“Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.”
As a filmmaker Christopher Nolan likes to take chances. In a CGI riddled film landscape he chooses to film almost entire without it, choosing a refreshing approach to shoot mostly all ‘in camera’. Oftentimes the plots of his movies are complex, multi-layered and, at the very least, interesting.
With Tenet Nolan has created a very polarising film. Some will laud it as a complex masterpiece while others, myself included, think it a messy, sometimes contrived plot littered with single dimensional characters.
It feels very much like a movie that has been edited and reedited to death, almost to the point where you can now see the seams of those edits.
Opening with a blistering pace at a amphiteathre we are introduced to ‘The protagonist’ (John David Washington) as he is unwittingly recruited into an ultra secret espionage group called Tenet. Someone in the future has figured out how to entropy objects, effectively sending them back through the same timeline without having to reverse time itself which has catastrophic implications for humanity, pitching us on course for world war 3 and the end of humanity itself.
The opening of the movie feels extremely disjointed. Introducing us in a very slight way to the character simply called the protagonist. As pitched, he is bond lite. A carbon copy minus the charisma and charm. As played by John David Washington he is almost characterless. Wheter that is down to the endless reams of exposition he is asked to say or the unweildy dialogue itself it is anyones guess.
But what is abundantly clear is the fact that he struggled with it seemingly different from scene to scene. There wasn’t anything for him to cling to to create a character so I would say it is a major flaw of the screenplay. As it stands he is sterile and cold like the plot itself lacking humanity. Which is in counterpoint to the second half of the movie where we are to believe a contrived love connection between himself and Kat, (Elizebeth Debicki) a put upon mol, with litterally zero chemistry between them.
Which places the whole female in jeopardy plot point into the realms of suspending disbelief. As the main antagonist Sator (Kenneth Branagh) struggles too. An unweildy russian accent, snarling at the screen like a panto villain. ( Sean Connery famously played a russian submarine commander using his own accent and I was totally on board with it.) So really one of the weakest parts of the movie is the characterisation itself and the constant use of exposition to move the plot along. It doesn’t help that certain sections of dialogue are deliberatly obscured by the mix.
That’s not to say that the movie is terrible, its not. There is interest to be had. The scenes involving time going backwards are inventive and interesting if, at times, a little unclear. The locations are great with some nice production design and photography.
On a technical level it is brilliant especially the end where two squadrans of soldiers, one going forward and one going backwards in time occupy the same space.
So the question really is how far can you suspend your disbelief and hang on deciphering a complex plot? If you enjoy Nolan’s movies you will definitely want to see it. The question remains wheter you will ultimately see it as a wonderous failure or potential future classic. To me it is neither a complete failure nor a classic decidedly in the realms of just passable.