Tenet
Director: Christopher Nolan
Stars: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki
Genre: Forward to the past
I’d love to be able to tell you what Tenet is about but I’m not sure I really can. To say that this is a time-travel sci-fi film really doesn’t do it justice. Time isn’t travelled so much as it is scrunched up and folded over multiple times, a bit like toilet paper but without the satisfying conclusion after the initial effort. Beyond trying to save the world, from what or whom I’m not really sure, I can’t elaborate on any plot lines or enlighten you with any insights.
That’s not to say that Tenet is a bad film. Far from it. Like any good sci-fi offering there are impressive special effects including a real 747 being driven into a real building.
Then it all gets difficult and complicated when parts of the action go backwards, though this does make for the most extraordinary and sometimes confusing fight scenes ever in cinema where one protagonist or battle group moving forward through time battles another moving backwards. Give an Academy Award to the choreographers and editors.
But to what purpose is difficult to grasp. Just when you think you know what’s going on, the scene changes for reasons at best loosely understood, and while you try to come to terms with the dual timelines you also try to grapple with the why. I do wonder if any of the actors understood what they were doing while performing. Unlikely, so full credit to them because across the board they are good, even Michael Caine, though he was one of the few that didn’t travel through time. I think. Probably.
In a post-Covid world where everything is either too real or two weird, Tenet is the perfect film to blow your mind on your return to the cinema, but in a good way.
Rating: Half-and-a-three.
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