Tenet

Christopher Nolan’s high-concept heist movie was supposed to be a summer blockbuster to herald the reopening of the cinemas and the rest of normal life. Nolan was determined not to release it to streaming, and the result was that a massive and beautiful film ironically took the sort of money that a big art movie might coin in. It was the point of maximum regret that I couldn’t get to the cinema to see this but I am of course glad I stayed indoors.

The film is a search for a McGuffin to prevent a typical movie bad-guy from destroying the world. The concept is so simple and so common to all sorts of films that, whilst brilliant, don’t excite critics. This film has been lauded and has divided audiences. It’s maybe because people are dwarfed by the immensity of it, or confused by a time-travel plot that I am convinced I’m fine with, but I’d not want to explain it completely until subsequent watches.

What’s certainly no secret is that, as the title suggests, there’s two time-lines that moving in opposite directions. But this is not a screenplay structure thing, it’s part of the sci-fi technology that is part of what’s up for grabs by The Protagonist (John David Washington) and the man he meets who leads him through the mission. The classic-ness of the heist even includes a femme fatale Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) which gives The Protagonist an additional reason to continue a dangerous mission. The film opens with an attack on a concert hall with masked gunmen destroying instruments and shooting people. It’s a faintly harrowing reminder of the recent past, and jars you into the story… Soon after there’s an incredible set-piece in an archive (because part of the story involves a Goya drawing—I loved the archive scientist, Clémence Poésy, who gets to explain things but does it authentically—and an even more massive spectacular sequence involving a cargo aircraft crashing into a storage area at Oslo airport. This is one of the sequences that Nolan shot for real, crashing a real aircraft. There’s also a bungee jump scene which was probably massively effective on the big screen. Elsewhere there are the much trailed sequences where action is running backwards and forwards at the same time. The culmination is quietly amazing.

The heart of the film is this simple heist plot with an Oligarch called Sator (Kenneth Branagh) at the centre. You might uncharitably say that the story is too much like a Bond story with a cartoon villain, and the stakes don’t feel terribly original. What is original, though, is the use of time as a plot device rather than a narrative one. If Tenet is like any other film it’s the recent Mission Impossible movies: the scale of production is that high and then some, and the BluRay looks incredible. The IMAX Presentation would have been my preferred viewing experience but love of cinema means having to make sacrifices so that one day it can all return to normal. This film might be remembered as the blockbuster that didn’t have its chance, but regardless of the money it’s an original twist on a genre movie and highly entertaining.