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Tenet gets two stars
- –John David Washington and Robert Pattison– to strive (with a modicum of success) for a comprehension among the chaos and hyperbole on screen
- Which is a tall order. Tenet is a tough film to understand; early on, a character offers, “we’re being attacked by the future” which if said with any degree of seriousness should elicit a response of, “WHAAAA?!” Hence, the film opts for its players
- Guiding a film constantly operating in schizophrenic simultaneous forwards and backwards timelines
- This makes for a visual feast, but a plausible nightmare
- Opening at the Kyiv Opera House (Ukraine), Tenet likes to hop locations almost as much as it likes to unshoot
bullets out of the ground. The film takes place over a handful of days going forward and then the same handful going backwards. Tenet was shot (and set, I believe) in Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States and also the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Italy, India, Estonia, and Denmark. - The biggest coup this palindromic enigma has to offer is the simultaneous backwards and forwards action. Admittedly, it’s not easy acting; what do you do when the director tells you: “Pretend the bullet shot back into the gun?”
- I’d fault Tenet for the acting. The players never quite convey the astonishment one would have seeing reverse things happen in real time, yet acting might be the least of the film’s problems. Tenet never adequately explains why some things are going backwards while others are going forwards. And this is not only important for audience comprehension; the reality changing physical mechanism itself appears to be the film’s MacGuffin.
- The production operates like Christopher Nolan wanted to make a James Bond/Mission Impossible film
- But with his own special accent
- Biding his own time, Kenneth Branagh eventually shows up so he can embody Tenet’s over-the-top villain
- The film runs 150 minutes
- Which is a very long time to be confused.
- “Protagonist” –yes, “Protagonist” as listed in imdb (John David Washington) spends the entirety of Act I and then some not fully comprehending what’s going on.
- He’s not alone; and this is by design. Tenet wants to be the kind of film where if you don’t understand what’s going on, you can at least enjoy either the banter or the action. I found that a Mission Impossible.
- Almost every scene in the film is dictated by the decisions of the hero, our alter ego matching our thoughts yet battling with a greater skill set.
- The constantly shifting micro-realities undermine everything the film is trying to tell us including: “What the Hell is ‘Tenet’?”
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A sad-yet-fitting tribute to film in 2020, Tenet will almost certainly go down as an ambitious fail, too-clever-for-its-own-good, and highly representative of why we didn’t miss movie theaters nearly as much as we could have during the pandemic.
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Now, in true Tenet form, I’ve deliberately written this review both backwards and forwards. Please read each dot separately but in reverse order.
♪Tenet is a silly film where everything’s insane
Folks go backwards to go forwards
Which seems like smoking crack
The motivation changes with every single scene
With made-up physics and device
Your “take” will be done twice
The film eats back and forward clever
Like it’s the menu for lunch
And just then you realize
“This film is not so fun”
Tenet has guns
Shoots bullets back
Confusion, Tenet will never lack♫
Rated PG-13, 150 Minutes
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writer: Christopher Nolan
Genre: Like a cross between James Bond and MC Escher
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People too mesmerized by the spectacle to realize the film is kinda wack
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The easily confused
♪ Parody Inspired by the commercial theme song to Parker Brothers “Bonkers” board game
