๐ง๐ฒ๐ป๐ฒ๐ ๐ฅ๐ฒ๐๐ถ๐ฒ๐: ๐ก๐ผ๐น๐ฎ๐ป ๐ถ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐ฟ๐น๐ฑ ๐ถ๐ป ๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐ป๐ฒ๐ ๐ณ๐ถ๐น๐บ, ๐ฐ๐ผ๐๐น๐ฑ ๐ฏ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ๐น๐ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฒ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ณ๐ถ๐น๐บ ๐ถ๐๐๐ฒ๐น๐ณ.
A mind-bending experience that is exhilarating and tiring in equal parts, works in spurts and not as a whole
The supposed โeventโ film of the year, begins, strolls, ends like one but, it felt like an event with a lot of style, a lot to brag about from the outside. Substance? Not so much!
And, after the event ended, I was like did I really need to attend the event? The event didnโt feel necessary but it did have its moments and a lot of it goes to its relentless edgy soundtrack by Ludwig Gรถransson and the protagonist, called the protagonist, played by an in-form John David Washington.
We meet our unnamed protagonist fighting out in a CIA operation which the film opens with, in a packed auditorium of Kyiv Opera House. During this operation, he is aided by an unknown maskman, who appears and disappears in a fraction of a second. He does something out of the ordinary, which leaves the protagonist wondering with a โHuh?โ as the bullet emerges out of the wood of a nearby seat. All this happened when he originally was saving hundreds of civilians from death.
Now, if you have watched the trailers, you know the film is about inversion, a phenomenon that reverses an objectโs entropy against time.
After being captured and tortured, the protagonist is fed with a cyanide capsule, which he survives, which in the end was his test โ his body systemโs resistance to poison and come out alive.
He is then taken to a remote facility, where a scientist tells him about the concept on inversion. Here the protagonist is playing both him and the audience in trying to get what exactly is happening with him.
He gets to know about the inverted entropy of the objects, through the bullets, which are manufactured somewhere in the future and can wipe out the past. So, he is not firing the bullets, he is catching them from already fired shots, that he experienced in the Opera House.
So, in his new mission, he is introduced to a mysterious fixer, Neil, (an enjoyable Robert Pattinson), who has masters in Physics, then to an arms dealer in Mumbai, Priya Singh (Dimple Kapadia), who looks after the the family business instead of her husband, and they track it to a villainous Ukrainian oligarch, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh, in another parodied Russian accent, in an uninspired performance), to whom they can only access through his estranged wife, Katherine Barnes or Kat, (Elizabeth Debicki), who is running for her and her sonโs life and wants to break free.
And, both the protagonist and Neil are on a mission to save the world from apparently, World War III, so stakes are definitely high. But, when these huge stakes meet a brainy screenplay where the people and everything around them is moving disorderly, as opposed to the mundane forward movement.
The masterful creator of โInceptionโ and โInterstellerโ โ Christopher Nolan โ has in the past played with and around time. So, this is nothing new for him, but whatโs new is the weariness of it all.
The film is ambitious, no doubt, the technicality, VFX, music, all feel like we are experiencing a truly different kind of cinema. Which it is. However, all this technical and conceptual brilliance donโt hold when the constant to-and-fro of the screenplay along with the inversion gets confusing, and tiring to keep up.
The hamy villain, doesnโt help either. While, Katโs constant sorrow about she wanting to be with her son at the end of it all feels superficial, when they donโt even know if they will even survive.
The premise here tried to become the protagonist, which doesnโt ring effective when itโs your USP. Nolanโs self-indulgence was pretty evident in many a scenes when inversion, past, present and future is mentioned again and again, which puts off me as a viewer from the main story of the protagonistโs journey.
However, thereโs enough to enjoy as well here, albeit a running time of clocking 150 minutes. After first 100 minutes, you start looking at your watch, which is not a nice thing, given the film you are watching, is inverting the time itself.
Pattinson as Neil was my favourite of the lot. It seemed as if he was just happy to be in Nolanโs world and just enjoying himself. Debicki, although sincere, I felt was given a very surface level role, where the writing failed a gritty performance. Dimple Kapadia as the arms dealer, and the head of the Tenet project, so to say, was serviceable.
John David Washington, gets the meatiest of the part, being the protagonist. His every expression, smile, facial movement is on point. Iโm afraid to use it again but Washington was just inch-perfect sincere in his role. Leading a Nolan film, he let his silences do the talking and his scenes with Pattinson and Debicki were a treat to watch. Maybe, itโs him or both of them, he fed of their energies so well, they looked like a team from the start.
Thus, โTenetโ is not Nolanโs best work by any stretch of imagination, but a worthy addition to his movies about playing with time, at a time, where no one knows what futureโs going to be like.
Tenet releases in Theatres today.
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