Watching Christopher Nolan’s latest film Tenet was one of the most frustrating cinematic experiences I’ve ever had. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad film by any stretch; spinning a nail-bitingly tense story of high-tech underground arms dealings and the special unit tasked with putting a stop to them around a typically complex sci-fi conceit: the inversion of time around objects causing them to move backwards. Tenet has so much going for it in the right direction – a top-tier cast with stand-out performances from John David Washington and Batman-to-be Robert Pattinson, stunning cinematography, breathtaking visual effects and a suitably epic score from Ludwig Gorranson. So the fact that something as minor (in the grand scheme of things) as sound mixing almost derails the entire thing is a huge blow. As is always the case with Nolan’s work, spoilers are a huge issue – but worry not, this will be as spoiler-free as possible.
That spoiler-free promise becomes immediately difficult to uphold when you have to try and explain the concept of Tenet, but the basic premise involves John David Washington’s “Protagonist” being recruited by a shadowy organisation to investigate a potentially world-ending discovery: the reversal of an item’s entropy causing it to flow backwards through time. Think a bullet exiting the wall it had been lodged in and flying backwards through the air to land back in the chamber of the gun or a car chase flowing in reverse. It’s difficult to visualise when you read it but rest assured Nolan does his best at capturing the mind boggling and making it visually plausible. There are a few spots where this device begins to strain that plausibility, but by the time you reach these moments you’ll likely be far too confused to worry much about them. The journey of the “Protagonist” eventually puts him on a path towards Russian billionaire Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), a man who may know the most about this mysterious technology, and his wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), forcing him to enlist the help of colleague Neil (Robert Pattinson) to infiltrate the shadowy organisation Sator controls and unlock the secret to time inversion.
As with all of Nolan’s work, Tenet is incredibly well made, from the set designs and costuming which gives the whole affair a real spy movie flair – like some kind of sci-fi-tinged James Bond film – right through to the top tier effects, a lot of which are practical this time around. Where the film does employ special effects to render its time inverted sequences, it does so to jaw dropping effect. Buildings that have exploded piece themselves back together from the wreckage with rubble flying upwards and flames shooting back into explosions, freezing instead of burning in their reversed state. It should come as no surprise to anyone that has seen a Nolan film before and while the effects never reach the spellbinding highs of Inception, there are some incredibly inventive scenes that deserve a spot in Nolan’s highlight real. Another central pillar to any Nolan film is the score and in-demand composer Ludwig Goransson (known for his work on Black Panther and The Mandalorian) does not disappoint, delivering a pulse pounding soundtrack worthy of frequent Nolan collaborator Hans Zimmer’s lofty standards. Hitting all the right highs and lows, with those blaring horns that Nolan’s films have become synonymous with, Goransson’s score adds that epic flare to almost every scene and will give your eardrums the rattling they have been missing from trips to the cinema.
Unfortunately for Tenet this fantastic score works as something of a double-edged sword. Nolan and his team seem to have made the downright bizarre choice to mix the score in heavily whenever anybody on-screen is talking to maddening effect. It’s not an exaggeration to say that by the halfway point of this meaty epic I had only been able to understand about a quarter of the dialogue that had been spoken. In a film already so complex and exposition-heavy (Nolan has clearly done his homework and wants us to know about all the scientific theories that explain this time inversion concept), it seems like an obvious thing to go quiet on the background noise and music in scenes where facts and theorems that are central to our understanding of the plot are rattled off. Those Inception horns I mentioned earlier are blared constantly during these scenes, leaving you clueless as to what was said to the point where when someone in the film references a piece of dialogue said earlier you’ll have no clue what they are talking about, you just have to take it on faith.
This wouldn’t be the glaring issue that it is if Nolan didn’t feel the need to complicate the story of Tenet to a frankly ridiculous degree. If you’ve seen any time travel film you’ll be fairly well equipped to grasp what you’re about to see. Nevertheless Nolan seems convinced that his take on the concept is something completely groundbreaking when the reality is – apart from some of these inverted action scenes – it is all pretty standard time travel fare. Twisting the story beyond its already confusing time travel elements is the editing, with choppy cuts that don’t seem to blend very well together failing to give you a proper idea of where our characters are in their globe spanning adventure; one minute we’re in India before a quick trip to Italy and then right back to India. It’s something very atypical for Nolan and along with the sound mixing debacle mentioned earlier it’s quite perplexing that these issues weren’t called to attention in the editing bay, especially given the extended delay during the pandemic that would have given ample time to fix these gripes.
Fortunately these issues are mitigated somewhat by excellent performances across the board. John David Washington cements his status as a leading man following a brilliant turn in BlacKkKlansman; as a man thrust into this extremely covert world spy scenario and completely out of his depth, with nothing to rely on but his own wits and judgement over who he chooses to trust. As a surrogate for the audience, the somewhat clueless nature of his character allows Nolan to unload mountains of exposition in a way that doesn’t seem too boring but there’s only so much you can take before it starts to get a little overwhelming. Beyond that, Washington shows a command over the screen reminiscent of his father Denzel, and with a long career ahead of him Tenet will be remembered as one of his best early performances that showcased the promise of this young talent. Pattinson and Debicki both do great with the roles they are given, with Debicki given a bit more to work with as the beaten-down wife of Kenneth Branagh’s tyrannical criminal mastermind. Her exploration of domestic abuse and the burden of not being able to escape Sator as it means leaving her son behind is especially powerful and one of the most engaging emotional relationships throughout the film thanks to her stellar performance. The real highlight here is Branagh, putting on a wild and deranged display as the unhinged Russian with too much confidence in his status for his own good. Branagh steals every scene he is in, playing the character dangerously close to an 80’s action movie villain stereotype but pulling it back in the quieter moments where Sator gets a chance to show his intellect. This is a man three steps ahead of anyone else in the room and in a film so complex the simplicity of the threat he represents is a welcome counterpoint.
Tenet is not Christopher Nolan’s best film, in fact it might not even be in the top 5; but as with his entire filmography it is still an exceptionally well made movie, from its visual flair to its technical impressiveness. The frustrating complexity of the story and the bizarre decision to mix the dialogue in with the score forces the audience to trust the fact that they know where Nolan is taking the story, even if they do not know themselves. Given Nolan’s track record, this isn’t a huge gamble and I won’t exaggerate and say that the sound mixing completely derails the film as the addition of subtitles on future home viewings will likely fix the issue. Nevertheless if you’re going to pay to see this in the cinema – and for a lot of people this will be their first big post-quarantine viewing – you’ll want to understand what you are watching. For a director as precise as Nolan to overlook this, or even worse to do it intentionally is bizarre but Tenet is still an incredibly engaging, inventive film featuring terrific performances from its entire cast that more than earns its spot in Nolan’s incredible body of work.
Tenet stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Himesh Patel, Michael Caine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Kenneth Branagh – In cinemas now.