TenetYour past influences your future; but what if it was the other way around? Tenet is a science fiction action movie about an unnamed Protagonist (John David Washington) who is recruited by a secret organization named "Tenet" to avert "World War III". The Protagonist's "handler" is a man named Neil (Robert Pattinson), who partners with this new recruit to help uncover the source of the deadliest threat known to existence, who's behind it, and--most importantly--how to stop it at all costs. This takes the duo across the world--and time itself--in their mission to avert complete and total annihilation.
|
|
Many comparisons have been made between Tenet and the James Bond movies. A lot of this comes from the way that the Protagonist is portrayed. Like Bond, the Protagonist is a very skilled agent; he is ex-CIA, is skilled in martial arts and firearms, and is an expert tactician. In one scene, he comes up with a complex plan on the fly to pin in a vehicle on the highway with various other trucks--all in motion--so that he can abscond with its cargo in broad daylight. The Protagonist's nemesis is a Russian arms dealer named Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), whose accent and convoluted machinations would make him perfectly at home as the sneering villain in a Cold War era Bond movie. Tenet is written and directed by Christopher Nolan, known for mind-bending blockbusters like Inception and Interstellar; Tenet fits neatly into his body of work. The apocalyptic threat that the Protagonist must thwart first makes itself known almost by accident. In the midst of a performance turned violent raid by terrorists at the Kyiv opera house, the Protagonist and a team of other agents try to extract one of their own. In the chaos, a struggle ensues between the Protagonist and an assailant. Suddenly, a bullet hole in a wall seems to magically repair itself, and the embedded bullet "un-fires" itself through the Protagonist's enemy. Viewers who walk into Tenet with no inkling of what's coming will no doubt be perplexed, but this event is meant to spark the match of mystery in the audience and set their minds aflame. The Protagonist is subsequently taught what it means for something (like a bullet) to become "inverted"...not in the first three dimensions, so to speak, but in the "fourth". In other words, Sator's weapon is "temporal", not "nuclear", although Tenet suggests that they have a bit in common.
The Protagonist learns of Sator through another arms dealer named Priya (Dimple Kapadia), after he and Neil dramatically slingshot themselves up to her and her husband's penthouse apartment in Mumbai. To reinforce that the Protagonist is a highly intelligent agent, Tenet has him share with her that he discovered that she was involved in the production of the inverted ammunition by way of the components that went into their creation, save for the radioactive element. For this, she points the Protagonist to Sator, but explains that the best way for him to get into touch with his enemy is through befriending his wife, Katherine "Kat" Barton (Elizabeth Debicki). Kat and Andrei have a strained marriage, despite sharing a son, who they both love very much. Kat is an art appraiser, but after she misidentified a forgery of a Goya painting which she encouraged Sator to purchase from an acquaintance of hers (named Arepo), he opted to use that mistake as leverage to keep her from leaving him. But more important to the Protagonist, she's positioned and motivated to help him take down her embittered husband; the Protagonist attempts to ingratiate himself with her to that end. (This is where the differences between the Protagonist and James Bond diverge a bit. While Bond has a reputation as a lothario and seducer, and despite the Protagonist being handsome and well groomed, theirs becomes a strictly platonic affair.)
Even though Sator never believes that the Protagonist is anything other than an enemy from go--and threatens him in almost every encounter--our hero pitches a risky idea to Sator about stealing a batch of "Plutonium-241". He does this in the hopes that such an offer will get him close enough to stop Sator from unleashing his real weapon upon the world, which the Protagonist learns is an "Algorithm" from the future, which--when activated--causes total inversion of the past. The Protagonist correctly concludes that such a weapon wouldn't just end all life, it would actually destroy existence itself. Only the faintest of details about "what" the Algorithm is or "why" it exists are divulged to the audience, with the most intriguing clues being that somewhere in the future, "a man in a crystal tower throws a switch", and our reality ends, and that someone or something in the future blames us for "rising oceans and dried up rivers". There are frequent comparisons made between the conflict in Tenet and a "cold war", somewhat underscored in the Russian Sator. But the real enemy in Tenet comes from hundreds of years in the future; yet no one really knows this enemy, not even Sator, who is little more than a pawn in this war across time. The ambiguity of this enemy makes a lot of Tenet feel foreign and unfamiliar, despite some exciting action set pieces, which likely accounts for many reviewers recommending audiences watch the movie at least a second time. At one point, the Protagonist is forced to enter a "turnstile" that apparently inverts him, and the whole world looks like it's moving backwards. This "movie in reverse" look is a disorienting experience, and is revisited during the climactic showdown of Tenet, ensuring that any viewer who walked into the last twenty minutes or so of the movie would be utterly baffled. Yet this speaks to one of the strengths of Tenet: it is always raising the metaphysical stakes and as a result, the accompanying feeling of constantly struggling to keep up helps the audience better empathize with the Protagonist, who also experiences all of this for the first time.
Many of the names in Tenet--even the title itself--comes from a mystical "word square" referred to as the "Sator Square". This word square has been found in places as old as the ruins of Pompeii (also referenced in Tenet), but it's true purpose has been shrouded in mystery and supposition for millennia. Some have attributed magical or deific qualities to it, but despite puzzling scholars for ages, it remains a mystery. Though the Sator Square itself doesn't figure into Tenet directly, its inscrutable legacy is a thematic metaphor used to describe how the world will always contain riddles and puzzles, inviting us to constantly question what we hold true.
Recommended for: Fans of a complex science fiction story that blends explosive action with metaphysics. Tenet is filled with lots of "eureka" moments that makes it feel a bit like a magic show. Combined with plenty of twists and turns, this makes for an enjoyable ride, yet one that demands the audience's attention to fully appreciate.
The Protagonist learns of Sator through another arms dealer named Priya (Dimple Kapadia), after he and Neil dramatically slingshot themselves up to her and her husband's penthouse apartment in Mumbai. To reinforce that the Protagonist is a highly intelligent agent, Tenet has him share with her that he discovered that she was involved in the production of the inverted ammunition by way of the components that went into their creation, save for the radioactive element. For this, she points the Protagonist to Sator, but explains that the best way for him to get into touch with his enemy is through befriending his wife, Katherine "Kat" Barton (Elizabeth Debicki). Kat and Andrei have a strained marriage, despite sharing a son, who they both love very much. Kat is an art appraiser, but after she misidentified a forgery of a Goya painting which she encouraged Sator to purchase from an acquaintance of hers (named Arepo), he opted to use that mistake as leverage to keep her from leaving him. But more important to the Protagonist, she's positioned and motivated to help him take down her embittered husband; the Protagonist attempts to ingratiate himself with her to that end. (This is where the differences between the Protagonist and James Bond diverge a bit. While Bond has a reputation as a lothario and seducer, and despite the Protagonist being handsome and well groomed, theirs becomes a strictly platonic affair.)
Even though Sator never believes that the Protagonist is anything other than an enemy from go--and threatens him in almost every encounter--our hero pitches a risky idea to Sator about stealing a batch of "Plutonium-241". He does this in the hopes that such an offer will get him close enough to stop Sator from unleashing his real weapon upon the world, which the Protagonist learns is an "Algorithm" from the future, which--when activated--causes total inversion of the past. The Protagonist correctly concludes that such a weapon wouldn't just end all life, it would actually destroy existence itself. Only the faintest of details about "what" the Algorithm is or "why" it exists are divulged to the audience, with the most intriguing clues being that somewhere in the future, "a man in a crystal tower throws a switch", and our reality ends, and that someone or something in the future blames us for "rising oceans and dried up rivers". There are frequent comparisons made between the conflict in Tenet and a "cold war", somewhat underscored in the Russian Sator. But the real enemy in Tenet comes from hundreds of years in the future; yet no one really knows this enemy, not even Sator, who is little more than a pawn in this war across time. The ambiguity of this enemy makes a lot of Tenet feel foreign and unfamiliar, despite some exciting action set pieces, which likely accounts for many reviewers recommending audiences watch the movie at least a second time. At one point, the Protagonist is forced to enter a "turnstile" that apparently inverts him, and the whole world looks like it's moving backwards. This "movie in reverse" look is a disorienting experience, and is revisited during the climactic showdown of Tenet, ensuring that any viewer who walked into the last twenty minutes or so of the movie would be utterly baffled. Yet this speaks to one of the strengths of Tenet: it is always raising the metaphysical stakes and as a result, the accompanying feeling of constantly struggling to keep up helps the audience better empathize with the Protagonist, who also experiences all of this for the first time.
Many of the names in Tenet--even the title itself--comes from a mystical "word square" referred to as the "Sator Square". This word square has been found in places as old as the ruins of Pompeii (also referenced in Tenet), but it's true purpose has been shrouded in mystery and supposition for millennia. Some have attributed magical or deific qualities to it, but despite puzzling scholars for ages, it remains a mystery. Though the Sator Square itself doesn't figure into Tenet directly, its inscrutable legacy is a thematic metaphor used to describe how the world will always contain riddles and puzzles, inviting us to constantly question what we hold true.
Recommended for: Fans of a complex science fiction story that blends explosive action with metaphysics. Tenet is filled with lots of "eureka" moments that makes it feel a bit like a magic show. Combined with plenty of twists and turns, this makes for an enjoyable ride, yet one that demands the audience's attention to fully appreciate.