‘Tenet’ Review (Spoiler Free)
This review is probably worthless. If you’re a Christopher Nolan fan in a city playing the movie, you’ve probably already bought your ticket and have seen it. If you’re not a fan, you probably won’t see the movie in theaters for fear of your life. If it’s not playing in a city near you, then you need not worry. There may be a few fence-sitters wondering if in fact the movie is worth going to see. For those in that category, you have somehow wound up at our website reading this review (spoiler free).
The story revolves around a man (John David Washington) who is captured during a mission and is “killed”. When he wakes up, he is given a word – “Tenet” – that will open doors to a whole new, nefarious world. And indeed it does! For the sake of all the people reading this who do not want the plot spoiled, his journey takes him all around the globe and introduces him to some very interesting British people (Michael Cain, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki) and some sinister Russians (Kenneth Branagh and a handful of nameless goons). Space, time, and the world is at stake – can our plucky hero prevent total Armageddon from happening?!?
The machinations of the plot are fairly simple and straight forward, but that’s not why one shows up to a Christopher Nolan film. Indeed, Christopher Nolan’s signature themes of playing around with time and space in both the world of the film as well as on the audience is on full display here and done in a somewhat unique way at that. There is just enough hard science to explain what is going on that, for the most part, you accept the more ludicrous or paradoxical elements that happen. Similar to Inception, Tenet teases information about the science and rules of the world all the way till the end to make sure there was some internal logical consistency, and it helps to make sense of some of the questions that you may have had at the beginning of the story.
With that said, most of the people in the theater I was in were pretty much confused on how the big Christopher Nolan science gimmick worked. I would be lying if there were parts that made me wonder as well, and just trying to think back to how it works leaves me in a bit of a mental tizzy.
This isn’t helped at all by the fact that the movie feels a bit like a sloppily assembled picture. I feel that over the last ten years Christopher Nolan has become sloppier at the art of film making but has become a master at the art of the set piece, and this movie is no different.
Let us be clear – the set piece moments of this film are simply phenomenal. Each one is an escalating blend of technical and creative wizardry and are worth the admission price alone. When I look at some of the set pieces, I still wonder exactly how it is done. I, unfortunately, cannot get into any details with them (especially as they build toward the end of the movie), but know that every one of those moments is endlessly watchable – a technical sorcerer at the top of their game.
I wish the same could be said for most of the rest of the movie. I feel no part of the actual production crew, aside from production designer Nathan Crowley and composer Ludwig Goransson, come out looking pretty. I have not been a huge fan of Hoyte van Hoytema and Christopher Nolan’s work with him – while both Interstellar and Dunkirk are visually arresting films, both movies feel like they lack the detail and eye for consistency that Wally Pfister had. In Tenet, the camera is so close that, a lot of the time, you cannot tell what is going on. This is helpful in many of the set piece moments – it can help to hide the illusion much more easily, but it also means that, as a whole, the film loses some of its congruency.
The editing fares even worse. Working with new (for a Nolan film) editor Jennifer Lame, the editing is somewhat lacking. The moment-to-moment edits feel extremely rushed, as if there is no room to breathe – and each scene feeling like it is over-edited. This is especially problematic during the big set piece moments – sometimes the cuts are so fast that you can’t really process what is going on even if you can see it. The last set piece especially is hard to tell what is going on at times, mainly because the special and temporal geometry is not carefully set up and reinforced as well as it should have been. And while I was not a fan of the first half of the movie – the opening sequence feels too self-indulgent and the rest of the act feels like the spark notes version of the story – the rest of the film has a perfect pace to carry you the rest of the way.
A lot has been said about the sound design of the movie. The music is fantastic – as usual for Nolan at this point, music is used to help heighten and reinforce the central themes (and Christopher Nolan gimmick) of this movie. The rest of the sound design is questionable at best. I watched it in an IMAX theater, where the bass was turned up so high that it made a lot of the dialogue sequences, especially when people were wearing masks or headgear or talking over the phone, distractingly hard to process. The movie also just felt loud – there were some fantastic uses of silence in the movie, but the opening sequence especially just geared me for a really loud experience. A bit smarter control regarding the dialogue, a little less bass, and a bit more quiet moments to punctuate the scenes would have gone a long way. With that said, I did not miss anything that context clues could not provide, and I was able to make leaps without needing to understand every line, so the issue with the dialogue (especially the idea the movie needs subtitles) is blown way out of proportion.
The performers are all highly enjoyable. You have the full range of them – though Robert Pattinson as the charismatic sidekick and Elizabeth Debecki as the somewhat prisoner wife stand out in the film. Kenneth Branagh chews scenery in a perfect fashion, and John David Washington brings as much wit, charm, and swagger as Christopher Nolan allows in a performance that is relatively straight-laced and straight forward. Many people felt he was too stiff in the role, and while he was in parts, he was no more stiff than other over-actors who lead Christopher Nolan films and are sensibly reigned in (Leonardo and Christian, I’m looking at you). I want to make a special call-out to Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who I feel I’ve become much more a fan of as of late, especially in supporting roles, as he is here.
I feel like I’ve been overly harsh on the movie, because at the end of the day I really liked it. I think that the foundation of the film is not as solid as other Nolan movies – the spy fiction genre feels more like window dressing than a foundational support of the movie. The moments that are good are amazing – almost every set piece seems so carefully constructed and detailed that continuity inconsistencies don’t seem to trample the experience too much. And again, it’s Christopher Nolan – he takes high-level intellectual concepts and turns them into a fantastic popcorn movie.
Unfortunately for this reviewer, Tenet never really transcends being just a popcorn picture. The hard science fiction elements and the crafty set pieces are so fantastic it’s worth a watch, but only the die-hard should watch this one in theaters. Overall, a fantastic entry into the Nolan cannon, but one that does not surpass those that came before.
