n Short Paragraphs: Tenet

 2020, Christopher Nolan (The Prestige) -- download

A friend didn't like this movie, stating it was just another example of Nolan showing the world how smarter he is than anyone else, but he also stated that I would probably like it. He was right, on both accounts, for the arrogance and self-importance just drips from the movie, and it is a movie of the twists & turns of time travel, which I love, even when they hurt my head. But I must say, but for some small details in the chaotic mess that is travelling both forwards and backwards in time, this one was pretty straight forward. The temporal mechanics are familiar ones, it was the execution that was new, and I rather like new.

Protagonist (seriously, that is his name?) is an agent, probably CIA, tasked with a duty within an event -- take a captive from an opera that is already in the middle of a hostage taking. In the midst of the police forces storming the opera, Pro (John David Washington, Ballers) notices they are also leaving bombs. Something is up. As he and his crew begin gathering, a strange reverse bullet happens and Pro is saved by a stranger. But he is caught by the Bad Guys, whoever they are, and his final act is to bite on a suicide pill.

Alas, he awakens, "Welcome to the afterlife..." I almost wish he had followed up with, "Nah just fucking with you," as this was a key line in the trailer, so no it does not happen in any sort of post-death. They must have caught him before he bit down. Anywayz, they explain to him about something going on and that they need to let him cool off inside a sea based wind turbine. He's waiting for them to come back and pick him up.

This whole setup is part of the Nolan method, having inexplicable things happen, and we are to just accept them. Pro acts that way as well, as he doesn't argue with the Boss Guy who explained where Pro was now, in terms of the plot, and just goes along with him. He also showed him a cool hand gesture.

Turns out Pro is getting mixed up in a world impacting situation, where someone has learned how to reverse the flow of time on specific objects. They are called inverted, and they have been sent backwards or made inverted by someone from the future. And their purpose is murky, and probably a Bad Thing. But Pro is being recruited into this organization, called Tenet (notice the palindrome?) and his first job is to dig up more on where the bullets come from.

Every reveal in the movie leads to further complications, very Bond-ian espionage twists and turns, and further conspiracies. But they center on a Russian Oligarch (independently wealthy with control of the country) named Sator (Kenneth Branagh, Wallander), who came out of Soviet area city-sized black-sites, and rose inexplicably to power very quickly. Pro can get to Sator through his wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki, The Crown) who is desperate to get out of the marriage, but will not leave without her son. The leverage comes from a small forged art piece, which Pro decides to steal from a very very very secure vault in Oslo.

The heist, which involves crashing a plane loaded with gold into an airport terminal, introduces us to one of the technologies in the movie, strange turnstiles which can not only invert objects but also people. Wee! Weird, backwards choreographed fight scene with mysterious figures with an unknown agenda!

Much of the movie plays out like Nolan was trying to re-capture the golden touch he got from Inception but with much more chaos. These are supposed to be thoughtful action scenes, like Michael Bay on Adderall. But once he gets past the highway scene, and into the two-directions mass combat scene, the entropy of so many things happening at once, we are not expected to understand what is going on in the least. This is entropy for the sake of it, so Nolan can spend the money he has at his disposal with grand effect. If he cannot expect his viewers to understand what he is telling them, then he can at least dazzle them with bombastic effects.

The crux of this movie, and what most people must not be able to decipher, is a mild twist in my books. Its a fun Shyamalan turn of the heart of the movie's plot. If you want spoilers, go Google "Tenet Explained". For me, it was a fun but to an already fun movie that mired itself by trying to be deeper than it had to be. The temporal mechanics are not all that divergent from other examples, but for the fun addition of inverted things and people. The motives of the Bad Guys seem murky given their "closed loop" understanding of time travel, but they seem oblivious to that, and just go with it, much like Neil (Robert Pattinson, Twilight) is once he realizes where his loop is going.

So, I enjoyed the movie? Yes, immensely. Will I watch it again? Definitely, so I can travel the loops again with a certain understanding, just like some of the characters did. Did I understand everything? No, but I am sure a few more loops will assist, and some things are so clouded in obfuscation, Nolan doesn't expect or want us to understand. But he can have that, as I got enough out of it for me.