A man catches a bullet in the palm of his hand from where it lay on the table. A scientist plays a recording of it for him, backwards and forwards. Backwards: he dropped it. Forwards: he caught it. This is Tenet’s approach to time travel called inversion. It is not leaping up and down threads of time, but every action and object walking backwards or forwards along a single strand, in perfect parallel pace. “Don’t try to understand it,” the scientist says, “Feel it.”

This is what Tenet asks you to do from the offset. If you listen to the scientist – and to director Christopher Nolan, so obviously speaking through her – you are likely to be in for a very good time. You’ll be in for a film that, if you enjoy it, almost requires viewing more than once to catch every nuance with new eyes.

As of writing this, I’ve seen it twice myself. That is going to inform broad swathes of this review for you, constant reader. Obviously, I loved it a lot. I’m a big Christopher Nolan fan, though the man frankly seems like a snob. I don’t think this film would have been any worse if you’d seen it on Netflix or Prime Video or any other streaming platform of choice. I don’t believe in the idea that going to the movies is the purest, best, most immersive way to watch a film. That’s elitism.

That’s acting as though packed cinemas aren’t full of distractions in and of themselves. Distractions like that person two rows over from you who apparently decided to bring a full rucksack of the noisiest sweets available, the one guy who thinks he’s a comedian and keeps making boorish comments. That also doesn’t take into account the giggling pack of friends, the people who need to pee halfway through and silhouette themselves over the most significant sequence of a film…

I had none of that, thankfully, but cinema can sometimes be far worse than watching something in the privacy of your own home, on your own headphones. In general, I want to emphasize that there’s no requirement to see it in the cinema, particularly in our persistently troubled times. I made the decision to go to the cinema and see it for myself. I’m not going to endorse or suggest that anyone else do it. To do otherwise would be irresponsible.

So yes, my cinemas are open, and yes, I saw Tenet. I was deeply pleased to find that not many people are going to the cinema to begin with, and that the staff are enforcing social distancing and cleanliness in a way that means cinemas are – quite honestly! – a more pleasant experience now than they have been in years. It was sparsely populated, with no strangers allowed to elbow me in the side for the whole movie. I had the kind of safe and pleasantly lonely experience at evening showings that in the old world was only possible at the end of a movie’s theater run.

That said, the sound mixing was pretty dreadful. It was better the second time for me than the first, but the second time I deliberately went to a subtitled viewing so that I didn’t miss any crucial dialogue. Pretty much all of the dialogue is crucial. The music and sound design in this film is wonderful. It’s a deep shame that for the millionth time in his career, a Nolan film’s sound mixing has been completely borked in the cinemas.

Another point for the home cinema experience is that there wouldn’t be any disparity between cinemas or problems with sound on a streaming platform, or even on a DVD. Nolan’s snobbery about the cinema experience would probably be met with a lot less derision if people hadn’t been fighting since Nolan’s Batman trilogy to hear his movie dialogue in cinemas.

Now: I roll my eyes at Nolan himself, and I roll my eyes at the marketing for literally any of his movies. However, my eyes practically come spinning out of my head as the same old internet debate starts up when a new Nolan movie comes out. It’s the same slew of hot takes every time: “this movie was so confusing, lol” versus “this movie is actually not smart and is therefore not good”.

Nolan’s movies have never actually asked you to think all that hard. For crying out loud, in Interstellar, the core concepts of the movie are explained to a literal child in-world, acting as audience proxy. The difference is that instead of over-explaining, generally things are only explained as often as they need to be. The audience is expected to pay attention and keep up. 

There’s actually no pseudo-intellectual buffoonery. Take in the concept, the idea the film wants you to understand, and just run with it. It’s a science-fiction movie, too. If the movie was proclaiming from the start that it’s one hundred percent scientifically accurate, it wouldn’t be science-fiction. If you’re not able to accept what Tenet wants from you – to not understand it, but to feel it – then you’re not going to enjoy the movie.

Tenet is the story of The Protagonist, portrayed by John David Washington, previously known for titles such as the excellent BlacKKKlansman. He’s the first Black main – as in central – character in a Nolan-directed movie. His lack of name brings him into Nolan’s tradition of characters with simple names or only titles. That goes all the way back to Nolan’s directorial debut Following, in 1998, where the main character was known only as The Young Man.

The Protagonist is a CIA agent, and early on, he’s given a new mission: the word tenet and a gesture of interlocked fingers, designed to open doors. He has to learn as he goes. He doesn’t get any more information. This is how he learns about inversion, the reversal of time, and from here, a plot to undo the world. It’s down to him to stop it, bringing with him Neil (Robert Pattinson), a dryly intelligent man who knows more than he lets on and Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), a Russian oligarch’s estranged wife.

With few friends and allies of unknown motives, Tenet is a spy thriller. It is also a heist movie, a romp back and forward in time over a two week period. None of the characters are given too many particular layers and complexities. They exist exactly as we see them in the film, and for Tenet, that works. There’s so much going on that in lieu of deep backstories and complex character development, we are instead given breathing moments between action sequences. We watch them resting, recovering, preparing – simply just ‘being’ – and in these spaces they become human.

The movie is two and a half hours of almost non-stop movement and action, taking us back and forth across the world. From Mumbai, Oslo, London, Estonia, Ukraine… It’s gratifying to see the movie never tread on American soil. The Protagonist is American whilst never centering America. Tenet – as the word and gesture given to The Protagonist, as the operation – transcends nationality, locales, time itself.

In all these set pieces, I found a surprising thread of tenderness. In retrospect, I don’t know why I was surprised. Interstellar, Nolan’s last science fiction venture, put love at the very heart of science. Love can transcend time, life, death and knowing, Interstellar said. I found Tenet saying the same in very different ways. Instead of exploring a father-daughter relationship, Tenet put The Protagonist and his relationships with Neil and Kat at its center. 

The Protagonist and Kat have a far different relationship than I was anticipating. I had braced myself for a romance, and honestly, watching Washington kiss the 6’3” Debicki wouldn’t have been the worst use of my time in 2020… but it never happens. Instead, when The Protagonist goes out of his way to help Kat, it’s because of a streak of empathy that should be absent from a man in his line of work. Instead, this empathy is established in the opening moments of the movie.

Yet whilst carefully avoiding spoilers, the relationship between The Protagonist and Neil is the more important of the two. I don’t remember the last time I saw a movie let men be tender and emotional towards each other. “If you still care,” Neil says patiently at one point, and at a later point The Protagonist tears up looking at him, proving he does.

At no point do they declare each other to be brothers. Male friendship in movies is often determinedly defined by a sharp no-homo. Someone, somewhere, once decided that the only way for men to truly express friendship is to declare each other family, by bond or by length of friendship. I would say it has ruined male friendship in cinemas since. It’s often laced with homophobia, too, with characters using familial terminology to rebuff any alternative interpretations. Note: characters declaring each other to be “like brothers” has never (not even once) stopped alternative interpretations.

So, like bracing myself for Kat and The Protagonist to fall into bed with each other, I spent the movie waiting for one of the men to say, “You’re like a brother to me.” They don’t. Instead they exchange in tender tones. Neil scolds The Protagonist for not letting him sleep, the men grasp hands triumphantly when they pull off the almost impossible and work in sync together as if they’ve known each other forever. They seek each other’s help and advice in turn. Close friendship between men should look more like this in films. If I never hear “you’re like a brother to me” again, it’ll be too soon.

As an aside: as appreciative of their friendship as I was, I would have liked it better if theirs had been the romance I was half-anticipating. It would’ve firmly dragged Nolan’s work into the 21st century, and made some certain plot beats hit like a punch to the gut. That said, I am fresh off of reading This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, so I know for a fact I’m currently hungry for more explicitly queer time travelling romances. Sue me. Tenet could’ve been a queer action movie. The fact it wasn’t doesn’t make it any less excellent. It’s just my wishful thinking.

An area where Christopher Nolan still falls down in his writing is women. I never find them particularly offensive – some whitewashing and laziness in his Batman trilogy aside – but I do find them lackluster. Elizabeth Debicki, who I recognized from her role in 2015’s Macbeth adaptation, is astounding as the maligned woman. Yet the movie seemed to never quite take her beyond the stereotype of a mother or the damsel.

She would repeatedly tell us how her son is everything. Kat is largely estranged from her husband, but he is a looming shadow over her life, controlling who she sees and what she does. He’s physically abusive when they are together. Kat motivates herself in survival moments that she doesn’t want him to touch her or doesn’t want him to win. Outside of that, she repeats lines about her son, never about herself.

Faring slightly better (if only slightly) in terms of motivations is Priya, played with poise and certainty by Dimple Kapadia. She’s tangled up in the Tenet operation too. Her knowledge is among the greatest but her motivations are among the cloudiest. We only see Priya when she’s immediately relevant as she has a life and work outside of this, and Kapadia deftly brings that to the fore. No character ever overstays their welcome. Usually, you’re left wanting to know more.

Keeping my previous comments about Kat’s character in mind, whilst the domestic abuse storyline between Kat and her husband isn’t particularly deep, or fleshed out; I have no qualms about saying that it remains satisfying to watch women retaliate against their abusers. In real life, retaliation can simply be surviving the ordeal to the best of your ability. In the movies, I never tire of seeing abused people in movies win through whatever means necessary. 

Her husband, Andrei Sator, is played by Kenneth Branagh in a role I almost didn’t recognize him in. Nerds who don’t watch as much cinema as they should (including myself) will know him better from Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, as the duplicitous Professor Lockhart. Here, he’s an imposing presence, with an outer stillness matched by extraordinary, predatory eyes. 

His Russian accent is a standard Russian movie accent, though critics might be pleased to hear that the movie has an explicit reason for why we have a Russian villain in the first place. The movie industry (and entertainment as a whole) has a longstanding tradition for continuing the America-Russia rivalry. It is arguably still lazy for Tenet to go this route, yet I found myself satisfied by what answers the movie gave me.

In Andrei’s intimidation of Kat, he’s downright chilling. Nolan uses violence and fear against Kat sparingly enough to make the point. An explosive performance from Branagh plus some powerful bombast from the music lends itself to a handful of terrifying moments. We don’t need to see every bruise, and I have more respect for the film for understanding that.

On that note: Tenet was certified a 12A in the UK, where I live. For constant readers not in the know, that means twelve-year-olds can see this movie if accompanied by an adult. The warnings for the film are as follows “moderate violence, threat, domestic abuse, infrequent strong language.” Explosions and gunfire galore happen, and one person is even shot in the head. However, clever editing, obfuscation, camera work and direction all band together to create a film that has very little blood for something so action-packed.

All the same, I probably wouldn’t let a twelve-year-old watch Tenet because of the domestic abuse storyline. There’s a conversation to be had about how so much violence can go into a movie and it still be deemed acceptable for twelve-year-olds, yet the domestic abuse – though not overt or exploitative, as I have said – was stark and terrifying in the moments that it was explicit. 

Something interesting I found out whilst writing this puts that in a new light: Tenet was originally nine seconds longer. Those nine seconds were footage cut in order for Tenet to pass as a 12A in the eyes of the British Board of Film Classification. Those nine seconds consisted of shots, from one scene, of a man kicking a woman. It’s easy to understand this as being Andrei and Kat, and highlights how close to the line Tenet was. It also highlights how much work and precision goes into making something arguably suitable for a whole family.

I don’t want to talk too much at length about the time travelling aspects of the film. I found it spectacular, in a way that for Nolan was unusually grounded. The world becomes strange, going up and down the stream of time, but this was not the enormous space sets of Interstellar or the city-bending dreamscapes of Inception. It’s at times sometimes quiet, almost missable, with Nolan not exploiting every single avenue to use it at much as possible. This works to great effect, in my opinion. When the time travel is used for big set pieces, it’s all the more stylish and effective.

A welcome relief for Tenet was to not see Hans Zimmer scoring it. I wasn’t sure whilst watching though. I felt that if it was Hans Zimmer, he was clearly trying something new. I’m a fan of Zimmer’s previous work, the Interstellar soundtrack in particular, but it was nice to know he was too busy tied up with the upcoming Dune adaptation to do Tenet. Especially since Ludwig Göransson, also known for his work on Black Panther and Venom, does such an incredible job.

It’s a driven, pulsing, frenetic score that all the same knows how to be slow. It knows when to drag. It works skillfully in time with the action on screen, almost driving it at points. Several times, the soundtrack makes that telltale distorted sound of music going in reverse, then forwards again. It’s a kind of creature unto itself that, whilst non-diegetic, feels like part of what is going on. If it’s cheesy to say that the music felt like an ever-present character, then call me a cheese ball.

A particular standout favorite from the soundtrack is “Sator”, a chilling track named for Branagh’s character. It starts off ominous and then shifts to terrifying, building to a crescendo of wheezing, gasping breaths and then the watery thump of a heartbeat getting louder by the second. It’s also very necessary to give a shout out to the end credits song – “The Plan” by Travis Scott. Not only does the track fit in seamlessly with the rest of the soundtrack – helped in part due to Göransson contributing to it – it’s also just a genuinely excellent track, which is a hard ask. Songs actually made for movies are very rarely as good as this one.

It feels almost obvious to talk about how good the film looks. Nolan’s career is awash with gorgeous movies, and Tenet doesn’t do anything different in that regard. It’s beautiful to look at and watch. The colors are rich and the practical effects are stunning. I will never explicitly prefer watching a movie shot on film over one shot in digital, but they are distinctly different aesthetics. There’s a texture to movies shot on film that adds to atmosphere.

It’s unfortunate that I find my biggest criticism of the movie is in its final long sequence. It pulls out all the stops for time travelling chaos such as buildings un-exploding then exploding again along with people running, shooting and dying in reverse. It’s a wonderful spectacle. it’s also one that isn’t quite clearly defined enough. This is perhaps the one area of the film that really could’ve used some more clarity, just to prevent making it a necessity to see the film twice. It wasn’t so much the events as just the staging of them. Identities and sides could (and should) have been made just a touch more obvious. 

With a laggy understanding of who and where, the when and the what struggle not to be lost. The end result doesn’t undercut the film as a whole, and the sequence itself is not bad by any means, but it lacks clarity. Always, unless you are deliberately trying to screw with your audience, you need as much clarity as you can afford in science fiction stories like this. Tenet does, for the most part, as long as you pay attention, but towards the end, paying attention is no longer quite enough.

Other plot beats and sequences were obvious, but never enough to detract. There’s a few particular sequences where the audience is presented with masked or unseen characters. Thanks to the limited scope of important characters, you’re likely to figure out who’s who well before the actual reveal. In a movie about time travel, though, I think the real mystery is not meant to be in the who, but in the how. The ‘how’ will satisfy some, but not all. For me, I come back time and again to the request that Tenet made at the beginning: “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.”

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Tenet

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• Beautifully shot on film
• Stellar soundtrack
• Fast paced movie

Cons

• Weakly written women
• Muddled final segment