The Reviews from Critics on Christopher Nolan’s Tenet Start To Roll In
Tenet’s final trailer releases as film’s early reviews begin
The movie release of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet has been pushed back so many times from its original, 17 July 2020 release date, that the film almost feels like a paradoxical plot, as if it exists in an Inception limbo. Well, even with the coronavirus pandemic looming down under, it seems like we might just see the much-awaited Nolan film hold its 27 August release date here in Australia. And ahead of its release in other places round the world, the first reviews of Tenet are already rolling in.
The film so far? Not so great. Film critics, so far, have labeled Nolan’s Tenet as an overly complex, tiresome mess— and failing to deliver on the time-manipulation mystery plot the early trailers promised. Though, the reviews have noted that it delivers the see-it-on-the-big-screen hype. Well , right now, we’re all probably so desperate for some movie entertainment that we’ll see it anyway, but read the Tenet reviews for yourself just in case you want to know what you’re walking into.
Some of this is weariness: for all Tenet’s technical ambition, the plot is rote and the furnishings tired. Eastern European heavies lumber about with pliers and meat-cleavers. Clocks literally tick. Synths groan deeply on the soundtrack. No one shoots anyone without elaborately speechifying first. Extreme lengths (remote catamaran) must be pursued to ensure confidential conversations. The luxe locations titillate for a bit, but there’s something tonally off about the aspirational, How to Spend It aesthetic (Sator’s Italian villa, in particular, really overdoes the busts).
Nolan is not invested in the meat-and-potatoes plotting of lesser mortals. He trades in big-picture concepts, and his latest is tried-and-tested: a device that reverses matter. Careers too, apparently. “Tenet” revisits the terrain of 2000’s “Memento” with more money and a protagonist — sorry, Protagonist — who, in tracking and repurposing that gizmo for good, masters the flow of time rather than falling prey to it. Yet plot-wise, “Tenet” has more in common with “Minority Report” than “Memento,” even as it lacks the sophistication to make that route worthy of exploration. An insinuating mid-budget noir has been punched up into a bet-the-house studio actioner; interminably PG-13 shootouts and fistfights replace those tangible, haunting Post-Its and Polaroids.
The sheer meticulousness of Nolan’s grand-canvas action aesthetic is enthralling, as if to compensate for the stray loose threads and teasing paradoxes of his screenplay — or perhaps simply to underline that they don’t matter all that much. “Tenet” is no holy grail, but for all its stern, solemn posing, it’s dizzy, expensive, bang-up entertainment of both the old and new school. Right now, as it belatedly crashes a dormant global release calendar, it seems something of a time inversion in itself.
Repeat viewings will likely improve your understanding of it all, as well as your appreciation of the jigsaw puzzle plot that Nolan has meticulously assembled. (And there are plenty of A-HA! moments as the movie goes on.)
On first watch though, Tenet likely would have benefited from some breathing space. It does truly put you in the shoes of the Protagonist, learning the world as he goes along, but it can be all a bit overwhelming for the viewer.
In terms of spectacle, Tenet delivers. The stunts, the camera work and the scale are impressive. As is Nolan’s appetite to use blockbuster entertainment as a platform to seriously consider existential threats, the unconscious mind, and cutting-edge physics.
We are a scant few minutes into the film’s 2½-hour run time and it has already delivered: the sequence ends with interior and exterior shots of an explosion, which the editor Jennifer Lame transforms with as perfect an action cut as ever there was. In that microsecond, we’re reminded of something the last few months have conspired to make us forget: cinematic scale. “Tenet” operates on a physiological level, in the stomach-pit rumbles of Ludwig Goransson’s score, and the dilated-pupil responses to Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography, which delivers the same magnificence whether observing a narratively superfluous catamaran race, or the nap and weave of Jeffrey Kurland’s immaculately creaseless costumes. Seriously, the most mind-boggling aspect of “Tenet” might be the ironing budget.
No other artform could quite present such a collision of time, place, idea and emotion, and it’s clear that Nolan’s pure intent is to give us the utmost of what this medium can uniquely provide. At its best this is a ride that manages to be viscerally thrilling while still being emotionally and intellectually engaging, all in ways that are truly, uniquely cinematic.
Tenet – Warner Bros. – YouTube
See for yourself when Tenet debuts here in Australia next week the 27th of August.
Tenet. Christopher Nolan.