The first major theatrical blockbuster in a post-Covid world, it's only natural that all eyes are on Tenet. A new Nolan release is guaranteed to attract serious heat anyway, but the director's staunch refusal to delay the film's release date has turned it into the cinematic talking point of the year. And while its temporal musings have proven divisive, it's quite possible that this could be Nolan's most ambitious project yet, conceptually but especially release-wise. So the question is this: is Tenet the film to get big-screen releases back on track?
Essentially following The Protagonist (an on-point John David Washington), a CIA agent sent on a mission to prevent WW3, Tenet is broadly a spy film, albeit one intricately infused with Nolan's knack for time-centric cinema. The film is firmly rooted in its action, which is undoubtedly its greatest strength. The setpieces benefit from the combination of forward flowing and inverted time, and it's a joy to see previously introduced ideas take on new meaning as the plot progresses. One central car chase that's nail-biting gold on first pass gains a greater level of resonance upon repetition, a spoiler-free example of a narrative device that becomes more and more impactful every time it's used. And while the reversed time aspect may sound confusing when explained in the first act's seemingly endless exposition, it's surprisingly elegant in practice, proof that the real strength of Tenet's storytelling is in its visuals
See, the plot of Tenet isn't actually all that complicated, and unlike other Nolan fare such as Interstellar or Memento, it lacks an emotional core for the high concept to hinge itself on. Thankfully, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, with the film playing out as a breakneck ballet moving in two different directions at once and excelling as a piece of action storytelling rather than any sort of interrogation of the human experience. That said, the juxtaposition of the relatively basic story and the complex concept does mean that Tenet comes up a little light in terms of substance, an issue not helped by the constant stream of exposition, made worse by the film's sound design, where a good chunk of the dialogue ends up being just about unintelligible. The sound brings another issue with it too: This film is LOUD. I won't go so far as to label the sound mixing unfinished, but it is uneven, and the experience of the film loses a fair bit because of it
But as a piece of blockbuster cinema, Tenet is as good as anything we've gotten in the past year, expertly marrying a high-concept with Nolan's reliably strong ability to craft IMAX-worthy spectacle. Basic as the plot may be, its individual components end up being more than the sum of their parts. Kenneth Branagh's menacing Russian baddie, for instance, seems like a caricature on paper but ends up giving the film's conflict real weight and immediacy- not just something for the heroes to fight, but something to fight against: a human manifestation of a bigger idea that makes unlikely victory seem possible because it's suddenly become human. The same is true of Elizabeth Debicki and her gangster's moll, who undeniably suffers from Nolan's chronic inability to write a convincing female character but ends up softening the film's cold, objective edge, ultimately allowing the conclusion to resonate, adding satisfaction and weight to what might otherwise have been purely emotionless and functional
Ultimately, Tenet just about meets its lofty ambitions, a heady, large-scale blockbuster that warrants rewatches backwards and forwards. It's clear Nolan has a lot on his mind, with this film feeling like an extension of a man who's been vocal about his concern for the future. What it lacks in its narrative and loses with its chaotic sound design it easily makes back with intricate, well-crafted action and a satisfying eternal logic. And while it doesn't reach the heady heights of Dunkirk or the Dark Knight trilogy, it does mark a triumphant return for both cinema's most fastidious intellectual and the screens he yearns to pour his dreams onto. And you really can't ask for more than that
★ ★ ★ ★
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