Review: Tenet

Some of you already know what I am going to say (and for that you deserve a place in Nolan's stories). I watched Tenet twice (surprise surprise!). I was absolutely befuddled first and then blown away by how precisely the scenes were plotted. Second time's the charm, I guess.

Nolan's brand of sci-fi is special. In normal stories, the characters discover a new phenomenon and experience its consequences. In Nolan's stories, the phenomenon is already normalized. His characters aren't discovering it, they are the experts in using it to their advantage and yet they end up in challenging situations. This makes for much more interesting and complex stories. It also means that viewers face a steep learning curve; first understanding the rules of the new world and then seeing the entertainment value. Usually it's difficult to do both at the same time. In Tenet, with little to no exposition, it is the hardest. So first things first, do not expect Tenet to entertain you in the first viewing. You'll definitely end up saying "what did I just watch?". But Nolan is not known to indulge in meaningless filmmaking (at least so far). So it does deserve a second look.

Tenet takes an interesting approach to time travel. You cannot get in a machine and instantaneously travel a decade in the past. The time-machine "inverts" you and you live ten years watching everything around you move backwards. Some explanation is given about reversing the entropy (suffice to say, it's fictional). Basically, the world looks inverted to you and you look inverted to the world.

Apparently, humans of the future have realized that they messed up the climate pretty bad. Their desperate solution is to destroy their ancestors (us!) and hope that it doesn't destroy them (cue grandfather paradox). They hire a wealthy businessman in the past (our current time) to do the job. Our protagonist is tasked with stopping them. What follows is an intricate chain of events with things happening simultaneously in forward and backward motion, inverted and non-inverted people interacting. There is a jaw-dropping battle where half the soldiers move forward in time towards their goal, while the other half move backwards from the future. It's simultaneously fascinating and confounding. The story moves blazingly fast and doesn't stop for explanations. But ultimately, when you piece together the puzzle, it is satisfying to the core. I'm sure finding goofs will be internet's favorite pastime in coming days.

The movie does falter when it comes to its characters. They lack the personal quests of Inception or Interstellar. So it is hard to empathize with them. But this is a minor quibble in an overall rewarding experience. And there's an emotional twist in the end to make up for it.

Finally, the beauty of a Nolan film is that so much is hinted at but not actually shown. It gives fodder for thought, space for imagination and that's what I consider wholesome entertainment. Tenet is no exception.

****