TENET | FILM REVIEW
Dir: Christopher Nolan (12A, 151 mins)
Returning to the cinema for the first time in over five months was indeed an emotional experience. A more or less empty auditorium, for an early morning showing with a facemask, it was different to cinema trips of old, although I’ve always preferred as few co-attendees as possible. A tear came to the eye as the trailers played and the opening shots of Tenet, set in a crowded concert hall, played. It was good to be back.
Christopher Nolan’s films have an obsession with time, from Memento to Inception via Interstellar and the fractured storytelling of Dunkirk, but Tenet ups the ante considerably, often frustratingly. MILD SPOILERS AHEAD. John David Washington plays The Protagonist, a skilled operative who is recruited into a mysterious cause via Martin Donovan’s one-scene honcho; from here, he discovers that his perception of time is flawed, as Clemence Poesy’s (also one-scene) character shows him how to catch bullets from a gun. Sir Michael Caine, Nolan’s lucky charm, also pops up for some one scene exposition.
Much discussion of physics ensues amidst a barrage of slippery plotting, often delivered at such a ferocious pace or muffled by masks that you are constantly afraid you’ve missed something. The trail eventually leads to Kenneth Branagh’s Andrei Sator, a not-at-all-scary Russian-accented baddie who may be about to end everything as he plays with time. Elizbeth Debecki is his abused wife who cares only for their son and with whom Washington is supposed to have some sort of frisson. Robert Pattinson continues to impress as Washington’s sidekick, winningly gauche and cerebral and someone you actually care about amidst the time trickery.
Character motivations and unnecessary labyrinthine plotting aside, this still has bravura moments, backwards car chases, plane crashes, a scene that will literally make you hold your breath, reverse fistfights and a Bond-like storming of a site to defuse a sort of bomb. Unlike the brilliant Inception, however, the timey-wimey machinations feel far too convoluted and create more questions than answers for Tenet to truly engage. It may improve on further viewings, but it doesn’t fill you with the same interest and awe as previous Nolan outings.
Tenet has an unfair weight of expectation on it as cinemas reopen, but unfortunately this is sub-par Nolan, still full of fantastic ideas but ultimately free of the same storytelling discipline and movie clarity of his previous complex crowdpleasers.
It was lovely to be back in a cinema though…
In cinemas now
words KEIRON SELF
