Tenet

Tenet certainly doesn't pose an intellectual challenge and is one of those films that you'll enjoy the most when you think less about time paradoxes, the motives of the film's characters, and their quest to defeat the Bond-like villain. As a popcorn flick deliberately reminiscent of Agent 007 stories in a sci-fi coat, and as an action spectacle, Nolan's film really works. Thanks to John David Washington, we essentially have the first "non-white" Bond in history. I enjoyed the dynamic opening opera heist, where Nolan drew inspiration from a real terrorist act. Kenneth Branagh also pleased me, intentionally building his villain as a monstrous comic book character. Overall impression: 65%. (03/27/2024)

A banal plot in which two characters (a man and a woman with chemistry) speak normally and everyone else in such coded language that it could be developed without conspicuous illogic into a seemingly ultra-sophisticated spectacle packed with unexpected situations and unprecedented visual attractions. Or rather, one unprecedented attraction, when in one shot some characters run forward and others backwards and it looks neither ridiculous nor strange, but on the contrary, fresh and spectacular. Nolan clearly and meaningfully declared his fetish for time paradoxes in Inception and now he’s merely changing it up on other theoretical levels and interweaving it with new sub-genre elements (in this case, Bond films). And he increasingly equivocates, pretends and artificially complicates things as much as possible in order to push everything farther and higher than last time, while cleverly hiding the absence of a supporting foundation for the plot (which was dreams in Inception). Winking at the thoughtful viewer with lines like "You have no idea what I'm talking about...” Answer: “No, but it sounds extremely important" can thus be understood as passing the buck, but I see it rather as a plea for leniency towards the deliberate gaps in logic and, conversely, appreciation of his courage and exceptional genre progressiveness. Tenet is a techno-thriller from another dimension. In the context of the viewer’s state of mind induced by the film, the last scene with Pattinson reminded me of Casper Van Dien in Starship Troopers, which almost made me laugh in places with its cheesy absurdity. Actually, that was the best thing that could have happened to me with Tenet, if I'm supposed to like it. P.S. Göransson’s music is outstanding, as it gives the film a more energetic and innovative tone than we would expect from Zimmer (whose music, however, would be more enjoyable to listen to on its own). (09/07/2020)

Christopher Nolan at his most challenging, ambitious and exhaustive. It's good to finally watch a big, expensive film in the cinema after a long time. Tenet is really great to look at, it has excellent technical aspects, beautiful cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema, an ear-splitting soundtrack (quite possibly the loudest film I've ever seen in the cinema), great actors, where both John David Washington and Robert Pattinson get a proper carrier boost, and also nice and spectacular action (the fight in the kitchen, the car chase and the finale are a blast), and the concept itself is presented in an original and engaging, albeit complicated way. Even the dialogues are pretty hard to understand, they talk about things I don't care that much about, but fortunately Tenet has a good pace and when it looks like the film is getting boring Nolan pulls an ace out of his sleeve. Story*****, Action****, Humor>No, Violence>No, Entertainment****, Music****, Visual*****, Atmosphere****, Suspense****. 8/10. (08/30/2020)

Nolan spins the threads of time, reverses entropy, and becomes definitively his own genre benchmark, no longer needing to prove anything to anyone. He plays a stimulating game with the viewer that is, at its core, justifiably simple because its magic lies in its precise narrative composition, which inevitably demands full attention and multiple viewings. I gave up the first time and the composition of the timelines together with the thunderous music threw me into lethargy. It was only on the second viewing that I enjoyed the elaborately complex structure that makes you think and gives nothing away for free. It’s a fascinating and immersive experience in every way, with such unique production values that it is almost impossible to compare it to anything else. I read the Q&A breakdowns for this film and consider them proof that the viewer is really just a small cog in the great game of one principle. (11/01/2021)

After my first viewing of Inception, I wrote about the film as a perfect toy for the enjoyment of its creator, but I was a decade ahead. It is Tenet that is a meticulously crafted construction set that works exactly as the author needs it to, right up to the last frame. This also means that Christopher Nolan himself plays with it the best and the audience can only watch over his shoulder, wondering how each mechanism works, thinking about how they wish they could play with it, too. He will probably allow them to, but only when they come to see it for the second or third time. I can't shake the feeling that with each new film, Nolan goes deeper into his mode of expression, not only in terms of the complexity of the screenplay, but also in relation to the viewer. With Inception, or even earlier with The Prestige, were able to present each twist or trick almost kindly and "narratively", even when it was a nerve-wracking twist. But in Interstellar, it became necessary to go more towards information, and in Tenet, you can only get answers through machine-gun dialogue or quick cuts. Despite the usual drawn-out running time, the film doesn't allow for a breather, and even in situations where the main characters rest or wait for something, more information, branching paths, or theories are thrust upon us, which could easily be a dead end – or conversely, the most crucial clue. This time, everything is subordinate to this approach, including the last vestiges of accommodating the viewer, the personalities of the characters (this time expressible without exception in two sentences) or visible emotions. Still, at the end, my heart jumped to unforeseen heights, and for that I am most grateful. For the fact that even though this latest Nolan film has surprisingly sharply divided the audience spectrum, it was worth every long minute to me, and its dirty and unusually aggressive world will thoroughly mature within me for a long time. (09/01/2020)