To say I was exhilarated to be back in the warm embrace of my favorite art form would be an understatement. The sweet salty aromatics of overpriced popcorn permeating the air, gallon sized sodas overflowing with diabetic wonder…I was back and it felt like home. Not only that, but I was back and so was the modern master Christopher Nolan. How could this night go wrong? Impossible right? Nolan’s films are perfect to fill the magic tapestry of the big screen, huge and sprawling, action packed and intelligent, few else would be a better host for the return of the ultimate cinematic experience.
“Tenet” begins with the now standard cold open action sequence, think “The Dark Knight”, “Dunkirk” or “Inception”. Throwing the audience into an against- the-clock bullet parade, to which I still don’t fully understand why the sequence even truly matters to the plot at all beyond somehow proving our “protagonist”, ( for real, his character name is “The Protagonist” played by John David Washington) worthiness to which the parameters of this worthiness we’re never really privy to, anyways I digress. We learn though extensive exposition that someone in the future is “inverting” items, which allows for the dual reality of the past and present to be manipulated, either utilizing linear time or a reversed time flow. Trying to meticulously explain the extremely convoluted plot to you would be boring and that’s my point. That is precisely what Nolan spends 80% of his running time for the film doing. The characters spend so much time explaining the concept of the film that it feels they are talking to us, the audience, and not so much to each other, which results in no truly meaningful interactions among them. They exist only to further push the concept and action and almost nothing else. It takes an interesting idea and somehow chokes it into being dull and contrived.
It’s not all bad, per usual Nolan’s grand scale view point is beautifully crafted, the stunts are epic, and his technical prowess is unrivaled. I love that he shoots for big ideas that are challenging and he’s unafraid to be bold. But the magic of his best films is the balancing act of both the big budget blockbuster and managing to produce characters that we care about. “Tenet” only is successful in the former, with the characters feeling less like people and more like figurines on a chess board, limited only to what services the high concept ideology he so desperately wants to convey.
“Tenet” isn’t a bad film. But it is a disappointing one. This being his tenth film in twenty years, Christopher Nolan has set a high bar in filmmaking. The chinks in the armor of an illustrious career might be starting to show. I truly hope I’m wrong.
**1/2
Everything Film 