Tenet

In two and bit hours I will will to became a guy who will have seen Tenet. I am starting this review with the last paragraph and the whole thing is a palindrome. 🎵BRRRRRRRRRRR🎵

The laser focus on the forwards-backwards time concept worked for me and I really enjoyed the film. That is to say, I enjoyed the film and its focus on the backwards-forwards time concept.

Sorry sorry I know I’m not funny. Anyway I can’t help wonder if this is the perfect film through Christopher Nolan’s eyes. He’s never really given much of a shit about emotional stakes (here it is simply ‘save tall pretty lady’), or characters or even really plot arcs. So he’s sacked it all off and done what he does best - incredible set-pieces with little to no use of computer generated imagery.

They actually drove a jumbo jet through an aircraft hangar. I don’t know what more you can ask for (or at least, I don’t think Christopher Nolan knows).

This is really an exercise in how to make time itself work in reverse on screen, in a medium that only ever goes forwards. And yes it’s easy to shit on Tenet for barely telling a story but I was very much impressed with what he managed to pull off here. It’s pure spectacle, and OK perhaps it makes absolutely no fucking sense but just let yourself go and enjoy the flippy backwardsyness of it.

The biggest sacrifice he makes is that because of his mad idea 90% of the dialogue is just pure exposition. Someone even says “don’t try to understand it” near the start of the film so why the fuck do we spend so much time trying to understand it?

Also, speaking of dialogue, I’ve never been one to moan about the sound mix but even with my nerdy multi-speaker setup I was working the volume knob more than a third rate wedding disc jockey. If I’ve got it loud enough to hear voices, the next scene is then at a volume that sets off the neighbour’s car alarm.

I think it also needed a bit of a sense of humour, given that it’s pretty much just a Mission: Impossible film. There’s a high-brow pretension to it that is at times a bit laughable given that the working title of the film was ‘Time Bastards’.

Anyway I still recommend Tenet because to be frank, only one man can gather enough money and resources together to pull this shit off. It’s a failure in many regards but an ambitious and noble one. Better that, than to play it safe.