TENET: Another Perfect Nolan Flick

From the dark set pieces to the bizarre concept of time, Tenet is one of the best blockbusters to come out during the Covid-19 pandemic, and proves the fact that some movies can be most enjoyed in cinema halls.

The story follows the protagonist, played by John David Washington, and Neil, played by Robert Pattinson, as they search for a man who can invert materials in time, meaning they move backwards. Rather than suggesting the fact that timelines can be of multiple branches, the movie states that what has happened has happened and will happen. The science here is not fully wrong but is not fully right either. Yet, it is just perfect to make the movie entertaining and leaves room for a lot of innovation.

Like Inception's concept of heists being in layers of dreams, Tenet's thrilling set pieces focus on altering time as some characters are moving backwards while others are moving forward. This makes for some of the most outstanding and fresh action scenes in cinema. Characters fight each other in different aspects of time, which leaves huge space for creativity that the director nailed and like every Christopher Nolan movie, the action here is never meaningless and the audience will always have to be glued to the screen to get a proper understanding of the whole movie. With a perfect soundtrack, the whole tone and aroma really feels like a movie from Nolan.

The movie, however, constantly tries to rationalise the time travel, making it stuffed with expository dialogue. It spends almost 120 minutes of its 150-minute runtime to explain what is happening and why it is happening. Nolan digs very deep down his own rabbit hole, which may lead to some people having to take notes throughout the film to keep track, making this Nolan's biggest mistake. Even though the film takes a lot of influence from past Nolan films like the Dark Knight or Dunkirk, the stakes do not feel as high, the maze isn't as well constructed as Inception and furthermore, the film fails to fully explore the characters, unlike Interstellar. This makes them more like puzzle pieces to the plot rather than a whole realized character itself which costs the movie its much-needed emotional tone.

In the end, the film boils down to a James Bond movie by Nolan with a Bond inspired villain, shadowy agents and Russian oligarchs. Even with its flaws, Tenet is enjoyable from the very first second to the end. Tenet is not Nolan's best work, but it is a great movie and the perfect movie to discuss with your buddies. It does a good job at leaving questions in the mind of audiences and like Inception, it will leave audiences theorising about it for months.

Abhoy Hriddo is a depressed antisocial teenager who over analyses everything around him. Give him a knock at abhoyhriddo@gmail.com