Written, Produced and Directed by Christopher Nolan
**1/2 (two and a half stars)
RATED PG 13
I suppose that it was a matter of time and it can happen to the best of them, even to filmmakers as superlative as Christopher Nolan.
For the past 20 years Writer/Producer/Director Christopher Nolan has unquestionably emerged and cemented himself as a true filmmaking visionary as well as a figure who can pop one absolutely tremendous bag of cinematic popcorn. He is one of the few major American based filmmakers whose filmography possesses an uncommonly high level of quality control and has the box office dollars to back him up, therefore making him a rare modern era director who can open a film based upon his own name and reputation. And in these days of franchises, sequels, prequels, reboots, re-imaginings and the like, Nolan's output is largely original, and his detours into the Batman saga all fit perfectly into his consistent themes of identity, memory, causality and the ever tenuous grasp to sanity.
Yet, for his full body of work, Christopher Nolan's number one prevalent theme is the concept of time, in all of its fluidity and fragility, and it has been an ingenious threshold to tackle over and again and he has proven its inexhaustible quality as a storytelling engine. In fact, over the years, Nolan's films have become increasingly complex and challenging yet very much like the magicians at the core of Nolan's "The Prestige" (2006), he is a storyteller of considerable gifts as he has miraculously been able to make the density of his concept tangible and even soulful and his commitment to his characters and story always carries the day and us right along with him.
With his latest epic, "Tenet," it feels as if Christopher Nolan has not only outdone himself but to the point where he is considerably undone. While not a disaster or even a mess, "Tenet" is a film that struggles tremendously to even make sense of itself due to its plot and themes which twists the concept of time inside and out to a degree that is essentially impenetrable and therefore, nowhere near as enjoyable or as satisfying as the remainder of Nolan's output.
Where the actual plot of "Tenet" is extremely straightforward--a nameless secret agent known only as The Protagonist (John David Washington) embarks upon a mission to stop World War III by using time manipulation in order to cease an attack upon the present from the future--yet the execution is anything but. In addition to all manner of truly extraordinary action set pieces, in which we witness the art of time shifting backwards and forwards simultaneously, the film delves into additional elements including the svelte art appraiser Kat Barton (Elizabeth Debicki), her estranged husband, the Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) and the fight over their son, the pursuit of a case of plutonium, crucial algorithms, paradoxes, inversion turnstiles, temporal pincer movements and the clash of free will, destiny, order and entropy.
On the surface, Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" falls firmly in line with every other film within his oeuvre. Merging the heist film, espionage adventure and science fiction, it is a muscular production, staggeringly well filmed, staged, edited and mounted and propelled triumphantly by Composer Ludwig Goransson's dynamically propulsive score. And unquestionably, John David Washington asserts himself and anchors the film beautifully in the leading role, more than affirming his skillful magnetism as evidenced in Spike Lee's "BlacKKKlansman" (2018). He is no fluke and is definitely his Father's son!!
Nolan's talents as an action filmmaker remain superbly impeccable and as always, he possess the ability to fully raise your pulse rates due to the speed, intensity and outstanding choreography of his action sequences. An attack upon an opera house makes for one absolutely sensational opening sequence. The ensuing fight fights, war sequences and car chases all flowing forwards and backwards simultaneously are all breathlessly superb in their visual heft and force. It is such a shame that this global pandemic has affected our lives seeing movies in the theaters so profoundly for if "Tenet" delivered anything at all, it is that large scaled cinema screen scope and breadth that Christopher Nolan is known for and with this film he undeniably delivered the goods and even more than as expected.
But if only there was a compelling story to give a greater weight to the proceedings as a whole. Or better yet, because the film does indeed have a compelling story...if Christopher Nolan had told his story in a fashion that was as tangible as everything else he has made previously. It is not the concept. I tis all in the execution of that concept.
Believe me, I deeply appreciate, and am so thankful, that Nolan is a filmmaker who clearly trusts that his audiences are intelligent enough and patient enough to accept his films, which do blend the visceral with the cerebral, the philosophy and the physics alongside the popcorn. For me, this has been a joy from essentially the beginning with "Momento" (2000), his crime thriller told in reverse and from the point of view of a man with short term memory loss. It was an ingenious storytelling tool utilized ingeniously and then further made firm by the commitment to the character development as well as the conceit.
This specific balance has served Nolan extremely well throughout his career, especially as his narratives grew more complicated, most notably, the levels of dream states and corresponding time signatures of "Inception" (2010) to the enormously risky "Interstellar" (2014), with its usages of wormholes, black holes, astrophysics and time travel.
As each film grew in their respective complexities, Nolan always devised of ways to keep the audience engaged and involved without dumbing down his material. With "Inception" for instance, we had the character portrayed by Ellen Page (NOTE: I am using Elliot Page's former identifying name and gender solely to mark and specify that film and that time), who served as the audience stand-in or as the student while Leonardo DiCaprio's character was the teacher. With "Interstellar," for all of its intricacies, everything in the film emotionally hinged upon the tenuous relationship between Matthew McConaughey's astronaut Father and his daughter (played over three time periods by Mackenzie Foy, Jessica Chastain and Ellen Burstyn, respectively).
With each film, Christopher Nolan has upped the stakes conceptually, as if he wanted to see how far he could go as a storyteller and filmmaker and in doing so, possibly see how far he could take us in the audience as well. He always ensured a proper "through-line," an emotional core for us to get from one end of the film to the other. For "Tenet" however, it is as if Nolan got inside his own head and couldn't find a way out, and in doing so, he left all of us behind in a story that left me confused, frustrated and even after having read a full synopsis after watching the film, I was even more confused as to what I had even experienced, regardless of how often I was held enthralled.
To say that "Tenet" is confusing would be an understatement. Now, for a story such as the one this film is trying to tell, as with several of Christopher Nolan's past films, a certain level of disorientation is to be expected and it is indeed a sizeable part of the fun. With regards to "Tenet," I was enjoying myself so much during the film's spectacular opening sequence, which begins at the aforementioned opera house and then smash cuts to a sequence where The Protagonist is being tortured by some goons on some train tracks which then smash cuts again to The Protagonist finding himself upon a large boat with a CIA operative. The feelings of disorientation continued in a quiet montage sequence in which we view The Protagonist in various states of exercise, meditative thought and even retiring for sleep and even those moments are all presented as if part of a jigsaw.
It is all so breathless, sleek and confidant that even though I was fully unsure as to what was happening and why, I was masterfully carried away. In fact, I even wondered if I was seeing some sort of quasi-sequel to "Inception" as Nolan was certainly delivering similar vibes. Yet once the film began marching further into its plot, and therefore its conundrums, Nolan surprisingly began to lose me.
I think for me it all came to a head during a moment fairly early in the film between The Protagonist and a scientist who unfolds a considerable amount of exposition in order to explain how one bullet could move forwards in time, how another could move backwards, how to tell the difference and then, even further, how to manipulate and interact with items flowing backwards. It is all a bit much but then everything is waved away when the scientist proclaims, "Don't try to understand it."
That line of dialogue stuck with me for the remainder of the film, as if it was something Christopher Nolan was attempting to tell us in the audience because it is unthinkable to me that he had no idea of how complicated his story actually was. If he was indeed informing us to not think about his concepts terribly heavily and just go with the flow of what he was showing us, then I do have to have quite a bit to quibble about with him. Because if it is not that important to understand his story, then why write it in such away where it cannot be understood?
From a pure construction level of writing, especially when it comes to the concept of time travel, one does need to establish a certain set of parameters in order for us in the audience to follow along and ultimately connect with the story and characters. I do think of Robert Zemeckis's "Back To The Future" trilogy (1985/1989/1990), as his rules for time travel were air tight in their construction. You knew exactly in which year you were, when characters were interacting with or as their past, present or future selves. You were never lost. James Cameron's "The Terminator" (1984), also set up a tricky paradox which was equally well established, consistent and therefore, easy to follow and connect with. For that matter, Joe and Anthony Russo's "Avengers: Endgame" (2019) set up their time travel plotline with a even greater intricacy that will undoubtedly continue to play out over future Marvel films and television series and even still, we connected.
Granted, all of those films lean more heavily into fantasy rather than Christopher Nolan's films which attempt to inject a scientific realism but I do think you understand my point. In "Tenet," there was really nothing to hang onto beyond its concept as his characters were mostly unknowable and essentially constructs to shuffle the plot points along. That, and astonishing visuals are not nearly enough to hang an entire movie upon...or are they?
Nolan's exquisite, exhausting war film "Dunkirk" (2017) actually achieved perfectly the very thing that ultimately failed for "Tenet." Within "Dunkirk," we experienced one World War II event over three different locations and over three different time periods of one hour, one day and one week, with Nolan delivering everything in an entirely non-linear structure, with scant dialogue and little character development. What worked was that the film showcased Nolan's theme of the elasticity of time when in the throes of war, for when pinned down by bullets underneath a boat while nearly drowning or spiraling through the air in an aerial dogfight, one minute can feel like a lifetime as you cling to what might be the final moments of your life. That was Nolan's "through-line" the connective tissue that merged his film to all of us and it was brilliant. "Tenet," by contrast has no "through-line."
But there is yet another exceedingly crucial element to this film, and has actually been a complaint about Nolan's work, and has increased considerably over the years, reaching its highest levels with "Tenet," and that is his increasingly controversial sound design.
Christopher Nolan has often been criticized that his movies are simultaneously too loud as well as harboring dialogue that is often either inaudible or incomprehensible. While have felt that he does mix his films to the louder side of things, I haven't really had any issue with his dialogue levels until this film, during which large swaths of dialogue are nearly impossible to understand as it is either seemingly buried in the mix, or voiced by characters in intense rushed hushes while wearing gas masks and so on. This again brought me back to that line of dialogue: "Don't try to understand it."
Now unlike "Dunkirk," which was primarily a visual experience and was not fueled with dialogue, "Tenet," by contrast, is loaded end to end with dialogue, to the point where even Nolan regular Michael Caine shows up to pass along a few key words (mostly about Brooks Brothers suits and their ineffectiveness in the extremely high finance world The Protagonist is about to step into). But so often, I found myself struggling to understand exactly what the characters were saying and it, as you can imagine, began to frustrate me. Nolan has been asked about his sound mixes in interviews and has expressed that if audiences really just understand "the gist" of what is being said, that works well enough for him.
To that, I really bristle because then, I have to ask the question: Why write expansive dialogue if I am not meant to understand it, either conceptually or audibly? Why not just make "Tenet" a visual experience like "Dunkirk" then? It makes no sense whatsoever to me. I even mused that if I had watched the film with subtitles, would I have enjoyed the film more. And to that, I felt that would also serve as a rightful criticism of the film because I should be able to connect on the first viewing, subtitles or not.
Certainly, there is a tremendous amount to admire about the film and believe me, it is a spectacle that contains some of his most ambitious material. But for me, Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" was the film where he either reached too far or didn't reach far enough in every area of his writing and filmmaking in order to ensure the film hit every high note consistently.
I have faith that Christopher Nolan will hit a grand slam again, and I am certain that I would watch this one again as well...but yeah, I'd better click on the subtitle feature.
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