TENET; A Professional Scotsman Review #32
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ALTERNATE TITLE: .teneT
FINAL SCORE: It’s a solid 7. Pretentious or exhilarating depending on your own tastes. That score may well creep up, back and around to an 8 or reverse down to a 6 but time will tell. Or not. Or it already has.
Cobb: "Never recreate from your memory. Always imagine new places!"
FINAL ANALYIS: It’s like a Nolan’s greatest hits – with all his ideas and flat characters in incredible suits, future Bond as it were and unquestionably a spiritual sequel to Inception, blaring music and all. All his best ideas are present and correct along with all his most glaring negative tics. Whether you enjoy it or not is probably down to how much you like Nolan in general. It’s got everything I want in a blockbuster – handsome, talented actors, mind bending ideas and flawless technical execution. I’d even like the weird sound design in most places so it’s antithetical to my soul to argue against such arthouse touches in a mainstream picture. God knows I want directors to take a risk. But it’s objectively too much of a mismatch of style and content – on first viewing at least. I suspect, as Nolan clearly wishes, the best way to enjoy such a film is merely to succumb to the overwhelming audio/visual spectacle and submit to the ride. Fighting against it – or trying to follow every plot point in detail – will result in your brain reversing itself. Just relax and it’ll be superficially fine. But this inevitably results in a poor initial viewing experience – or certainly a poorer one than I would have wished for when there was clearly a more satisfying film in there. And yet it was still easily good enough to warrant a second viewing in which I hope to have a fuller, deeper experience. And perhaps that was Nolan’s desire all along?
Cobb: “Well, dreams, they feel real while we're in them right? Its only when we wake up then we realize that something was actually strange.”
The acting is, as ever, very good. The stand out is Robert Pattinson, with his huge pretty eyes, whom manages best to inject a 2-dimensional character with charm whilst Kenneth Branagh has fun as the villain chewing the scenery in a cod Russian accent. The stunning Elizabeth Debicki provides the steely emotional heart of the film, what little there is – why there wasn’t a stronger romantic relationship between her and John David Washington’s taciturn Protagonist (yes, his name’s simply protagonist – that’s how clinical were being now) I do not know. At 6”3 she literally towers over most of the cast which was delightful to see. In a blockbuster sex scene does the man always need to be taller than the girl? Surely Tom Cruise popped that particular cherry decades ago? Fun fact: I’m also 6”3. So Elizabeth, if you’re reading this… I can relate. And make no mistake – there are visuals in this movie that you have never seen before. Washington’s unnecessary (or vital?) bare chested pull ups for one. Buildings reforming and exploding before your very eyes. There are smart ideas and plenty to admire. I just wonder if Nolan’s brilliance is finally starting to creak under the weight of having to make an accessible movie?
Eames: “You musn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”
And let’s be clear – it is an absolutely phenomenal idea. Pulpy, for sure, but so much fun. I won’t go into much detail but I loved it. Nolan excels at time bending, narrative contortions. I suppose the inevitable apogee of such ideas is literally bending time itself. Again, with Inception, which this is clearly a companion piece to if not an outright sequel, there is a practicality to the idea which some will love and some will hate. But then we come to the next major issue: the sound design. All the voices are pushed back into the mix so that they’re often incomprehensible. This is completely deliberate – Nolan believes that the sound palette is not the most important things and that it’s the overall effect that should inform viewers what’s happening. This is commendable from an art house perspective and sometimes works brilliantly. At other times it was extremely frustrating as I literally struggled to understand apparently key bits of dialogue – especially pertinent in such an involving plot and idea. The overall effect on me was turning the complex into convoluted. It also made me wonder if Nolan has complete faith in his scripts. I don’t think this will be the sort of film you’ll end up quoting simply because every line can be obscured.
Cobb: “You create the world of the dream. You bring the subject into that dream and they fill it with their subconscious.”
Ariadne: “Then you break in and steal it.”
Cobb: “Well...”
I have always admired Christopher Nolan’s films. I think that Inception [10] along with Fury Road [10] were the two best films of the last decade. Yet, there’s always been room for criticism in his work. The supporting characters if not the main ones are almost always just ciphers for exposition. Think Juno…uh, sorry, Ellen Page’s Ariadne in Inception who traditionally would have been the protagonist in most films, providing the fish out of water character to allow the audience to discover the world without the exposition feeling forced. Well, she was that and barely that. No real love interest and is in fact just a character to propel Di Caprio’s protagonist to the fore. Now, I think it got away with limited characterisation in Inception because it at least allowed us to gather our thoughts and, for any criticism you wish to throw at DiCaprio – the man can hold a viewer’s attention with ease and was thus able to full fill the role of audience substitute AND the Obi Wan Kenobi mentor role. In Inception it’s almost as if the dazzling brilliance (in my humble opinion) of the idea along with the kinetic filmmaking execution meant that it got away with very simple errors in the premise. In Tenet, the simple failures in script and execution compound to overwhelm the brilliance of the idea.
Arthur: “Give him the kick.”
The first and last film I saw until last night in 2020 was Cats [4]. Now, I’m not saying that Cats was the harbinger of doom that ushered in the apocalypse…wait, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Ok so before I dive in to this (then reverse it and start the review backwards) I just wanna say that Cats was appalling and amazing – the most I’ve laughed at the cinema ever. I guarantee that if you get some mates around and get the bevvies in, you’ll have a blast. So now that’s out the way; let’s start the review of Tenet.
