Review 574: Tenet

Tenet is a gripping, gigantically confusing andgigantically entertaining spy/espionage thriller (to quote the Guardian) and another expertly crafted addition to Christopher Nolan's filmography.

Armed with only one word – Tenet – and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a secret agent known only as "The Protagonist" (John David Washington) journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission to prevent WWII that will unfold in something beyond real time. Not time travel. Inversion.

The plot is an intricate,  Nolan engages us in scenes of loud noices and incomprehensible dialogue, but the dialogue is not the point. The film is purposefully made to function without it. The sound design and the score are so purposefully loud and intrusive that it feels redundant to point where it functions almost like a silent film. I think that it goes without saying that the title is a Palindrome so it reads the same backward as forward.

At its core, Tenet is an espionage thriller. Nolan's love and respect for the genre is laced in every frame of the film.

It's also a film that deals with the concept of time. In this case it's "Time Inversion": the idea that the intrepee of an object or person could be reversed. It's all madly preposterous and at the end of the day doesn't make any sense but as Peter Bradshaw put it "It shouldn't make sense"

Christopher Nolan's direction is marvelous throughout. Filming many of the scenes (action or otherwise) in an amazing blend of wide, medium and close ups. The cinematography is gorgeous, the locations are splendid, the scenery is breathtaking, the score by Ludwig Goransson is spectacularly, pulse pounding and energy filled. The action scenes are a feast for the eyes 

John David Washington delivers a steadfast and charasmatic performance playing the films protagonist. He is never mentioned by name throughout the entirety of the films 150 min runtime which seems to be Nolan's adherence to Todorov's theory. It also allows us to put ourselves as an audience in his shoes and project our front and backstory. His whole world and everything he believes in has turned upside down. He must keep going through the stiles, learning, and adjusting until he gets it right.

Robert Pattinson is excellent playing Neil, The Protagonists handler. He's the type of person who appriciates chaos and likes it when things don't make sense. Pattinson brought a rugged and enigmatic charm to the role

Elizabeth Debicki is also vulnerable and lovely playing Kat even thought she's basically playing the same character that she played in The Night Manager. Inteligent, intuitive and manipulative

If John David Washington is the Protagonist of the film, then Kenneth Branagh's Andrei Sator is definately the films antgagonist. Branagh brought the right amount of menace required for this part

Michael Caine also has a small role in the film playing British Intelligence officer, Sir Michael Crosby. A possible homage to his roles in 60s spy films such as The Ipcress File.

 

Clemence Poesy, Himesh Patel, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Martin Donovan round out the films cast with

 

5/5.

 

The Anonymous Critic.