Tenet (2020)

Every beginning contains a foreshadowing of the end, but especially in Tenet. The film starts with a symphony slowly warming up for a performance, tuning their instruments at higher and higher volumes as the auditorium fills with more and more people. Then the conductor taps his stand, the crowd falls into a silent hush, and everyone waits for the perfect opening to an elegant piece of classical music. Just as the conductor moves his wand, we hear the first note…a gun shot, aimed right at the chest of the conductor, followed by a masked terrorist who destroys an upright bass with the stomp of his military boots.

From this beginning to the end, Tenet is a film that is utterly confusing, totally disorienting, and completely breath-taking. It is a film in which successive viewings do not lead to more answers but rather more questions, and yet one still decides to venture into these successive viewings. Tenet generates a host of cognitive and aesthetic reactions which are as compelling as they are confounding, and as foreshadowed in the opening scene, anyone who desires a genuine appreciation of this film must be prepared for great violence inflicted on the mind and soul.

Before exploring the plot, a few words must be given to the form of this film, a form that is foreshadowed in the opening scene (which takes place at an opera house) but also suggested in a more direct way when the main character asks the villain Sator, “Do you like opera?” If you like opera, you are going to love this film, because like any opera, nobody knows exactly what is going on. In an opera, nearly every ounce of artistic energy is directed toward visual stimulation and musical perfection, and the story is only a convenient backdrop. Nobody goes to an opera for a great story; you go to the opera to have a fantastic experience, and this same expectation is the best way for Tenet to be savored.

“The algorithm” is one of many examples to illustrate this point. The algorithm is a crucial element of the plot, for it is the thing which is trying to be attained at the beginning of the film, throughout the film, and then being destroyed/separated at the end of the film. And yet, despite the algorithm’s vital role, it is nonetheless preserved in bland metal boxes of various shapes which, when put together, form an even more unimpressive adult-sized Lego wand. The metal boxes themselves look like they were constructed by a high school metal-working class with no imagination, and they scream to the viewer “I’m not really that important”. Christopher Nolan has a limitless sensitivity to detail which delights the viewer at so many points in this film, but the algorithm is not one of them. Every time a piece of the algorithm appears on screen, it feels like the viewer is being asked again, “Do you like opera?” Will you allow the story in this film to fade to a lower level and allow other elements to rise to higher levels?  Even the main character is not named at any point in the film but is only listed in the credits as “the protagonist”, a curious use of nomenclature that again clues the viewer into the more hazy and undefined dimensions to this story, just like an opera.

It is erroneous to think that the story is dismissed in this film; quite the opposite really, for the story is entirely relevant and even captivating, but it is given less direct attention than other elements in the film. Consider the constantly frustrating experience of not being able to hear crucial parts of dialogue: for some people, this dialogue is essential because it explains the plot, but if you like opera, then you don’t really pay attention to what the baritone is singing about specifically. If there is another girl on stage with the baritone, and he is kneeling down next to her and thrusting his hands to his heart and whining in a loud voice, then that probably means he loves her; if she slaps him and then sings for three minutes in a loud and angry tone, then it probably means she rejected him. Similarly, in Tenet, “the story” is a complex synthesis of visual, intellectual, and musical movements which, like an opera, provide a stimulating mixture that can delight only to the extent that the viewer allows all dynamics to operate at once, surrendering his/her experience of the film to something greater than “figuring it out” in the moment. Like an opera, if you can’t fully understand the story within the music, then it probably means the conductor wants you to focus on the music. And from the opening scene to the final cut, Tenet definitely sings.

Some captivating melodies arise during a memorable fight scene in a gourmet kitchen. After a not-so-clear explanation of how a combination of fake art, romantic infidelity, and Russian intrigue have allowed Sator to control his wife Kat, the protagonist is taken to the back of this kitchen and proclaims “I ordered my hot sauce an hour ago”. While the mind is still struggling to understand how some fake piece of art is going to unlock closed doors with this Russian oligarch, the eyes suddenly notice Sator’s henchmen hitting the protagonist square in the gut. While the protagonist is on the floor in pain, the eyes continue to inform the mind, not so much about the fake piece of art, but that this Russian oligarch is not to be messed with. In a rare piece of dialogue that can actually be understood, one of Sator’s disciples states that Sator “always gets what he wants”. But the protagonist plans to spoil Sator’s meal, and things really start cooking when he uses various instruments for processing food to pummel his enemies, including a meat mallet, a stack of plates, and a cheese grater which both blocks punches and shaves off the whole side of a man’s face. Now this is my kind of opera!

One of the most legendary opera houses in Europe is the Verona Arena, and what makes it so thrilling is not some state-of-the-art sound system or elegant drapery; rather, it is legendary because it is a gladiatorial Colosseum from Roman antiquity, and it is so large that it can allow for full sized boats to be brought onto the “stage” and perform all-out naval warfare in the midst of a musical tale. Tenet seems to be inspired by this type of opera house, for if it can be done bigger, wider, and more expansive, then it was done in Tenet. The scope of this film is broad geographically, being shot in numerous iconic cities around the world and giving a distinct international flavor to an international conflict (the protagonist is told he has a “duty that transcends national interest”), and this allows both the protagonist and the viewer to go on a splendid international journey. The film is also broad in many specific moments: Neil and the protagonist scale large buildings not short ones, they crash big planes not small ones, they ride huge boats as well as expensive ones, and the protagonist vacations at massive wind farms in the middle of a vast ocean. Everything in this film is big, bold, and broad, but nowhere is this more true than in the film’s treatment of time, which blows the neural circuitry of every viewer and goes beyond any stunt ever tried at the Veronese Arena.

Whenever the mind encounters something totally new, it searches for analogies, and the audience is in desperate need of an analogy to understand Tenet‘s mind-bending navigation through time. Thankfully, Tenet provides this analogy through its constant reference to nuclear energy and its many consequences. The protagonist is told that the world is in another cold war, but one that is temporal and not nuclear.  The scientist responsible for this temporal cold war is like Oppenheimer, the creator of the nuclear bomb. The successful use of this scientist’s algorithm will destroy the world like a nuclear holocaust, but through temporal chaos.  Even the ability to reverse the flow of time is caused by entering a nuclear-radiation turnstile, and the manipulation of time-reversed objects is handled by the wearing of gloves used for radiation. The continual recurrence of this analogy allows the viewer to slowly understand the implications and mechanisms behind a not-so-familiar phenomenon at the core of the film, which is reversing the flow of time.

The movie insists that this reversal of the flow of time is not the same as “time travel.” The characters and various objects are going backwards in time, but this is different from entering a DeLorean and jumping back to a former point in time. However, reversing the flow of time has some of the same implications (and complications) of time travel, perhaps the most important being the creation of moments in time in which the same person is present in various locations with various levels of consciousness (there are several scenes in which three different versions of the same person are present in the same frame at one moment). There are a host of confusing cognitive complications to this world of reversed time flow, but when the protagonist starts looking for some answers to these complications, Neil gives him advice which is relevant to the whole audience: stop asking so many questions, and “try to get some sleep”. Neil goes on to explain that there are some paradoxes inherent in reversing the flow of time, and that these paradoxes have no answer.

Unable to understand the many riddles present in any time warping film, there is at least one aspect to the reversal of time that both the characters and the audience can agree on: it is cataclysmic. Like many other cataclysmic weapons, including nuclear weapons, the protagonist decides to use this same weapon to begin moving backward and forward through time, only better and more efficiently than his enemies. This decision to use reversed time-flow to achieve his ends creates a situation in which there are both forward and backward protagonists, as well as forward and backward antagonists, and this gives rise to a nearly nonsensical tapestry of time that required even the directors of the film to create visual maps and 3D imaging to understand what exactly should be happening at any moment in time. Just as stories with complicated geography require a geographical map, so too does this story require temporal maps. But if you really like opera, then you might just consider tossing the map out the window.

This reversal of time is the real feast of this film, the very source of all that is confounding and astounding to the mind as it watches objects and persons move backwards in time and interact with each other. Any person can press rewind on a film and watch things move backwards (as is done in the film to explain the mechanics of reversed time flow to the protagonist), but the backwards movement in this film is done in a synchronized, coordinated, and thoroughly thought-out manner. Christopher Nolan went way beyond turning the twin pines mall into the lone pine mall, for every action that happens in the “future” of the film actually happens earlier in the film but seen from a different angle and with information from the future now available at these earlier moments. The actions of every character in the film, while freely chosen, are nonetheless contained within an overarching story that ends with the protagonist achieving his end while thwarting the plans of the antagonist Sator. Tenet is a symphony of coordinated story lines but our movement through this symphony is distorted and broken from the very beginning. If you like any film directed by Christopher Nolan, then this fragmentation of time is not just forgivable but also enjoyable.

The film concludes with Neil saying that “We are the people saving the world from what might have been…Because no one cares about the bomb that didn’t go off, only the one that did”. Neil and the protagonist achieve their operatic conquest of the enemy, saving the world by preventing a temporal bomb that could have destroyed the world. All the other people in the film living ordinary lives throughout the world, from the city night-life in India to the coastal shores of Italy to the opera halls in Kiev, are clueless to a life-threatening danger operating just underneath the surface of their daily lives. It is a temporal chess match with universal consequences, but it is also a hidden and subtle antagonism that escapes the notice of nearly everyone else in the world. Unlike super-heroes who are seen by many and known by all, the heroes of this film operate in the shadows, live under long black garments, are covered with face-distorting masks, and sometimes do not even have personal names (ok, so they basically are like super-heroes). It is this hidden, unknown, and cataclysmic battle which needs a fresh-faced protagonist to stir things up, and the protagonist does this by moving selflessly and powerfully through invisible worlds of chaos, transforming this chaos into a synchronized melody that sings powerfully throughout, but beautifully at the end.

This transformation from chaos to harmony is not without its cost. At the beginning of the film, Kat is a fearful and timid puppet of her husband: of Sator, she says “he controls me”. At one point she even tries to kill him, but she cannot because, according to Sator, she is not angry enough. In the course of time (and even by traveling backwards in time), Kat learns to be angry enough to kill Sator, and right before pulling the trigger, she shows the scar on her body from being shot by Sator “earlier” in the film. Thus at the end, Kat has lost her timidity and despair, and she is now transformed into a “vengeful bitch” with scars on her body that show all she has been through. While the protagonist and his associates are saving people from the danger that no one knew was real, there is still plenty of danger that is very real for those who are aware of this subtle international and temporal death match.

To complete his mission, the protagonist is told that he is “going to have to start looking at things differently.” There are many tenets he holds about time and its possibilities which, if he is to succeed, must be broken and reworked, and he does break them successfully. Thus the real barometer of power in this world of reversed time flow is not physical strength but imagination, and no one is more creative than the protagonist in imagining how to create a new set of temporal tenets to live by. In an earlier Christopher Nolan film (Batman Begins), Dr. Crane says, “in here, only the mind can grant you power”. That is true both in Arkham prison where Dr. Crane works and in the temporally distorted world where the protagonist fights.

Thus, to move from chaos to harmony, to remove the boot-stomping disorder from the opening scene into the peaceful tranquility of the closing scene, what is needed most is not physical strength but a powerful imagination. The ability to fight in hand-to-hand combat is impressive and essential (when Sator is told that the protagonist is a government official, he quips that he is “good with fists for a diplomat”), but this strength only helps the protagonist go so far, because while the protagonist drives a speed boat, Sator owns a yacht with surface-to-air missiles; the protagonist has a gun, but Sator has an army; the protagonist has a car, but Sator has a fleet of SUV’s. So how does he conquer his foe in this imbalance of strength? Through the power of a great imagination, which itself is a complex mix of virtues like courage and hope (he begins many actions which have only a slight chance of success) and of cognitive abilities like memory and analysis (his recall of past details is constantly impressing his peers, and he and Neil are literally masterminds in planning their heists). He also possesses that indispensable creative element found in many legendary heroes: a radical trust in intuition and a persistent willingness to accept this intuition spontaneously. Such creativity is the intellectual (and thus spiritual) bomb with the real power to change the world, turning violent noise into tranquil music, turning tragedy into drama, turning chaos into harmony.

Christopher Nolan studied English literature at University, and the main story of this film resonates with the closing lines of the great English novel Middlemarch:

Neil concludes the film by saying that he has “faith in the mechanics of this world”, and an essential element of such mechanics is the recurring protagonists (like Neil and his friends) who are willing to accept unhistoric roles which nonetheless change the fate of history. According to both George Elliot and Christopher Nolan, there are a considerable number of unnamed protagonists in this chaotic world, constantly diffusing an underground cold war through the warmth of their intellectual (and thus spiritual) creativity.