It’s been one hell of a turnaround for director Christopher Nolan over these last three years. After releasing the severely divisive “Tenet,” which was a critical and commercial bust, his mega-successful “Oppenheimer” is now set to win the Oscar for Best Picture
From what I can remember about “Tenet,” Nolan had somehow managed to make a movie that, in comparison, made his 2010 mindbender “Inception” a breeze to follow. This translated in the most divisive reviews of his career.
In a recent interview on The Late Show, Nolan defended this criticism of “Tenet”, saying not everything in the film was meant to be fully understood by viewers.
You’re not meant to understand everything in Tenet, it’s not all comprehensible. It’s a bit like asking me if I know what happens at the end of Inception. I have to have my idea of it in order for it to be a valid productive ambiguity, but the point is it’s an ambiguity.
Nolan mimicked these thoughts, a few days later telling the AP that “Tenet” is about the experience. “The thing with ‘Tenet’ is, I think of all the films I have made, it’s the one that’s very much about the experience of watching films. It’s about watching spy movies in a way. It tries to build on that experience and take it to this very magnified, slightly crazy place. A lot of that is about sound and music and this huge image,” he explained.
Nolan is known for making films with complicated and complex storylines. However, I can’t say that I fully agree with him on this one. He’s right that a filmmaker can make an astmosphere-driven film that isn’t meant to be understood, that’s David Lynch and Alain Resnais’ cinema for you, but you can’t really do that with “Tenet” — a film devoid of atmosphere that pummeled me to submission with its action, loud sounds and cardboard acting.
In “Tenet,” which very much felt like Inception-on-steroids, Nolan somehow managed to give us his most complicated and confusing movie to date. It hammered me to a pulp, with its relentless 153 minute assault on the senses.
“Tenet” felt like a woefully classic case of putting concept over story, a film heavy on pseudo-science as it tackled time-travelling via reverse engineering, in a clear-cut world-hopping homage to Bond movies. Nolan’s byzantinian vision kept playing around with time and place, in sometimes playful, but ultimately frustrating fashion.
“Tenet” is being re-released on Friday, and I will be watching it again on Thursday — I am open to having a revelatory experience such as what Sean Baker had with the film on rewatch.
Of course, we all know the rule: take these reactions with a grain of salt rather than treating them as gospel. Still, I will say that the film tested like gangbusters earlier this year, and Lionsgate clearly has confidence.