Tenet (2020)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Armed with only one word - Tenet - and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.
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What critics say influenced Tenet
(When you experience time inversion, you have to wear a special mask because your system is so screwed up, “normal” air will do you in.) “Tenet” is a movie filled with nods to other movies, from a certain color-coded element reminiscent of “The Matrix” to a late scene with an obvious nod to “Casablanca.”
I would be forsaken if I weren’t to reference Casablanca , “This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Washington does make an impressively rugged hero, but on this outing he’s surprisingly lacking in charisma, and he strikes fewer sparks with Debicki’s heroine than he does with Pattinson’s cooly ironic sidekick – their rapport echoing Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains’ beautiful friendship in Casablanca .
And he gets to paraphrase Casablanca , telling the Protangist that this is “the end of a beautiful friendship.”
Sí, se trata de creer, y Nolan transfiere ese mandato de fe al espectador, que debe confiar en Tenet a ciegas, en sus GESTOS deslumbrantes, en sus “mentiras”, en sus criaturas sin fondo, hechas de celuloide (de 70mm): personajes que citan como autómatas, a la manera de Godard, palabras de Walt Withman, de T.S. Eliot, de los protagonistas de Casablanca .
Of the Bonds, it riffs (and lifts) most from Thunderball, especially in the central relationship between Elizabeth Debicki and Kenneth Branagh; he’s a world-class Russian (or something) villain, she’s the trophy wife he won’t let go, and at one point, just like in Thunderball, it looks like he’s going to torture her in her cabin on his gorgeous motor yacht.
If Inception’s climax was an ode to the iconic ending to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (one of the best Bonds), Tenet is tribute to Thunderball , Sean Connery’s worst outing as the character that was bogged down by a production team who discovered underwater cameras and decided to shoot half the movie using them regardless of whether the whole story suffered.
In terms of Nolan’s body of work, Tenet ’s closest relation is probably Inception , though its themes touch on some of the same territory as Interstellar and Memento , without matching either their brilliance or their intimacy.
Tenet has already been rightfully compared to Inception in this department due to its time-centric plot and mind-altering visuals.
For the record, I acknowledge that Nolan’s intentionally borrowing elements from the secret agent subgenre (components of which were also present in his classic “Inception”).
When Washington’s super spy tussles with a masked opponent who moves, like those inverted bullets, in spooky reverse, it’s a faint echo of the zero-gravity hallway showdowns of Inception , with the laws of time instead of the laws of physics subverted.
He certainly has a flair for creating hugely successful event films on a scale that make even the usually overstuffed Bond extravaganzas seem puny by comparison and he has often spoken of being a fan of the franchise—the ski attack sequence in “Inception” alone struck many as an overt homage to the climax of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
While interesting and at times quite exciting in a definite Bond meets The Time Machine sort of way, the overall concept isn't quite as cool as the multiple dream layer plot of "Inception," and Nolan obviously cut his teeth with the backward time stuff way back when with "Memento."
The movie borrows bits and pieces from three of Nolan’s previous efforts (Memento, Inception, and Interstellar) while also at times recalling the likes of Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow (a.k.a.
In terms of Nolan’s body of work, Tenet ’s closest relation is probably Inception , though its themes touch on some of the same territory as Interstellar and Memento , without matching either their brilliance or their intimacy.
Feel it,” it’s like he’s evoking Nolan’s Interstellar , a film also governed by a highly conceptual scientific understanding of time.
It's a trippy concept, but it's one based in actual science as Nolan again worked with theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who consulted on Interstellar .
The response is reminiscent of Interstellar – it’s either a film that is underrated and harshly criticised or ranked on the same level as The Dark Knight Rises as one of his worst.
It’s a high concept thriller which never fails to take itself with deadly seriousness but Tenet fails to live up to the intriguing set-up in the first act and doesn’t quite convince the viewer of its internal logic as much as, say, The Matrix, Interstellar or Inception.
The movie borrows bits and pieces from three of Nolan’s previous efforts (Memento, Inception, and Interstellar) while also at times recalling the likes of Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow (a.k.a.
In terms of Nolan’s body of work, Tenet ’s closest relation is probably Inception , though its themes touch on some of the same territory as Interstellar and Memento , without matching either their brilliance or their intimacy.
The film distorts time and space in ways reminiscent of Nolan’s earlier mind-benders “Inception,” “Interstellar” and “Memento.”
While interesting and at times quite exciting in a definite Bond meets The Time Machine sort of way, the overall concept isn't quite as cool as the multiple dream layer plot of "Inception," and Nolan obviously cut his teeth with the backward time stuff way back when with "Memento."
When Nolan’s amnesia thriller Memento opened in 2000, Kaufman considered abandoning Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , the similarly themed screenplay he was working on.
And while there are no dead wives à la Nolan’s Following, Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception and Interstellar, there is an abused wife.
Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema ("Dunkirk," "Ad Astra"), shooting with IMAX and 65mm cameras in some pretty intense conditions, and production designer Nathan Crowley give the whole a sleek, steely vibe, occasionally goosed with colorful locations like the Amalfi Coast.
The film has an ice-cold sheen to it, appropriate to its Cold War theme and Eastern European and Scandinavian settings, courtesy of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who previously lensed "Interstellar" and "Dunkirk" for Nolan.
Since then, Nolan has cast his apparent touchstone as everything from an uncredited voice in Dunkirk to, well, here in Tenet in a completely spurious cameo as an aging English “Sir” who seems to be the only bloke who can tell our unnamed “protagonist” the location of someone else who may also have a piece of information to pass on which might eventually lead to...oh, never mind.
Nolan’s Inception and Dunkirk play with our conception of time as constant.
In the same vein as his previous architectural disruptions – Inception and Dunkirk , primarily – Tenet operates like a stainless steel Rolex: sleek aesthetics bolstered by complex mechanics.
Inception staged a heist in dreams within dreams that could stretch minutes into hours; Dunkirk ran three narratives in parallel, each lasting an hour, a day, or a week.
And while there are no dead wives à la Nolan’s Following, Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception and Interstellar, there is an abused wife.
Watching Nolan’s first film, Following (1998), it dawned on me that he hasn’t shed a certain film-school sensibility (even though, ironically, Nolan didn’t attend film school proper), opting to continue indulging his personal interests rather than building on them.
Even going back to his first two features, "Following" and "Memento," he played with structure in such a way that had you wondering how the films ultimately fit together.
And yes, this is coming from someone who has seen Following .
Don’t get me wrong, I love all of Nolan’s movies in the past ever since he made his promising 1998 black-and-white debut in Following.
As with his debut Following , of which Tenet follows familiar beats with respect to Debicki’s character, the pair take pleasure in breaking into the clandestine vaults of the rich.
Insofar as it directly engages the theme of non-supernatural “magic,” Nolan’s 2006 film The Prestige is the key to understanding his creative and philosophical project.
And while there are no dead wives à la Nolan’s Following, Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception and Interstellar, there is an abused wife.
From Leonard looping through a constant present tense in Memento to Cobb forever bumping into his own past in his attempts to shift the future in Inception , back to The Prestige, forward to Interstellar and again to the braided timelines of Dunkirk , Nolan is a filmmaker who orchestrates universes by playing with time and consequence.
Director Christopher Nolan (Interstellar, The Prestige, Inception) is known for challenging his audience members to think outside the box.
There can be a buzzy pleasure to that kind of closed-loop cleverness—it’s a variation, in some sense, on the way Nolan rearranged the chapters of his magnificent dueling-magician drama The Prestige to dazzle us with revelations.
Like Christian Bale’s Alfred Borden warned us in 2006’s The Prestige that “secrets are my life”, so is true of Nolan and the brand he has created for himself in keeping things so close to his chest that they might burst through his ribcage and out the other side.
Ha transcurrido el tiempo de una forma que jamás creeríamos posible y, sin embargo, hay algo que Christopher Nolan ha logrado preservar desde Doodlebug (1997) a la fecha: el saber cómo jugar con la mente de sus espectadores.
Although Tenet doesn’t represent Nolan at his best (for me, that would be Memento, Interstellar, or The Dark Knight), it’s among the director’s most ambitious efforts and is a match for his most narratively complicated screenplays.
His work even directly inspired actual Bond films, as Sam Mendes’ Skyfall takes several cues from The Dark Knight directly.
This opening sequence is patently designed to rival the bank robbery from “The Dark Knight,” but it’s never as riveting or straightforward; here, there’s a switch, compromised agents, a double-cross, and operational failures, all leading to kidnapping, torture, and death – none of which is evident as it’s happening.
Director/writer Christopher Nolan is nearly unequaled when it comes to giving audiences unimaginable, spellbinding visuals: The Dark Knight, Inception, Dunkirk .
Inception , The Dark Knight and Dunkirk alone are all spectacular examples of what Nolan can do when he’s firing on all cylinders.
The film is another masterpiece from the mind of filmmaker Christopher Nolan whose hits include Inception and The Dark Knight .
(When you experience time inversion, you have to wear a special mask because your system is so screwed up, “normal” air will do you in.) “Tenet” is a movie filled with nods to other movies, from a certain color-coded element reminiscent of “The Matrix” to a late scene with an obvious nod to “Casablanca.”
It’s a high concept thriller which never fails to take itself with deadly seriousness but Tenet fails to live up to the intriguing set-up in the first act and doesn’t quite convince the viewer of its internal logic as much as, say, The Matrix, Interstellar or Inception.
It’s not as pioneering as, say, The Matrix ’s “bullet time,” but it’s a new flavour of action eye-candy.
It asks us to see the possibilities of cinema in a new way, and I haven’t been as excited about the technicality of a fight scene since the Wachowski Sisters gave us ‘bullet time’ in The Matrix .
Here, Nolan has crafted some of the most thrilling, inventive, jaw-dropping action scenes since The Matrix .
Studios are inherently risk averse, so even when they dare to challenge the audience even a mite, what you end up with is the existentialism-for-beginners of The Matrix, the clodhopping satire of Starship Troopers, or the spoonfed causality of Edge of Tomorrow.
It’s almost as if I’m watching The Matrix Reloaded (2003) all over again, particularly during the confusing scene involving the introduction of The Architect.
The car chase sequence that is shown in the trailers feels like a pastiche of the car chase in The Matrix Reloaded , and while Nolan neatens it up, it still feels, well, old.
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That is what the hero of Cocteau’s “Orpheus” (1950) is told as he prepares to pass through a mirror into the underworld.
The movie borrows bits and pieces from three of Nolan’s previous efforts (Memento, Inception, and Interstellar) while also at times recalling the likes of Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow (a.k.a.
Studios are inherently risk averse, so even when they dare to challenge the audience even a mite, what you end up with is the existentialism-for-beginners of The Matrix, the clodhopping satire of Starship Troopers, or the spoonfed causality of Edge of Tomorrow.
If you like this, try: “Edge of Tomorrow”…
The final act is a full-on ground invasion by troops that’s composed of looped explosions, reverse-sprinting soldiers, and buildings toppling yet reanimating at once—recalling the immersive spectacles of Edge of Tomorrow .
And as if to highlight the nature of our globalized world, Nolan has his characters teleport across the planet between scenes, with almost every action set piece involving a vehicle of some kind: from yachts to high-speed BMWs to a cargo plane that, as it leaves its hanger, suggests the spaceship from Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Moon .
That dryness reaches into the smallest nooks of the narrative; gold bars, for instance, tumble from the belly of the 747, clinking on the asphalt, but when you think of the comparable moment at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s “The Killing” (1956), in which stolen banknotes are strewn beside a plane, what you recall is the robber’s agonized expression, as his ill-gotten gains swirl away like moths in the night.
What we DO know early on is there’s a whole underground world of deep-cover operatives who have a kind of “Eyes Wide Shut” code in order to recognize one another.
What Nolan has done is innovation beyond all else, perhaps his 2001: A Space Odyssey moment?
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– but Back to the Future and The Terminator handled the same idea with less heavy lifting.
There’s even a plutonium plot line, but this is no Back to the Future .
After getting our feet wet with the whole inverted object McGuffin hunt we start on, the film then keeps adding elements and theories until it goes full on Back to the Future in the second act.
In other words, Christopher Nolan wants you to know that this is not Back To The Future .
This isn’t “Back to the Future” where you can travel through time and alter the past, this is serious stuff about the prevention of World War III and nuclear holocaust.
Nolan’s unable to distil it into a simple expository scene and quest outline (think the blackboard diagram in Back to the Future Part II or the lecture hall briefing in Raiders of the Lost Ark ).
He is as confident, adventurous and acrobatic as Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible series.
Up until then, Tenet feels like either a 007 excursion or an installment of the Mission: Impossible movie series.
It’s basically espionage adventure, but with a science fiction backbone: Nolan ups the ante on “Mission: Impossible” by making the impossibility not just physical but quantum physical.
The only delight of Tenet is the film’s stunt work and production design, which lacks the wacky, self-aware thrill of, say, the most recent Mission: Impossible movies, but is graceful nevertheless.