Tenet

A banal plot in which two characters (a man and a woman with chemistry) speak normally and everyone else in such coded language that it could be developed without conspicuous illogic into a seemingly ultra-sophisticated spectacle packed with unexpected situations and unprecedented visual attractions. Or rather, one unprecedented attraction, when in one shot some characters run forward and others backwards and it looks neither ridiculous nor strange, but on the contrary, fresh and spectacular. Nolan clearly and meaningfully declared his fetish for time paradoxes in Inception and now he’s merely changing it up on other theoretical levels and interweaving it with new sub-genre elements (in this case, Bond films). And he increasingly equivocates, pretends and artificially complicates things as much as possible in order to push everything farther and higher than last time, while cleverly hiding the absence of a supporting foundation for the plot (which was dreams in Inception). Winking at the thoughtful viewer with lines like "You have no idea what I'm talking about...” Answer: “No, but it sounds extremely important" can thus be understood as passing the buck, but I see it rather as a plea for leniency towards the deliberate gaps in logic and, conversely, appreciation of his courage and exceptional genre progressiveness. Tenet is a techno-thriller from another dimension. In the context of the viewer’s state of mind induced by the film, the last scene with Pattinson reminded me of Casper Van Dien in Starship Troopers, which almost made me laugh in places with its cheesy absurdity. Actually, that was the best thing that could have happened to me with Tenet, if I'm supposed to like it. P.S. Göransson’s music is outstanding, as it gives the film a more energetic and innovative tone than we would expect from Zimmer (whose music, however, would be more enjoyable to listen to on its own). (07.09.2020)

For me, the best Nolan since Inception, i.e. in ten years, but with some “buts”. The most important of which is that the barrage is so relentless that it’s impossible to absorb. By this I don’t mean the big picture, which is pretty clear and sensible by the end, but the details during the journey. What was the role of several secondary characters in the story as a whole? What was the thought process that led the protagonists to choose the plans they choose in several parts of the story? How did they know where to go, etc. All the dialogues (and there are lots of them!) are simply reduced to the exchange of vital information, and there are so many that most people, myself included, are unable to remember them well enough, let alone connect them to all the other information that was given before and all the other information that is yet to be given, and I don’t think this is our mistake. If Tenet had the same amount of plot but was twice as long, I would have objectively enjoyed it more. As it is, I would have to watch it at least once more and hope to make sense of those smaller bits. Regardless, technically it’s awesome and the concept is brilliant. The scenes that mix events going forward and backward in time are unlike any other film and there where moments I thought my head would explode. This is exactly I want from Nolan, so I am very satisfied, though I understand people who aren’t or won’t be so, if only because Nolan doesn’t know how to work with female characters, that’s an objective fact. PS (Spoiler): If we consider the motivations of the “villains” (the invisible ones, not the Russian guy), shouldn’t we be actually rooting for them? :) (26.08.2020)

Nolan spins the threads of time, reverses entropy, and becomes definitively his own genre benchmark, no longer needing to prove anything to anyone. He plays a stimulating game with the viewer that is, at its core, justifiably simple because its magic lies in its precise narrative composition, which inevitably demands full attention and multiple viewings. I gave up the first time and the composition of the timelines together with the thunderous music threw me into lethargy. It was only on the second viewing that I enjoyed the elaborately complex structure that makes you think and gives nothing away for free. It’s a fascinating and immersive experience in every way, with such unique production values that it is almost impossible to compare it to anything else. I read the Q&A breakdowns for this film and consider them proof that the viewer is really just a small cog in the great game of one principle. (01.11.2021)

This time Christopher Nolan got a little off the rails and became his own enemy. Tenet is of course a great piece, very fast paced and nice to watch, but unfortunately it disappoints in the very things that should elevate it above the classic summer blockbuster. Nolan may have announced that he's pretty much making his own Bond movie, and it looks like it for the first half, but it's more or less a classically conceived spy thriller clashing with his cool direction, where he keeps his distance from everything. And the audience has to go with him. Tenet then becomes a downright Nolan flick somewhere around the halfway point, but unlike Inception, which is the closest the film comes to it, here we don't discover the rules of the new world gradually, and no one explains them in breathtaking scenes. Nolan simply takes the characters and the audience and throws them into deep water, regardless of whether they can swim. What's going on? How does it work? What affects what? And who's to blame for it all? That's more or less dealt with on the fly here, and I reckon I missed half the stuff. I did end up enjoying a lot of the spectacular action, where things were a bit weird, but I didn't really care why. I reckon on a second viewing I would have been clear on it, kept track of everything and got everything in order. But for perhaps the first time ever with Nolan, I'm not sure I want to watch it a second time. (24.08.2020)

I don’t want to be mean to Tenet. Yes, I enjoyed it as a solution to a quadratic equation, as an endless conversation with an android in whom someone implanted the EgoBooster 3000 chip. Yes, I understand who the protagonist is here and I will not haggle with a person who understands entropy and is not afraid to use it. But no one can expect that this ostentatiously conducted puppet show full of flatly-spoken phrases and motivations subject to narrative mechanics will evoke in me anything that is even remotely close to fascination, and even further away from emotional investment. In short, I cared even less about Tenet than Inception and Interstellar combined, and my degree of indifference was far greater regarding the film about people waiting on the beach, with a few other approaching them whose watches move at different speeds. For me, Nolan has changed from a magician who could draw me into his intricate magic into a puppeteer morbidly obsessed with wires and switches. I understand that it doesn't matter that McGuffin was pulled out of someone’s ass – it only matters that he functions in an entropic bidirectional. Ok, if this is a Bond film for future generations, I'm glad I grew up with the past one, which discovered insight and later the basics of psychology. (31.08.2020)

What happened (didn't happen). The opening plays with the idea of Lipsky´s Happy End, Moffat´s saga about River Song, the third Harry Potter movie and the The Sensational Reverse Brothers. Yes, it is undeniably closest to “the palindromic Inception", but with a differently conceived disruption of reality and time. From filmmaking perspective, it is again an extremely well-worked-out blockbuster “with people in suits in the same way as in a Bond movie", which at the same time does not let the brain idle. And it's purely Nolan: cold, reserved, depersonalized, sophisticated, precise and almost procedural. Which, although not many see it, is not a disadvantage this time, but an advantage. Compared to Inception, the biggest difference, apart from the surprisingly frequent and scaled-up ideas of breathtaking action based on practical effects and stunts, is that it does not give the viewer any explanation. Where Inception gradually went over the rules and clarified them, Tenet recklessly jumps right into them (especially in the final third). However, the source of “mindfucking" is not so much in the incomprehensibility/abstraction of that concept, but rather in keeping track of all of the events. And that at the end, at such a furious pace (the sophisticated audiovisual excuses helping the viewer slowly disappear), there are so many levels and storylines that it overwhelms all senses and does not change the overall level of comprehensibility at all. PS: Nolan simply has to adapt Sweterlitsch's “The Gone World" and no one can change my mind about that. (26.08.2020)

Christopher Nolan at his most challenging, ambitious and exhaustive. It's good to finally watch a big, expensive film in the cinema after a long time. Tenet is really great to look at, it has excellent technical aspects, beautiful cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema, an ear-splitting soundtrack (quite possibly the loudest film I've ever seen in the cinema), great actors, where both John David Washington and Robert Pattinson get a proper carrier boost, and also nice and spectacular action (the fight in the kitchen, the car chase and the finale are a blast), and the concept itself is presented in an original and engaging, albeit complicated way. Even the dialogues are pretty hard to understand, they talk about things I don't care that much about, but fortunately Tenet has a good pace and when it looks like the film is getting boring Nolan pulls an ace out of his sleeve. Story*****, Action****, Humor>No, Violence>No, Entertainment****, Music****, Visual*****, Atmosphere****, Suspense****. 8/10. (30.08.2020)

After my first viewing of Inception, I wrote about the film as a perfect toy for the enjoyment of its creator, but I was a decade ahead. It is Tenet that is a meticulously crafted construction set that works exactly as the author needs it to, right up to the last frame. This also means that Christopher Nolan himself plays with it the best and the audience can only watch over his shoulder, wondering how each mechanism works, thinking about how they wish they could play with it, too. He will probably allow them to, but only when they come to see it for the second or third time. I can't shake the feeling that with each new film, Nolan goes deeper into his mode of expression, not only in terms of the complexity of the screenplay, but also in relation to the viewer. With Inception, or even earlier with The Prestige, were able to present each twist or trick almost kindly and "narratively", even when it was a nerve-wracking twist. But in Interstellar, it became necessary to go more towards information, and in Tenet, you can only get answers through machine-gun dialogue or quick cuts. Despite the usual drawn-out running time, the film doesn't allow for a breather, and even in situations where the main characters rest or wait for something, more information, branching paths, or theories are thrust upon us, which could easily be a dead end – or conversely, the most crucial clue. This time, everything is subordinate to this approach, including the last vestiges of accommodating the viewer, the personalities of the characters (this time expressible without exception in two sentences) or visible emotions. Still, at the end, my heart jumped to unforeseen heights, and for that I am most grateful. For the fact that even though this latest Nolan film has surprisingly sharply divided the audience spectrum, it was worth every long minute to me, and its dirty and unusually aggressive world will thoroughly mature within me for a long time. (01.09.2020)

It’s a great feeling when you emerge from the cinema mystified by a film and you have a sense of returning from another reality or perhaps only back to the past, when the impression of having come into contact with something fascinating and absorbing was fresh and relatively frequent. Nolan is the last great fantasist of our age, a director who can still get inside our heads with his spectacular roller coaster. His films are truly creations meant to be seen in the cinema, not only with mammoth sound design and opulent visuals, but also with enchantment of the viewers, who have to give up the control over the film that is given to them by the remote and let themselves be carried away by the pre-set time that the director-protagonist carefully constructed. It is possible that the illusion will dissipate upon repeated viewing or absorption of all of the explanatory analyses and video essays. But it is perfect right now and, just like the characters in the film, I want to enjoy the blissful ignorance, to again be a teenage fan emerging enchanted from the cinema or at least to gaze enviously across the flow of time at the naïve youths from the perspective of a hardened veteran and wish them this genuine feeling of enthusiasm. (02.10.2020)

Tenet certainly doesn't pose an intellectual challenge and is one of those films that you'll enjoy the most when you think less about time paradoxes, the motives of the film's characters, and their quest to defeat the Bond-like villain. As a popcorn flick deliberately reminiscent of Agent 007 stories in a sci-fi coat, and as an action spectacle, Nolan's film really works. Thanks to John David Washington, we essentially have the first "non-white" Bond in history. I enjoyed the dynamic opening opera heist, where Nolan drew inspiration from a real terrorist act. Kenneth Branagh also pleased me, intentionally building his villain as a monstrous comic book character. Overall impression: 65%. (27.03.2024)

This is already too much of an exhibition from Nolan. A 150-minute roller coaster that spouts the same narrative scheme of his great films like Inception or The Dark Knight Rises. That is, for two hours he opens the scissors and in the third hour everything gradually closes wide, with thunderous music. That worked with the caped crusader and with the suited up Leo, but Tenet is already too much. It’s cold, complex and totally unreadable. It’s a bit like a Bond film that it’s not even worth trying to understand (especially during the screening). A story without colour, emotion or interesting characters. Only Washington breaks a sweat, and anyone can tell that he is Denzel's son after a few minutes of seeing him walk and talk. The action is cleverly shot, but the imaginary highlight is the classic hands-on plot in the kitchen anyway. With Goransson and Hoytem, everything is fine. Goransson copies Zimmer a bit in those chunky roundhouse synthesizers, but he achieves the desired effect. The last half hour can be slept through with a clear conscience, if anyone manages to do so despite all the explosions and dramatic music. (30.08.2020)

Tenet is a film about which I would love to write a lot, but in my current lack of time I can only be succinct: go to the cinema and don’t bother looking for pseudo-intellectual poses, let yourselves be drawn into a world whose presentation and development within narrative cinema haven’t been so impressive and satisfying in their own processes for a long time. I will write more after further mandatory screenings… It’s a pity that trolls will fuck up the rating, but that’s also part of Filmbooster – and actually it points to an all the greater movie. (27.08.2020)

With all of his previous movies, Christopher Nolan is far from having run out of his ideas, and with Tenet, he once again came up with something that is, in a way, previously unseen. Simple at first glance, the spy storyline is entwined with very playful directional ideas and, what’s more, filled with non-stop action and information-dense dialogues. So, the movie is constantly moving forward in a very dynamic fashion, without giving the viewer a chance to catch their breath, as well as seemingly lasting one third shorter than 150 minutes. Perhaps one in a million viewers will manage to absorb everything in a single viewing, since, simply by missing a few words or overlooking the meaning of something, one becomes clueless about what is happening for the following 30 minutes. Tenet obviously requires a second viewing, and I can’t wait for that. After a six-month break, here’s a cine-film which aspires to shake off the dust from the projectors, and I wish it every success it can get, because I’d be pleased to see more of Nolan’s visionary imagination on the big screen in the upcoming years. (02.09.2020)

In terms of story and narrative structure, Tenet is the most complex of all of Nolan’s films. It requires attention and concentration, but it leaves viewers with questions and uncertainty after the first viewing, despite all of their effort.  Though it often tends to balance on the edge of overall comprehensibility due to the overabundance of stimuli, information and experiments with the flow of time, it never slips into a being an opaque, chaotic mess, which is clearly a sign of Nolan’s directorial and storytelling qualities. He inventively makes use of the central motif of time in many spectacular scenes and constantly enriches it with new and unexpected possibilities of using it, thanks to which the plot continuously escalates to highly unpredictable dimensions and thus unceasingly becomes more complex, while at the same time becoming less and less concerned with explaining what is actually happening on the screen, how it should be understood and what would be good to take note of. It is not necessary to analyze the structure of the film and its plot sequence in detail, as it can easily be read only intuitively and on the basis of physical experience, supported primarily by the intense sound and music component and the realistically filmed action. In comparison with some of Nolan’s previous films, Tenet is far from perfect (particularly in terms of the cold rendering of the main characters and a few somewhat banal and awkward motifs), but it is still admirable and absolutely magnificent, with a consistently brisk pace and unrelenting rhythm. Not a second is wasted and the film holds together splendidly without letting viewers catch their breath in many passages. Tenet is fascinating, visionary, narratively revolutionary and not too similar to anything else. It is one of those films that you would think impossible to make if someone just told you about it. But Christopher Nolan indeed made it, with absolute precision and filmmaking brilliance. (24.08.2020)

Every new film from Christopher Nolan is a major cinematic event that is always worth waiting for (even despite repeated postponements of the premiere due to the covid pandemic), and Tenet is another prime example of Nolan a great director. Thankfully, the trailers didn't give much away, so I went into the cinema essentially as an unwritten piece of paper. Even though Tenet is two and a half hours long, it doesn't get boring thanks to the properly dosed action – you watch a convoluted story in which time is relative and the usual rules don't apply. Playing with time is a rewarding yet dangerous subject, but Nolan has succeeded in serving up a story that makes sense. It was thrilling to watch how things gradually back a little bit at a time during the course of the plot, making the pieces of the story fit together perfectly. The soundtrack was truly impressive and I was quite surprised that it was not Nolan's court composer Hans Zimmer but Ludwig Göransson, whose music, however, strongly evoked Zimmer's work for me. Technically, I have nothing to complain about – excellent cinematography and tight editing. The only thing that didn't sit well with me was the somewhat cold and mechanical performance of some of the actors, especially in the first third of the film – at least that was my impression. Either way, this is a quality film experience that needs to be seen in the cinema (and more than once). A weaker five stars! (26.08.2020)

The whole film went a bit over my head because physics and advanced mathematics were never my strong subjects (my math skills end with fractions), so all that trotting back in time just made me smile. Plus, the whole time (and it certainly took long enough), I couldn’t help feeling that there was something not quite right about those explanations of how the various time planes worked. I just can’t bring myself to feel excited about this film at all. (12.01.2021)

Anti-linear film logically offers an insightful lesson about any linearity of human behavior - a vector never leads to a goal, success, or end; it just returns in an infinite loop to its starting point, and we observe: a longing to change, a sense of missing, a search for termination; a new beginning. The villain, who believes they control time, always loses through it; humanity, fearful of its annihilation, will always be reborn after it; the hero, gradually building self-awareness as both substance and subject, is always thrown back to the beginning of the search: the beginning of the film, which is both the end and the beginning. The only lesson is that it's all completely insignificant. Blockbuster nihilism. A person is merely an unconscious mover of their own unconscious decision, about which it cannot be said when it originated because it is always decentralized from its consciousness. The inherent paradox of the film is that its time cannot be reversed: afterward, errors in the script will undoubtedly become apparent. Similarly, the film cannot be stopped because people would then have time to contemplate things, and the magic would be lost. But! Time cannot be stopped either, so these arguments are not valid in this context at all. (28.08.2020)

In many ways reminiscent of the blockbuster space-time series Dark, which wrapped up its third and final season this year. Nolan, however, has again taken a completely different approach to the perception of time, and traditionally shows the viewer not a shred of sympathy in the telling of his complexly intricate, but perfectly crafted story. This time, to my surprise, he was not afraid to add more action scenes and more challenging stunts. In short, Tenet is another precise screenwriting treat with a vibrant score by Zimmer scholar Ludwig Göransson. Epic camera shots with fascinating, natural non-green screen effects that are a joy to behold. (28.08.2020)

Christopher Nolan is even more distant and colder to his characters this time around than usual; on the other hand, he once again manages a narrative ultra mindfuck that playfully puts the rest of the blockbuster production in the deepest pocket. It's remains in question how much of Tenet is actually watchable, because unlike Inception, we don't get any downright "explanatory" scenes followed by some refreshing understanding. The film is terribly self-focused, but it's so beautifully purely nerdy and audiovisually enchanting that it's actually impossible not to love it. Along with Memento, it's probably the least accessible Nolan when it comes to some deeper understanding of the story. Still, I’ve given both Memento and Tenet 5 stars, because I obviously enjoy the hell out of their incomprehensibility. (03.09.2020)

A truly exhausting film that demands your full attention throughout its whole runtime, because once you tune out for even a single moment, you have virtually no chance of getting back on the same wavelength with Nolan, and the rest of your experience will get drowned out by the deafening noise and convolutedness of the plot. I must admit that the first time I watched it, I felt almost physically exhausted and was not far from getting lost in the plot. But in that mind-blowing moment, as the main character begins to understand and use his ability to change the flow of time, everything suddenly starts to fall into place, and it is one hell of a ride. Tenet is indeed Nolan's most ambitious film, and like all his other films, it will be subjected to a variety of, more or less justified, criticism. But as always, it is the only really must-see film of the year whose technical side, storytelling, and the way it is filmed relegates the rest of the Hollywood production to second-class status. (30.08.2020)