Tenet Review

Tenet, the last film of Christopher Nolan, a time-bending director in my own words, has become one of the most memorable movies of 2020, one of the movies that captured the minds of its audience, so to speak.

Even though there are those who criticize for the sake of criticizing, and even though there is a lot to criticize, this does not overshadow the success of Tenet. Moreover, it offers us a very different experience. I think Nolan is an extraordinary director who can think of many things. For this reason, I look for a consciousness in his every move. But for many people, liking or disliking this movie is based on personal reasons. In this article I will analyze Nolan’s Tenet.

🎬 TENET

The movie Tenet, starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine and others, is based on the following palindrome.

A palindrome always reveals the same meaning whether it is read straight or upside down, from above or from below. Whether you start reading the polynomial on the left in the first line, on the right in the last line, or from above or below, the same thing always emerges. But only the word TENET itself remains unchanged even in different readings.

I must say that Tenet is based on this polindrome, which we can understand from the use of the words Sator, Rotas, and Opera in the movie, which is not a coincidence. There is no doubt that Christopher Nolan, our time bender, did this deliberately. And not only that; the notion of time used in the movie also proceeds in the same way, straight and reverse, sometimes up and down. In other words, just like in this polindrome, what has happened has happened. This is the general logic of the movie.

It must be not said that the Tenet movie is incomprehensible and chaotic. Because a logic in it and the movie works according to the principles of this logic. Moreover, with the use of the phrase “don’t try to understand it, feel it”, we are not expected to understand the movie, but to feel it and enjoy it. So is the movie perfect? No, Is’t. It doesn’t claim to be.

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet: my review, critique and commentary

After an operation at an opera, our protagonist, a spy, passes a test to which he is subjected but which he is not aware of. Moreover, he faces what he is up against. He has to prevent a great war. But the enemy is not the ones in front of him, but the ones in the future. They have somehow reversed the energy of the object, so they are acting with the opposite energy.

Moreover, they have found a way to reverse time by doing the same for humans. But it’s not like a time machine; time is normal for you, but time in the world flows backwards for you. So you need ten days to go back ten days. But there are some rules in doing this; for example, you disappear in contact with yourself.

In the future, a scientist designs an algorithm that can invert the world, not just things and people. The inverted world will naturally disappear because it will come into contact with itself. But our scientist thinks that by destroying the world of the past, they will also be destroyed. Of course, there are those who believe otherwise. So she physicalizes the algorithm, disassembles it and hides its parts in the past; moreover, she commits suicide to prevent them from forcing her to build another one.

If we go back in the past and kill our grandfather, we are not born, and so we cannot go back and kill our grandfather in the future. This paradox is mentioned everywhere, it is mentioned in the movie. Some people in the future believe that if they kill their grandfather they will live. Grandfather here means the whole world. But at the end of the movie we realize that they do this out of desperation. The world we have left them has become uninhabitable.

In the movie, it was stated that not everyone in the future wants to destroy the world, and that there are those who are against it. What’s more, we learn that it’s not the distant future, that our main character actually lives in the future and founded Tenet, and that he and Neil, who was given to him as an assistant, have actually been close for a long time and that he sent him from the future.

One of the memorable things about the movie was the ending. In the finale, there is a time pincer operation. That is, half of the soldiers are fighting the enemy normally and the other half are fighting the enemy backwards in time. One side finishes the battle while the other side is just starting. This way they know in advance what’s going to happen.

Moreover, we learn that throughout the movie we are actually in a time paradox. Another confusing thing here is the vicious circle, just like in Interstellar or The House at the End of Time.

What’s confusing about this movie, apart from the vicious circle, is that there is a time travel within time travel, just like in the movie Inception. Moreover, as it is stated and as it is said in all similar time paradox movies, what has happened has happened. In other words, something has to happen in the past for something to be changed. This can also go a little bit to the concept of multiverse. When we think a little bit more about the movie Tenet, it is as if we are only seeing part of a bigger scenario; there is another scenario, but it is in the future.

For the first time in many years Christopher Nolan worked not with Hans Zimmer but with another musician, Ludwig Goransson. Some people say that this is the way it should be for this kind of action movie and that any kind of music will be similar to this. But I disagree, because I liked Goransson’s work very much. I would like to say that I find it very successful and admirable that in the scenes where time flows in reverse in the movie, the music also seems to flow in reverse. On the other hand, the cinematography, acting and all other qualities of the film are of Nolan quality. Tenet is also extraordinarily successful with its material qualities.

A much criticized aspect of the film is that it prevents us from getting close to the characters. The movie doesn’t tell us anything, it just shows us. So much so that we are not even told the name of our protagonist; and many things are not elaborated in the movie. For example, what kind of project Tenet is, what he actually does and the general situation of the future and many other things are vague.

With Tenet, Christopher Nolan clearly wanted to express that time is not a straight line but is very complex and intertwined. Moreover, the movie, which brought a breath of fresh air to cinema, could have been much more successful if it had not coincided with the pandemic period. Moreover, it is obvious that it will inspire many works.

My rating for the movie 7.9/10

And what do you think? Where would you place this movie among other Christopher Nolan movies? What is Nolan doing? Please feel free to share your opinions in the comments section below. Let’s continue talking about the movie in the comments section. For more, be sure to check out our web platform and forum on culture art, ideas and literature.