Tenet

The long awaited, a few times delayed new movie TENET will have historical significance as the first "tentpole" would-be blockbuster to open following this year's economy ravaging COVID-19 pandemic.  But not in big cities like NYC and L.A., where millions of frustrated Christopher Nolan fans stew in impatience as their Letterbox'd friends overseas and in smaller U.S. markets gleefully log the movie and offer their amateur takes.  This of course explains TENET's not exactly out of the gate box office performance.  The movie, which cost somewhere north 200 mill, needs to make at least 350 mill just to break even.  I normally don't talk about the business of films on this blog, but during such an unprecedented, historic era it does put things in some sort of perspective.

It's the first movie I've seen on the big screen in 2020.  As I've mentioned, if I get out to a theater ten times a year, it is a lot.  Had it not been for ol' Covid, I would've taken in at least three or four by now.  But the event films of '20 have been delayed until later in the year and even next.  It was questionable when TENET would finally be released, and I was skeptical about attending.  My neck of the woods is now in "Phase 2" of re-opening, and after reading that each auditorium would only be allowed to have a 40% capacity, I figured things would be relatively safe. My 7:30 showtime had about 30 folks.  Seats a few hundred.  I almost felt like I had the place to myself.

TENET is another of writer/director Nolan's crazily ambitious projects, a sci-fi adventure that reminded me mainly of INCEPTION, the director's 2010 hit, a film that I loved.  TENET also felt at times like a James Bond film with elements of THE MATRIX series.   But it ultimately fell short of all of those.  A big, booming, loud reminder that all the good intentions and brilliant ideas do not a satisfying film make.  Especially when you find you just don't give the slightest of damns what happens.  I almost agree with the detractors who say that Nolan really "had his head up his own ass" with this movie.

Early in the film, a scientist explains (in the first of many characters with overly expository dialogue) how objects like bullets move backwards through time. "You didn't fire the bullet, you caught it," she explains to the film's protagonist (John David Washington), who is in fact never given a Christian name and goes by that very moniker straight until the end.  Here begins the first of many explanations and demonstrations of time inversion, the film's main conceit.  I was chuckling as I felt like this scientist was representing Nolan, giving the audience a physics lesson in entropy.

The Protagonist is part of a CIA-like organization that is trying to thwart a Russian bad guy named Sator (Kenneth Branagh) who amassed considerable wealth following the fall of the Soviet Union.  An oligarch, basically, who has figured out how to communicate with and travel back and forth from the future. Er, something like that.   Does the Protagonist also have this power? How does Sator and other arms dealers utilize the "Turnstile", a machine that can invert the entropy of the animate and inanimate?

TENET features several impressive action set pieces, all done sans CG.  When Nolan stages a plane crashing into a hangar, you're seeing just that.  The astonishing freeway chases are also very real.  No one can ever accuse the director of not putting you front and center in the action, and his attention grabbing craft is as exhilarating as ever.  But fleeting.  The central plot is, when considered, not all that interesting, or different than a hundred other movies.  The use of inverted entropy leads to several mind bending moments, perhaps also unprecedented, but I found myself left wanting.  Unlike INCEPTION, a film that used its ingenuity in endlessly creative and dramatically interesting fashion, TENET is a cold, smug movie that never involved me.

Even as it tries to incorporate some humanity through the character of Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), Sator's abused, nearly estranged wife.  Her performance is good, but the character is underwritten.  Robert Pattinson also does some nice work as Neil, the Protagonist's handler, but he is underused.  Washington looks dashing but is kinda blah.  At least Nolan regular Michael Caine shows up (for one scene) to add some class and humanity.

And Ludwig Goransson's score was one of the most anxiety inducing I can remember.  It actually had me laughing out loud at times as to how dissonant and ominous it was.  That is, when I wasn't wincing in frustration at how it often drowned out the dialogue, which is often key to understanding just what in the hell is happening.

All of that said, TENET was made for the big screen, and again kudos to Nolan for sticking to his guns.  This was quite a welcome back to proper movie going.  I would make the effort if you can.  Wear your mask.