Tenet - Saving the World, And the Cinemas

Who better than Christopher Nolan to bring cinemas back from the dark days of the coronavirus lockdown? The director of intelligent big blockbuster films like Dunkirk, Inception, and The Dark Knight trilogy seemed like just the savior we needed to excite audiences and convince movie theaters to reopen their doors, warm up their popcorn machines, and reignite their projectors. After many months of watching films on tablets, laptops, and television screens, Nolan’s Tenet signaled the moment when cinemas would finally be able to let ‘rushing’ crowds in, with social distance being respected of course, to see the latest mind bending action tale by the most interesting modern Hollywood director.

This was the ideal situation Warner Brothers dreamed would come true. Unfortunately, the return to the cinema, either due to fear, disinterest, or people simply growing accustomed to watching content comfortably at home, was not as strong as the studio hoped for. As a result the film is struggling in comparison to Nolan’s past efforts, though given the current state of the pandemic this should not be as big of a surprise as some are making it out to be. Internationally the film is doing decently, having made more than 250 million. However, the film is doing extremely poorly in the United States, one of the biggest markets for Hollywood films, having only made only 36 million after three weekends in theaters. This is for many factors, including the inability to open the theaters to full capacity and the fact that New York and California cinemas are still closed as the virus remains out of control in the United States.

Considering all the film had going against it, it seems a bit silly to call it a flop, and executives are still hoping that it will continue raking in money with little to no competition on the big screen for the coming months. After Tenet’s less than stellar numbers, studios decided to move all their big releases back even further. Nolan’s failure to perform a miracle in the middle of the worst health crisis ever seen in a more and more globalized world has convinced Hollywood that now is not the time to do business as usual. The other day Disney announced the postponement of all of their upcoming releases including a remake of West Side Story and the Marvel films Black Widow and Eternals. Warner Brothers did the same one week after Tenet’s release by delaying Wonder Woman 2 until at least December. The new James Bond film is still on track to be released at the end of November but is expected to be the next film to be rescheduled.

It is hard to say what is the best thing to do in the world’s current situation. Release films as usual? Put them on streaming platforms? Delay them? Just after Tenet debuted it was announced by Disney that they would release their live action film of Mulan on their new streaming service Disney+. Understandably, there was confusion and even anger at this announcement. Mulan is clearly the type of spectacle that is meant to be seen on the big screen. The multiplex is especially effective for films like Tenet and Mulan that are not just films, but ‘experiences.’ No matter how enormous your tv screen is or how immersive your sound system is, the experience of seeing something in the cinema cannot be reproduced at home, and these big budget films are made with such impressive effects, exciting choreography and action set pieces, and booming sound that they can only really be appreciated on the silver screen.

It is also being reported that Mulan is not performing extraordinarily for Disney either. This may mean that there is no way for these huge budgeted films to make money in a coronavirus ridden world the way they did before. Perhaps for this reason, instead of announcing more theatrical or digital releases, all big films are being pushed back until the studios can come up with a plan of action that is bankable. One can only hope that unlike Disney, the studios will release the films as they were meant to be seen even if that means waiting. I’m not saying that Mulan, the umpteenth unnecessary Disney animated remake was ever going to be a masterpiece, but if I was not convinced about seeing it in the cinema, the idea of watching it on a laptop seems utterly pointless. Of course studios will do whatever brings in the most cash no matter the consequences, and asking them to think about something other than money is just as absurd as hoping the coronavirus will magically disappear.

Now, with all this box office and industry analysis done and out of the way, let’s talk about the actual film Tenet! One could look to make a comparison between the over the moon expectations of Tenet’s financial and artistic success and it’s consequential failure to live up to these expectations. While the film’s box office was a financial disappointment so far, the film itself is more successful as a trippy spy action thriller, but it is no miracle in itself either. Every Nolan film comes with exaggerated expectations from audiences that are sometimes met (The Dark Knight, Inception), and other times aren’t (The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar). Tenet fits somewhere in between being a total success and a disappointment, not fitting in with Nolan’s greatest hits nor with his missteps.

 The film is extremely complex and simple at the same time. In a nutshell it is about a spy who has to stop an evil super rich Russian from destroying the world. While it is essentially easy to understand, the specifics are totally befuddling and nearly impossible to follow as the characters travel forward and backward in time to fight for and against the destruction of the world. There are many moments when I found myself asking why they are moving forwards instead of backwards as I thought they had entered the backwards portal and have suddenly changed direction. The third act is particularly confounding as two groups of military forces go backwards and forwards in time, at the same time, to fight more successfully against the bad guys. I lost total track of who was who amid all the soldiers soldiering this way and that and explosions exploding reverse ways and normal ways through time. In an especially impressive shot a building is blown up through by people moving both into the future and into the past. I did not comprehend at all what was happening to it or how it was happening, or why it was happening, but damn it was cool.

There is a scene where Clemence Poesy is describing to the protagonist, and in turn to us, how certain material moves backwards through time, and it is summed up by her saying, ‘don’t try to understand it, just feel it’ - basically telling the audience not to get too worried when we get lost. I am not a proponent of this mentality at all when seeing as a film as it leaves you susceptible to being manipulated, and you can take for granted why a film makes you feel a certain way, and how it is doing it which at times can be very problematic. However, in this case, the film is so explosively, heart poundingly fun, and it had been so long since I had been in the cinema to see something so crazy, loud, and big, that I took her advice and just went with it.

Tenet is most similar to Inception in Nolan’s filmography. If Inception was his time warped dream heist, Tenet is his time travelling spy thriller. Maybe no scene reaches the sheer brilliance of the floating hallway fist fight from Inception, but the car chase scene in the middle of the film is one of his greatest achievements. With this time bending car chase, like the car chase in The Dark Knight, the plane heist in the Dark Knight Rises, The hallway scene in Inception, and opening scene in Dunkirk, Nolan once again proves that he is one of the most exciting and visionary action directors of all time. We see the same car chase two times, once in normal time, and the second time in reverse, and it is absolutely remarkable how everything fits together so seamlessly. While Poesy may have told us not to think too much, I am convinced that if you sit yourself down to analyze the logistics of every scene, that Nolan has it all planned out to perfection. We might not understand how everything works, but I am sure Nolan does. 

The rip roaring action is even more extraordinary thanks once again to Nolan’s championing of using analog film. In a world where blockbusters are made of more computer generated pixels than real world material, Nolan’s use of stunts and real people, props, and objects in his films is a real breath of fresh air. When an airplane crashes into the side of a building, we are really seeing an airplane crash into the side of a building! When four cars are side by side racing down the highway with a fire truck ladder stretched over them, they really recreated that! And it really, truly makes a difference! Nolan’s films make digital technology look all the more silly, because he does what all these other films fake doing with special effects, and he does it better. Of course there is always movie magic involved, but Nolan is much more hands on on set, a genius in portraying action set pieces that look real, because they almost are. Whatever faults Tenet may have, it’s brilliantly, technically precise action scenes with stunning choreography and execution make it so worthwhile to see. And I don’t care what the studios say, these scenes cannot be equally appreciated on the small screen.

And it is not only the visual aspect of the action that makes it so thrilling. Nolan knows better than anyone that the sound is equally important. The sound of the cars, the air planes, the screeching tires, the explosions,  the machine guns is all part of an expertly put together soundtrack that blends perfectly with the music of Ludwig Göransson. Görasson steps in for Nolan regular Hanz Zimmer, and his score, sounding especially Zimmerish, for me goes to prove that while both composers are certainly extremely talented men, that their scores are highly influenced by the director himself. They are pulsating, pouding, and constant. They create the atmosphere of the film as much as the camerawork does. The films are as exciting and thrilling as they are in large part due to these humming drumming scores that relentlessly fill your ears with booming drawn out tones and toe tapping anxiety.

Despite all the praise I have for Nolan’s visual and sound style, the film is far from perfect. The plot is a bit clumsily set up, and the characters are not his most interesting. We never really understand why the villain wants to destroy the world until a short dialogue scene at the end that is so hastily done in a moment of great tension that it is hard to really grasp what is even being said. John David Washington is our unnamed protagonist who does just fine in the role, but is nothing exceptional because he really does not have much to work with. Leo and McConaughey were so famous when they worked with Nolan that they brought their star power to their characters, something that Washington lacks right now, and since he is given little in terms of background history or character development, a recognizable super star perhaps would have been more interesting. 

Kenneth Branaugh is the real scene stealer of the film. He is terrifying as the villain and chews the scenery with a strong Russian accent that never descends into parody. It is a great performance for a character that again, is not given much to do, but Branaugh makes it less of a caricature than it could have been. Robert Pattinson is equally effective in his supporting role as the English spy assistant. He is clearly having a great time, and his style and good looks are used to great effect in one of his most charming and enjoyable roles

The real disappointment of the film is the performance by Elizabeth Debicki as the evil Russian’s oppressed wife. Debicki is an excellent performer with a fascinating physical presence, and it is a real shame that Nolan failed to give her anything to sink her teeth into. Many critics complain about Nolan’s dead mother / wife characters, but I find Marion Cotillard’s performance in Inception as the deadly deceased wife who haunts her husband’s dreams as one of his most invigorating characters. In Tenet Debicki being alive does not make her any more interesting. To begin with, her and Washington's relationship is completely forced and they have absolutely no chemistry. She is asked to replay the role she played to much greater success in the spy series The Night Manager, a beautiful woman trapped in a relationship with a super rich super evil international super villain. Dialogue has never been Nolan’s strong point, but as the world is ending and a character exclaims everyone is going to die Debicki inexplicably mutters: ‘including my son.’ I was so sick of hearing about her son by the end of the film that any future reencounter they might have would have surely annoyed me more than moved me.

Tenet may not be the Nolan film everyone was hoping for, or the box office miracle that Hollywood desperately needed, but it is a thrilling action film that displays Nolan’s greatest talents in a cinema experience that the world has been missing. It’s not perfect, but let’s hope its box office keeps climbing to ensure that we won’t be watching Nolan’s next effort on our smartphones