Tenet

A banal plot in which two characters (a man and a woman with chemistry) speak normally and everyone else in such coded language that it could be developed without conspicuous illogic into a seemingly ultra-sophisticated spectacle packed with unexpected situations and unprecedented visual attractions. Or rather, one unprecedented attraction, when in one shot some characters run forward and others backwards and it looks neither ridiculous nor strange, but on the contrary, fresh and spectacular. Nolan clearly and meaningfully declared his fetish for time paradoxes in Inception and now he’s merely changing it up on other theoretical levels and interweaving it with new sub-genre elements (in this case, Bond films). And he increasingly equivocates, pretends and artificially complicates things as much as possible in order to push everything farther and higher than last time, while cleverly hiding the absence of a supporting foundation for the plot (which was dreams in Inception). Winking at the thoughtful viewer with lines like "You have no idea what I'm talking about...” Answer: “No, but it sounds extremely important" can thus be understood as passing the buck, but I see it rather as a plea for leniency towards the deliberate gaps in logic and, conversely, appreciation of his courage and exceptional genre progressiveness. Tenet is a techno-thriller from another dimension. In the context of the viewer’s state of mind induced by the film, the last scene with Pattinson reminded me of Casper Van Dien in Starship Troopers, which almost made me laugh in places with its cheesy absurdity. Actually, that was the best thing that could have happened to me with Tenet, if I'm supposed to like it. P.S. Göransson’s music is outstanding, as it gives the film a more energetic and innovative tone than we would expect from Zimmer (whose music, however, would be more enjoyable to listen to on its own). (07/09/2020)

Nolan spins the threads of time, reverses entropy, and becomes definitively his own genre benchmark, no longer needing to prove anything to anyone. He plays a stimulating game with the viewer that is, at its core, justifiably simple because its magic lies in its precise narrative composition, which inevitably demands full attention and multiple viewings. I gave up the first time and the composition of the timelines together with the thunderous music threw me into lethargy. It was only on the second viewing that I enjoyed the elaborately complex structure that makes you think and gives nothing away for free. It’s a fascinating and immersive experience in every way, with such unique production values that it is almost impossible to compare it to anything else. I read the Q&A breakdowns for this film and consider them proof that the viewer is really just a small cog in the great game of one principle. (01/11/2021)

I don’t want to be mean to Tenet. Yes, I enjoyed it as a solution to a quadratic equation, as an endless conversation with an android in whom someone implanted the EgoBooster 3000 chip. Yes, I understand who the protagonist is here and I will not haggle with a person who understands entropy and is not afraid to use it. But no one can expect that this ostentatiously conducted puppet show full of flatly-spoken phrases and motivations subject to narrative mechanics will evoke in me anything that is even remotely close to fascination, and even further away from emotional investment. In short, I cared even less about Tenet than Inception and Interstellar combined, and my degree of indifference was far greater regarding the film about people waiting on the beach, with a few other approaching them whose watches move at different speeds. For me, Nolan has changed from a magician who could draw me into his intricate magic into a puppeteer morbidly obsessed with wires and switches. I understand that it doesn't matter that McGuffin was pulled out of someone’s ass – it only matters that he functions in an entropic bidirectional. Ok, if this is a Bond film for future generations, I'm glad I grew up with the past one, which discovered insight and later the basics of psychology. (31/08/2020)

After my first viewing of Inception, I wrote about the film as a perfect toy for the enjoyment of its creator, but I was a decade ahead. It is Tenet that is a meticulously crafted construction set that works exactly as the author needs it to, right up to the last frame. This also means that Christopher Nolan himself plays with it the best and the audience can only watch over his shoulder, wondering how each mechanism works, thinking about how they wish they could play with it, too. He will probably allow them to, but only when they come to see it for the second or third time. I can't shake the feeling that with each new film, Nolan goes deeper into his mode of expression, not only in terms of the complexity of the screenplay, but also in relation to the viewer. With Inception, or even earlier with The Prestige, were able to present each twist or trick almost kindly and "narratively", even when it was a nerve-wracking twist. But in Interstellar, it became necessary to go more towards information, and in Tenet, you can only get answers through machine-gun dialogue or quick cuts. Despite the usual drawn-out running time, the film doesn't allow for a breather, and even in situations where the main characters rest or wait for something, more information, branching paths, or theories are thrust upon us, which could easily be a dead end – or conversely, the most crucial clue. This time, everything is subordinate to this approach, including the last vestiges of accommodating the viewer, the personalities of the characters (this time expressible without exception in two sentences) or visible emotions. Still, at the end, my heart jumped to unforeseen heights, and for that I am most grateful. For the fact that even though this latest Nolan film has surprisingly sharply divided the audience spectrum, it was worth every long minute to me, and its dirty and unusually aggressive world will thoroughly mature within me for a long time. (01/09/2020)

What happened (didn't happen). The opening plays with the idea of Lipsky´s Happy End, Moffat´s saga about River Song, the third Harry Potter movie and the The Sensational Reverse Brothers. Yes, it is undeniably closest to “the palindromic Inception", but with a differently conceived disruption of reality and time. From filmmaking perspective, it is again an extremely well-worked-out blockbuster “with people in suits in the same way as in a Bond movie", which at the same time does not let the brain idle. And it's purely Nolan: cold, reserved, depersonalized, sophisticated, precise and almost procedural. Which, although not many see it, is not a disadvantage this time, but an advantage. Compared to Inception, the biggest difference, apart from the surprisingly frequent and scaled-up ideas of breathtaking action based on practical effects and stunts, is that it does not give the viewer any explanation. Where Inception gradually went over the rules and clarified them, Tenet recklessly jumps right into them (especially in the final third). However, the source of “mindfucking" is not so much in the incomprehensibility/abstraction of that concept, but rather in keeping track of all of the events. And that at the end, at such a furious pace (the sophisticated audiovisual excuses helping the viewer slowly disappear), there are so many levels and storylines that it overwhelms all senses and does not change the overall level of comprehensibility at all. PS: Nolan simply has to adapt Sweterlitsch's “The Gone World" and no one can change my mind about that. (26/08/2020)