TENET (2020) FILM REVIEW

*****

12A, 149 Mins

A terrific 10/10 for ‘Tenet’!

Time after time Christopher Nolan has fidgeted and fiddled with the concept and mechanics of time itself. ‘Memento’ (2000) was famously told backwards. In ‘Batman Begins’ (2005), Bruce Wayne’s origins story was told non-chronologically. Time works differently depending which dream level you’re on in ‘Inception’ (2010) and depending which planet you’re on in ‘Interstellar’ (2014). And, in ‘Dunkirk’ (2017), time differs depending on which character perspective you’re being shown.

Now, with ‘Tenet’ (2020), the genius film-maker tackles time travel with a fistful of plutonium and a shard of inverted bullets in this skull-spinning, cortex-splitting Sci-Fi thriller. A blockbuster with both brawn and brains, ‘Tenet’ balances sledgehammer action with cerebral ideas about parallel worlds, paradoxes and fixed points in time. It is unhesitatingly Nolan’s best film to date and, released in the current Covid crisis, deserves to go down in history as the film that saved cinema in 2020.

‘Tenet’ opens in suitably breathless fashion. A Kiev opera siege visually recalls Bane’s stadium attack in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (2012) and matches ‘The Dark Knight’s bank robbery prologue for sheer excitement. As masked terrorists hijack an opera house, it’s down to a band of men in black face masks and spandex suits to save the day.

Nolan dexterously choreographes shots of men running around the building to the thundering staccato of Ludwig Goransson’s palindromic score which BRAAMS and BUURS with the action. There’s a musical veracity to the reversed gunfire with bullets bouncing off objects echoing against the soundtrack. Most impressive and immersive about that first scene is how little dialogue it actually involves. With the exception of the quote “we live in a twilight world” (a nice nod to the poems of Walt Whitman), it basically powers along on a great, surging tidal wave of visual and physical storytelling. Nolan demonstrates here a profound understanding of the machinations of silent cinema that would make Melies proud.

From here, we are introduced to The Protagonist (John David Washington). He’s a secret agent tasked with preventing World War III. “Nuclear holocaust?” he questions to Clemence Posey’s perceptive scientist. “No...something worse” she answers forebodingly.

Threatening world peace is “inversion”. This is the ability to reverse an object’s entropy from travelling forwards in time to backwards in time. And there’s a great scene where The Protagonist fires a pistol into a rock face and the bullet shoots back into the magazine. “You’re not shooting the bullet...you’re catching it” says Posey. A simplistic, but cognitive description of the physics of inversion.

The metaphysical theory of the Grandfather Paradox has been explored many times in ‘Doctor Who’ (1963-). That’s the idea that changing the past to even the smallest degree can have grave consequences for the future. Marty McFly discovered exactly this when he prevented his parents from meeting on the dancefloor in ‘Back to the Future’ (1985). Thus making his own birth impossible.

‘Tenet’ addresses the possibility of paradox in a rather more breathtaking fashion. In the build-up to the climactic battle, a key conversation highlights, in the words of The Doctor, “the mechanics of the infinite temporal flux”. In reference to the upcoming “armageddon”, The Protagonist poses to Robert Pattinson’s Neil that “doesn’t us being here now mean it never happened?”. Neil’s response highlights the prospect of parallel worlds. Where an infinite amount of polar opposite scenarios can co-exist in time and space.

Bringing about this “armageddon” is Kenneth Branagh’s Andrei Sator - a Russian oligarch who can “communicate with the future”. With a reedycuulous Russkie accent and itchy stubble, it’s a role that should be total ‘Austin Powers’ camp, but Branagh plays it straight and serious. Even when verbally sparring off Washington with the most Bondian of quips. “How would you like to die?” he cackles in pure Dr. Evil mode. “You chose the wrong profession”...

Yet despite my initial pre-judgements, the director’s not-so-secret adoration of the franchise and Branagh’s trademark Eastern European baddie, this is not Nolan’s riff on James Bond. The film-maker apparently chose not to watch any spy movies in preparation for ‘Tenet’. I’m also not particularly sure about the comparisons with ‘Inception’. What do these two movies have in common beyond being fiendishly complex?

For the character of Neil, Robert Pattinson reportedly based his mannerisms on English author Christopher Hitchens. However - with his slick back hair, chunky scarf and tweed jacket - it appeared to me he was doing an impression of Christopher Nolan himself. Especially when pontificating and doing articulate hand gestures about crashing a plane. I just pictured Nolan pitching the line “not from the air! Don’t be so dramatic!” to the studio bosses at Warner Bros.

The aforementioned 747 crash is carried off with flame-grilled gusto. Looking and sounding especially spectacular when surrounded by a BIG, juicy IMAX screen. The most exciting plane crash since Flash Gordon crashed his jet into a greenhouse.

Early on, Washington has a punch-up with a gang of brutes in a kitchen. Through close-ups of each and every punch, the camera shakes and judders with the fisticuffs of the contest. Particularly when Washington grates someone’s ear off with a cheese grater. On the strength of this scene, Nolan could stand toe-to-toe with Paul Greengrass when it comes to delivering action of such physicality.

The wait for ‘Tenet’ has been long and, at times, painful. Nolan took a gigantic gamble insisting his movie come out in a summer wrecked by Covid-19. Whether his old-fashioned British stubbornness pays off remains to be seen. I just pray people get behind this bloody brilliant film. If you want the theatrical experience to survive, go and see ‘Tenet’...

‘Tenet’ is in cinemas now.
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