Tenet

No worries, no spoilers.

I’m an insomniac, emphasis on the niac. As in: not sleeping turns you into a complete and utter maniac. As in: not many good words end in niac. Egomaniac. Pyromaniac. Kleptomaniac. Megalomaniac, for maniacs with positive self regard. But while the word insomniac focuses on that which I do not have (ie, sleep), it fails to account for the many things I’ve gained, (ie, time). Time to stew on thoughts and do deep dives probing insecurities and trying new anxieties on for size, sure, of course, but also time to read. There is a special kind of reading that takes place in the middle of the night, when everyone else is sleeping. Once you’ve reached at least the 36th hour of nonstop awakeness, your brain unveils a secret capacity, a wormhole of clarity, almost, wherein all things are possible. I do read a fair amount of trash, but every now and again I like to throw in a hefty tome or two, just in case I’m secretly a genius with untapped potential, should I ever come across it. And it was on one such night, June 6, 2018 in fact, in a feverish sleepless state, that I was reading a book about string theory and understanding it. By morning, the ghost of string theory was still with me, and as long as I didn’t attempt to look at it straight in the face, it was there, a light dusting of dew on my brain that I worried would evaporate with the sun. Or rather, with sleep. Anyway, I am to this day not a world-renowned particle physicist, so it wasn’t permanent or complete enlightenment. But this wasn’t the first time I’d experienced such insight. In March of 2003, I was making my way through James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Ugh. That Joyce is a straight up dick. Finnegans Wake is the single most obtuse piece of literature to ever darken the Dewey decimal system. If you hate readers so much, why on earth did you become a writer? Idioglossia my ass, this man’s just straight up making shit up as he goes along all stream of consciousness like he’s never met a piece of punctuation he didn’t want to flick to the ground and grind it like it’s the stub of a cigarette and we’re the ones getting smoked. But for a minute there, a glorious minute, I was getting it. I was getting it! I was lost in the rhythm of Joyce’s unique syntax, I was beyond comprehension, I was feeling the meaning, and the subtext. I was absorbing it into my skin like Joyce and his opaque one-hundred-letter-words were nothing but aloe.

This might feel like kind of a digression, but first let me remind you that in order to digress, you have to have first introduced the topic from which to digress, and I haven’t done that, so consider the above paragraph bonus content. Now I will tell you that I am writing a review of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, the saviour of the summer blockbuster. Except it’s now been released at the very end of August, and even as desperate as people are for a good movie and a return to some normalcy, Tenet is not some trashy beach read, accessible and easily digested. It is most definitely a Finnegans Wake, and it’s unlikely to save cinema no matter what the hype may have you believe.

After a brush with insomnia over the weekend, I got some medically-induced sleep earlier this week and am feeling fresh of brain and body. But Christopher Nolan knows how to hypnotize his audience. We feel, if not incapacitated, then intoxicated. Nolan builds the kinds of worlds we might encounter in dreams. Inception taught us to challenge everything. Interstellar taught us to think outside the box. Tenet merely kicks us in the teeth.

The good thing about not understanding a movie is that you can’t possibly spoil it. And yes, yes there were times when I thought I was getting it. I was a smug little shit, untangling the plot like it’s a delicate, thoroughly knotted rose gold pendant that I’m desperate to dangle above my cleavage at dinner, the diamond shining just a little brighter for having worked for it. But no. No.

John David Washington is simply The Protagonist, an operative with a global assignment to stop a renegade Russian oligarch from destroying the world. To do so, he’ll have to master time inversion because sometimes the only way out is through.

Parallel universes are for pussies. Christopher Nolan’s played with time and space before. This time he’s fucking with it, and with us.

In the deepest, deepest layers of Inception, it was difficult to judge just how many layers down we’d gone, and therefore it was easy to lose track of which reality was actual reality. When Leo spins that top and the screen goes black before we know whether it will topple over, that’s basic math. Like, ultra basic. Not even addition, just straight counting. Tenet is like abstract algebra, necessitating the contemplation of infinite dimensions. Plus number theory, the properties of and relationships between integers and integer-valued functions. Nolan may be one heck of a professor and Tenet the most sublime power point presentation, but this shit is hard and for most of us, a little out of reach. Way too many times during the film I could smell the smoke coming from my brain as it attempted to calculate and process too many things at once. I am way too linear a thinker to feel comfortable when Tenet hits its stride, which is frustrating because those are objectively the very most interesting bits!

You know those pricks who back into a parking spot just because they can? Like it was totally unnecessary so they’re basically just showing off? Nolan is that prick. Tenet is his oversized pickup truck. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS HARD! But since it is, a few tricks:

  1. Pay attention to everything. Because everything is something, nothing is nothing, the more nothing it seems, the more something it is.
  2. You’re going to want to watch it again. Even if you hate the movie and how it makes you feel (cough*inadequate*cough), you’ll want to see it again. You need to watch it with the knowledge you can only gain by watching it hopelessly and helplessly the first time. And you’re definitely going to want to discuss it.
  3. The title is a clue.
  4. The movie poster is a clue.
  5. Even my goddamned digression is an accidental clue.
  6. Everything is important, okay? And it’s all happening all the time, and especially when it’s not. So don’t let your guard down.

19 thoughts on “Tenet

  1. ninvoid99

    I love Christopher Nolan and I have seen everything he’s done in the theaters since Batman Begins but… it is very unlikely that I’ll go back to the movie theaters due to this pandemic and I don’t want to die all because I went to see Chris Nolan’s new movie in the theaters. Yet, I am aware there are worse ways to die. A marathon of films by Michael Bay from Armageddon to Six Underground with a full audience as we all get sick from COVID is the worst way to die.

    Like

    Reply
    1. madf00bar

      My daughter and I went to an early showing Wednesday. There were 7 people in the theater! We sat in the middle of 3 empty rows.
      Whatever the risk, Nolan is worth it. His movies are HARD, not for the normies, and I love him for that.

      Like

      Reply
  2. charliecountryboy

    Excellent but I think your review may be better than the film, which is often the case.
    Love your Joyce rant 😘😘

    Like

    Reply
  3. raistlin0903

    Hmm….maybe I should be starting on those midnight reads as well, and see if I can get some of those secret brainpowers too. It sounds delightful😂
    I kind of expected this movie to be yet another tour de force for the mind, and that’s why this wasn’t a real suprise after reading this review that’s the case. That said, this one seems especially hard. Doesn’t mean that I don’t want to see it though, as I’m a huge Nolan fan. But sadly it won’t be in theatres 😔 Great post!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  4. fragglerocking

    Oh dear lord, I just about managed to ‘get’ Inception after 3 watches (though couldn’t explain it if I tried) but even if I’m wrong it was fascinating to watch. Will definitely have to do this for the crack. When it streams. Did you feel safe in the cinema? How are they doing?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  5. Brittani

    I laughed so hard at “I like to throw in a hefty tome or two, just in case I’m secretly a genius with untapped potential, should I ever come across it”

    I do really want to see this, but I don’t want to see it in a room full of people during a pandemic, I wish Nolan would’ve just kept waiting.

    Like

    Reply
  6. Invisibly Me

    So I’m going to need to be fully awake for this one? I can’t remember the last time I watched a film on high alert without the possibility of napping. Luckily, as per your review, I’ll be watching it a second time anyway, which is just as well as by then I would have forgotten the whole film anyway. Looking forward to it though! x

    Like

    Reply
  7. Liz A.

    Uh yeah. I think I’ll need to see this at home, take it in small bits, and rewatch, rewatch, rewatch. Not planning on doing it any time soon.

    Like

    Reply
  8. Robert Horvat

    Unfortunately, we won’t be seeing any new movies at the theatre in Melbourne until probably December or early new year because of tough restrictions here. So I guess I’m going to have to award the Oscar to the only film I saw this year The Call of the Wild 😉 I was so looking forward to Tenet, now it sounds like too much trouble.

    Like

    Reply
  9. George Aukskalnis

    Tenet is crap. Utter tripe. Make a movie that is incomprehensible and then have idiots like you claim to understand it so you can feel superior to the rest of us. Like Interstellar this is trash.

    Like

    Reply
    1. Tom

      The entire point of the post was claiming NOT to understand the movie. What is your problem, other than perhaps having recently lost a child to SIDS? You’re a troll and you need to have your everything taken away from you.

      Pray, tell, George — YOU FUCKING GREEK SHIT YOU MAKE ME WANT TO FUCKING VOMIT — where was the comment here at all that claimed they understood it?

      You, sir, need to fucking die.

      Like

      Reply
    2. Tom

      You, as an ejaculation, are a true waste of a woman’s body. Wow. Fuck you to hell you absolute Greek tragedy. I can smell your fucking olive-puke body odor from here.

      Like

      Reply

Leave a comment