TENET

 

Christopher Nolan is one of my favourite directors from this era, his capacity of creating incredible images combined with his original scripts makes him a unique filmmaker. His filmography is mind-blowing and if he is continuously making films as he has been doing it, I think he will retire as one of the best in film history. I never read any news or watch any trailers before the premier of his films because, I know his movies are going to be at least a 7/10. Before I watched Tenet, the only information I read was that Inception is Sesame Street compared to Tenet and after I’ve watched it, it’s completely true. This film is complicated, probably is going to need more than one view to understand everything. If you are really concentrated, open-minded and looking at all the details, on your first viewing you will understand probably not the entire film (if that's the case you’re genius) but the 70% or 80%. Even if you don’t get it, you are going to enjoy the film due to the magnified direction behind the camera, the score and the interpretations. As in the case of any Nolan’s movie, it is not necessary to say that everything looks amazing and the shooting is perfect. Also, the soundtrack is amazing, very intense and original. Unfortunately Tenet has become the most polarizing film from Nolan, their major criticism are his lack of explanation and depth of the characters. Tenet is not a perfect movie, some times the paste is too fast, the dialogue is too complicated and doesn’t let you follow the film well. But after 3 views, I think that was the intention of Nolan, actually there’s a sentence of one character at the beginning of the film that said: “don’t try it to understand, just feel it”. Nolan wants us to be confused, to feel every scene, to watch it multiple times to finally understand it. For me that's my only problem with this film, may be with a few more scenes of explaining or showing more details of the plot would have helped many people (including my self) to enjoy 100% of the movie in just 1 view. The other criticism that the movie has is the lack of depth in our protagonist and I don’t share that opinion. In his previous film Dunkirk that was also a disappointment for many, Nolan invented a new form of narration, he explains the battle as an event and not as a particular history of a soldier. In Tenet, Nolan doesn’t make empathize with our protagonist (John David Washington) because it is not important, it’s rather a new way of narrative, and it’s totally compressive for those who didn’t like it. The point of the film is to put intensity in our body, to make us say “wow” with the originality that the movie has, the protagonist is not important because you are the main character in this film. Despite it has ups and downs, Tenet is becoming one of my favourite movies from Nolan, every time I rewatch it I like it more and more. I think it is a masterpiece ahead of his time and in a few years I think people will feel the same way. Great films that we consider masterpieces today were considered “bad movies” in his era, it’s the case of Blade Runner, 2001 Odyssey… I’m not saying Tenet is in the same level of those films (because it’s not), but those films were unusual in their era as well as Tenet. Punctuation: 5/5