Tenet - "Don't Try to Understand It."

Enough temporal pincer movements have been made that I can now finally write about my favorite film of 2020: Tenet. If you can’t tell from the sporadic output of my site in general or the films covered in that sporadic output, I don’t write about new films very often. I watch nearly everything throughout the year (mainly thanks to the screeners I get during awards season), but I decided a while back to not write lengthy immediate thoughts about new releases. I think a film needs time to be truly great. As I scan through my top ten lists from the past, I constantly come across movies I forgot entirely; how could something forgetful be one of my favorite films of the year? So while the rest of the world tries to be faster, I decided to go slower and come back to films I love after some time to see if that initial spark led to an actual fire. Aptly enough with Tenet, I started off loving it, went through some confusing rewatches, and ended up right where I started. I love this indecipherable (at least, for me) movie.

On top of time, rewatchability is a big factor for me, as well. I wouldn’t think that Tenet, a film that demands your undivided attention, would be very rewatchable for me since I tend to like to put on movies as background noise at home. But somehow Tenet is a film I don’t mind catching twenty minutes of before I fall asleep, or watching the first temporal pincer movement scene while putting away laundry. It all comes down to the Protagonist’s (more on his namelessness later) meeting with the scientist when she simply tells him, “Don’t try to understand it.” I truly believe this is Nolan speaking directly to the audience.

Normally, a director telling you to essentially “not worry about it” when it comes to a severely complex plot would be a red flag. But I trust Nolan. I’m sure he put in the work, and all of this shit probably adds up if you stop and break it down moment to moment. I usually want to break down complex movies, especially in the sci-fi genre, but I don’t want to fully understand how certain scenes work in Tenet. I just want to enjoy the chaos. 

This wasn’t the case at first. After my first viewing, I loved it, but I immediately started watching it again because I didn’t know what the fuck was going on during the major action set pieces. After multiple viewings didn’t clear things up much, I went to YouTube and watched dozens of breakdown videos that featured diagrams and shit about how it all worked. At some point during that evening, I had Tenet figured out. I have since forgotten most of it, though, because it turned out I didn’t care. 

Homework should not be a part of the viewing experience. And I don’t think Nolan wanted his audience running to YouTube for breakdown videos after the film was over so someone could hold their hand and explain what they had just watched. Instead, he probably wants you to just watch it again (by the way, I know I’m assuming I know what Nolan thinks quite a bit here, but, you know, don’t worry about it). So that’s what I do everytime I come across Tenet in my collection and realize I can’t remember exactly what was going on in a lot of it; time to try again.

Continuously watching Tenet to try to understand it a bit more could be infuriating if the film wasn’t so enjoyable on a cinematic level. The amazing score cements the whole affair, blaring over dialogue (that I wouldn’t understand anyway) while complex time heists and shit occur. The backwards fighting and driving looks great and kind of funny at times (that weird part when the Protagonist is shimmying on the floor after a gun comes to mind). Everything is done big and fast, like a conversation that could have happened during a dinner instead happens while the characters pilot wacky boats I didn’t even know existed. And the cast is naturally charismatic enough that I don’t care if I understand what they’re saying. John David Washington, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Robert Pattinson could babble about temporal pincer movements the whole film, and I would be captivated. The whole thing is like a well-made James Bond film that doesn’t give a fuck if you understand why the world is being saved.

Which brings me to the Protagonist. It’s easy to shit on this movie by claiming that there is such little character development that Nolan didn’t even bother naming his main character. But I saw it as a commentary on these kinds of films in general. Yes, we all know the names James Bond and Ethan Hunt, but who are those guys when they’re not saving the world? Bond has all that fucking and drinking, I guess, but Hunt doesn’t even have that. They’re just protagonists that we follow while they globe-trot doing cool shit. Since this isn’t a franchise, why bother giving the Protagonist a name that we’ll forget before the credits are over? And it’s not as if there aren’t natural moments when a name could be given. Multiple times the Protagonist is introduced to a new person who provides their name (like a human would do), but when it comes time for him to say his name, the Protagonist instead brings up the next plot point. “Nice to meet you, I’m Neil.” “Who gives a fuck? Now how do we get into that arms dealer’s compound?” It’s comical; the most intimate detail we know about the Protagonist is that he drinks Diet Coke, and even with that, we only find it out as a clue that Neil has already met the Protagonist in the future.

The Protagonist doesn’t have time for any pointless character-building because he’s in an action movie, and it doesn’t matter. He needs to save the world. This means he’s a good guy. End of story. This is Nolan deciding to skip emotion (his detractors think he does that in every film anyway, though they’re only right half the time), and just give the audience a pure action film. Everything is done to move the plot forward. There’s no time for character development because the future is trying to end the fucking world. Time is doubly precious when some shit is moving forward while other shit is moving backward. 

Or maybe I’m just a Christopher Nolan fanboy. Where others find fault I see genius. I am a Nolan fan, that I cannot deny. But finding hidden strength in obvious weaknesses is what I do when I love a movie, no matter the director. It’s what I love about watching movies in general, or at least movies that affect me as much as Tenet has. This one is special to me because it has many elements I would typically hate in a movie, but in this instance they enhance my enjoyment, even years later. As it turns out, “time isn’t the problem” when it comes to me and Tenet, and I plan on revisiting this one many more times in the future, even if I know it will leave me confused. It’s like performing a temporal pincer movement on myself. Or maybe not. Still not sure how those work…