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 ...