John David Washington does a great job as The Protagonist, but ultimately there’s no back story for him. Robert Pattinson’s Neil is also great but there’s no backstory there’s no reason why we should be supporting these characters apart from the usual blockbuster rubbish of they’re the good guys trying to save the world. I thought Nolan was better than that.
Confusing is what Nolan is going for with all of this mix together. If you could hear the dialogue maybe these characters would be a bit more likeable and you might care for them but the soundscape covers up so much of the film that its almost as if it’s covering up for the fact that if you could just listen to the film you’d ask well how does this work or this doesn’t make sense. Hell, even Marvel films have the guts to say something like we have to forge a weapon from a dying star but at least we know the characters before that and we are part of their journey. For Tenet I simply have to say buy me dinner before you decide to do any time inversion with me, please.
Another note has to be said for the way the film is made. Tenet looks fantastic most of the time, there are shots of Italy in IMAX that’ll make you wish you could go on holidays right now. There are, however, unnecessary moments that’ll make you ask why? The much talked about real-life plane crash is well careless and a bit hypocritical. To make a film about the world ending because of global warming in the future and then to crash a real-life plane into a building in a less than remarkable nature and something that I imagine could easily be done with models and visual effects and it is disappointing and a bit disrespectful to the great work that VFX companies are now capable of doing. If George Lucas can blow up model X-Wings back in the ’70s and make it look real then destroying an entire plane and building instead of recycling it or using the money elsewhere is actually upsetting. Nolan is a director who is leading the film world, future directors are studying his films and it isn’t the right thing to teach especially when his films appear to be about the world being destroyed by man, its heartbreaking for your idol to be doing this.
Everything you see is real is a great way to advertise your film and get people excited because yes a lot of films are just made with green screens. There is a balance to be found though, there’s Star Wars’ new Stagecraft which looks incredible or even Mission Impossible has Tom Cruise doing all of his stunts for real but mixing it with visual FX that also look incredible. You could also do a lot more with time inversion as well, in the film small things like guns and bullets are inverted because its easy to say put a magnet under a glove and have someone look like they’re picking something up backwards. There are a few bigger moments but not as many as there should be to really show the scale of what is happening with time inversion. Much like the Nuclear reactor in The Dark Knight Rises, we have another boring real life but not really looking device that shaping the whole film that makes no sense to the viewer when watching the film because it’s just a ball on a string or in this case a few random metal cubes that just happen to do the job.
Tenet is still somewhat enjoyable, watching people going backwards and forwards at the same time in a scene is mind-boggling and fascinating. Watching fight scenes where one person is going backwards is quite remarkable and you still route for the good guys to win. The film misses that Nolan moment though where the score rises up and your heart starts to race right at the end. Nolan is a master of those moments whether its Cooper trying to dock in Interstellar, Batman fighting his way up the tower to catch the Joker in The Dark Knight or all of the dreams collapsing at once in inception. These are moments that make you remember Nolan’s films but Tenet doesn’t have that moment.
I’m sure watching it at home with the subtitles on will help the film make sense but I shouldn’t have to do that. Living in the time we do now where people are potentially risking their lives to see a film whose director is adamant that you have to see it in the theatres it’s almost embarrassing to then show a film so poorly suited for the big screen experience. Tenet isn’t Nolan’s worst film but it is by no means close to being his best. I’ll applaud anyone who is coming up with original ideas in modern cinema but this is a real miss for someone who wrote and directed Inception, I guess a great Nolan Bond film was truly just a thing of dreams.