My resolve finally weakened and I returned to the cinema on Saturday afternoon to see Tenet. As near as I can tell, it is only my second big-screen movie experience in 2020 - the last one was Birds of Prey back in February.
I was drawn in (or drawn out, depending on your perspective) by two factors - one is that Tenet's director, Christopher Nolan, is one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, and has been since Memento (2000).
The other was an email from The Rare Hipster who had seen it at a midday matinee earlier this week and who attached a picture showing the three other masked people at the screening.
So this review will include two elements: a spoiler-free review of the movie itself, and a quick look at how reckless it may or not be to go to a movie theatre during a global pandemic.
Tenet is a movie I have been looking forward to for quite some time - I am enough of a fan that I began periodically shadowing Nolan's IMDb account for news of his next project about a month after watching Dunkirk in 2017. When the teaser was released last year, I was intrigued, and also pleased at how parsimonious the marketers were with story details. The full trailer also kept its cards very close to its (presumably stylish and well-cut) vest, and made Tenet probably my most eagerly anticipated movie of 2020. And keep in mind, this is in a year with two Marvel movies and a Bond film on the schedule!
Then the pandemic hit, and I was certain I would end up seeing Tenet on the small screen at home instead of in IMAX as I had originally planned, but yesterday I relented.
Was it worth it? Yes. Nolan's skill at stitching together great scene with wonderful actors using tense dialogue and deft camerawork is matched only by his unmatched ability to stage brilliantly imaginative set-pieces in scales ranging from the intimate to the epic, and both of those traits are on fine display in Tenet. It is worth seeing this on as big a screen as you can manage.
Is it a great movie? Possibly...I can't really say for sure yet.
Even by Nolan's standards, Tenet is a complex film that demands the attention of its audience. I was happy to give it, but still found myself baffled at places, a state that was not aided by the film's breakneck pace.
The reason for the complexity is that there are objects (and at times, people) moving backwards through time in this film. I know, I know, time travel is a pretty fire which has warmed many a storyteller and burned many more. Nolan establishes his rules fairly early on and embellishes them with a tidy bit of exposition in the second act, confirming some things canny viewers may already have sussed out and introducing a few more.
One criticism I feel compelled to share is my disappointment with the sound mixing. Despite the clarity of the sound effects and a brilliant score by Black Panther's Ludwig Goransson, I had to struggle to make out much of the dialogue. This may be due to modern techniques and a desire to incorporate too much live sound or ambient effects, or it could be an intentional ploy by Nolan to force viewers to focus their attention. Whatever the reason, impeded both my enjoyment and understanding of this film.
Having said that though, Tenet is still well worth watching, and even begs the question: how necessary to appreciation is understanding? At multiple points in the film I simply stopped trying to anticipate things and focused instead on the moment at hand, and in almost every case I felt sufficiently up to speed by the time the next scene began.
As an American intelligence agent in a (temporal) Cold War, John David Washington is the real deal. I loved him in Black KKKlansman, but he is given far more room to work here. He brings that balance of charm, menace, grim humour and raw physicality as effectively as any actor who has carried the 007 mantle, and looks just as much at home in tactical gear and body armour as he does in a sharp suit.
Kenneth Branagh deserves special mention here as well for playing a brutal Russian arms dealer and oligarch so far out of his regular type that it feels at times the performance feels like mo-cap done with a Branagh suit. Robert Pattinson is likewise both physically capable and smart as a fellow agent and has increased my already-high anticipation of next year's The Batman movie.
All in all, Tenet is a movie that deserves your attention. It's plot, though Byzantine in places, never relies on stupid people to advance, although you can count on desperate or ruthless people to monkey wrench it periodically. Its big ideas are a feast for the mind and the visuals, as always, do the same for the eyes, even if it doesn't reward you with a complete understanding and appreciation of what you've seen at first blush. Many of Nolan's films become even better on repeated viewings, and I am confident this one will be no exception.
But those second screenings will have to wait until I get the BluRay and can turn on the subtitles.
To the second point now, and whether seeing a movie during COVID is the act of a madman.
Having already committed myself, my answer is probably biased, but no, I don't think so. The theatre capacity was greatly reduced (as you can see in the graphic below), all staff and patrons are masked (when not eating popcorn). and we are assured of vigorous sanitization between screenings.
Interesting about seeing a film in Edmonton vs here in Japan. In my local cinema, where I also saw Tenet, we have assigned seating, and there is no more sitting together with that special person. We are seated a minimum of one seat away from each other. (We choose our own seats at a machine outside, so can sit close to each other, but the seats are blocked off physically and on the machine so no cheating!) Masks are to be worn unless you are eating popcorn/drinking something. Temperatures are taken when you go into the screening area and the staff no longer takes the tickets to rip nor do they have blankets available. They do have extra air flowing through the cinema which they take great pains to explain before the movie starts. Also, in the lobby, there was alcohol for hands and tissues so you could use the alcohol to wipe down your seat before you sat down, although I believe the staff also does that between shows.
ReplyDeleteEnglish films don't have huge audiences usually (small rural city) but there were probably 30 or 40 people in the cinema. I felt safe going as the numbers are low here.