It’s hard to believe that the same man who masterminds some of the greatest set pieces and concepts in recent memory also writes the line “including my son” while sober.
Nolan’s movies have always been ripe for haters to hate and fanboys to fanboy over, but with Tenet, he has outdone that notion in the same way Dunkirk challenged it. Yes, characters seem like they were written by an alien trying to replicate human emotions, lines of dialogue are just not as witty as the movie clearly tries to make them seem, and the never-ending exposition feels like you're gonna be quizzed on this at the end — but you also got Nathan Crowley out there constructing impossibly elaborate sets in seven different countries, Ludwig Göransson trying to one-up the unrivaled Hans Zimmer in "how-many-horns-and-synths-can-i-fit-in-logic-pro", and Hoyte van Hoytema engineering both 65mm and IMAX in forwards and backwards time on a massive scale.
So do the classic Nolan twisty "oh shit" moments involving time inversion, entropy, and whatever the fuck this movie's about, override the classic Nolan "i don't know what human emotion is, but i think a mom and son will do it"? Hardly. For all the accurate metaphysics and philosophical implications Tenet prides itself on, it misses a heart. A logical deduction of what might make people cry might make people think, but it sure won't make people genuinely care, especially after the credits roll. Christopher Nolan might've surpassed the backward technicalities of the now twenty year old “The Scientist” music video, but does he really know what the song means?
But it's ironically what makes Nolan so good. In an age of studio filmmaking where all personal stories seem to be filtered by millions of data points, I'm kind of glad "including my son" wasn't distilled by Warner Bros. I'm glad John David Washington and Elizabeth Debicki weren't like, "Chris... don't you think this line's a little...um..." because that means people are putting trust in a singular vision — 225 million dollars of trust to be exact. For an original story, that's unheard of in cinematic history.
In a 2017 interview at TIFF regarding Dunkirk, Nolan was asked, “Did you ever feel like this is going to be too complicated for the audience?” to which Nolan responded: “Well... it's like, fuck it, y'know?"
And for that you gotta respect him.
C+
Nolan’s movies have always been ripe for haters to hate and fanboys to fanboy over, but with Tenet, he has outdone that notion in the same way Dunkirk challenged it. Yes, characters seem like they were written by an alien trying to replicate human emotions, lines of dialogue are just not as witty as the movie clearly tries to make them seem, and the never-ending exposition feels like you're gonna be quizzed on this at the end — but you also got Nathan Crowley out there constructing impossibly elaborate sets in seven different countries, Ludwig Göransson trying to one-up the unrivaled Hans Zimmer in "how-many-horns-and-synths-can-i-fit-in-logic-pro", and Hoyte van Hoytema engineering both 65mm and IMAX in forwards and backwards time on a massive scale.
So do the classic Nolan twisty "oh shit" moments involving time inversion, entropy, and whatever the fuck this movie's about, override the classic Nolan "i don't know what human emotion is, but i think a mom and son will do it"? Hardly. For all the accurate metaphysics and philosophical implications Tenet prides itself on, it misses a heart. A logical deduction of what might make people cry might make people think, but it sure won't make people genuinely care, especially after the credits roll. Christopher Nolan might've surpassed the backward technicalities of the now twenty year old “The Scientist” music video, but does he really know what the song means?
But it's ironically what makes Nolan so good. In an age of studio filmmaking where all personal stories seem to be filtered by millions of data points, I'm kind of glad "including my son" wasn't distilled by Warner Bros. I'm glad John David Washington and Elizabeth Debicki weren't like, "Chris... don't you think this line's a little...um..." because that means people are putting trust in a singular vision — 225 million dollars of trust to be exact. For an original story, that's unheard of in cinematic history.
In a 2017 interview at TIFF regarding Dunkirk, Nolan was asked, “Did you ever feel like this is going to be too complicated for the audience?” to which Nolan responded: “Well... it's like, fuck it, y'know?"
And for that you gotta respect him.
C+