Watching Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” for the second time reveals more layers to the story, more depth to the characters, and quite a few hidden clues missed the first time around. It’s still a maddening puzzle to solve, the stakes aren’t always clear, but, as with all Nolans, it gets better with every viewing.
And yet, something different is occurring this time around, this is the first Nolan movie since 2002’s “Insomnia” where a big chunk of his loyal and ardently passionate fan base isn’t totally on-board. That’s happening with “Tenet.” Many believe Nolan, an ardent puzzle-maker who revels in always being one step ahead of his audience, has gone a tad too far with the maze-like complexities of “Tenet.” This is a film that has had many openly admitting they couldn’t understand or follow the plot — compare that to his other most difficult film to follow, “Inception,” which, for all its layers upon layers of dream infiltrations, was seemingly solvable, if you concentrated hard enough and focused on the heavy exposition set forth by the screenplay.
The only question mark at the end of “Inception” was whether or not the totem actually stopped. In “Tenet,” the questions are endless, we are left scratching our heads exiting the theater, not knowing who or what was what. Also, was the first fake Goya drawing planted? Who is Arepo? What exactly was the future sending back to Sator? This has frustrated an unlimited amount of viewers and resulted in Nolan’s least favorable reviews in quite some time.
Tenet’s 74% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes represents the lowest rated movie of the director’s career on the movie aggregator site. Meanwhile, its 69 Metacritic score is the lowest for a Nolan since 2006’s “The Prestige (which, oddly enough, over time, has become one of the most admired movies of his career).
Audience scores haven’t fared any better. Tenet currently has a B Cinemascore rating and a strong, but un-Nolan-like, 7.9 IMDB rating. Has his fanbase rebelled on him and had enough with his mindfuckery?