Christopher Nolan is one of the few living directors whose films I will try to see at the cinema, much as I hate: a) spending money on anything, and b) leaving my cell. In Covidemia I no longer need to go anywhere, since everything is now illegal, and so I streamed it, which is of course not illegal at all. Watching Tenet on my laptop was very different to a typical cinema outing: I ended up watching it staggered over three evenings as my energy is greatly depleted by my pointless, dispiriting, badly-paid labour, leaving me little concentration for films or books; however, I was able to find a version with subtitles for the first 2 evenings, which proved invaluable – for the last session I was doomed to watch it without subs and frequently understood nothing, not even what language they were speaking. 

The unclear audio irritates, in moderation; by the third evening I’d given up on understanding or really liking the film and was watching out of pure bloodymindedness; I didn’t care how it ended, presuming that it would make no sense anyway. The film’s entire premise is “nothing will make sense, don’t even try to get it” and the almost inaudible dialogue is presumably part of that; either that, or Nolan is pushing for foreign language films by getting audiences used to subtitles. 

A shame, as the dialogue I understood via subtitles was often good, e.g. the unnamed protagonist holding a gun to an Indian arms dealer’s head, inquiring about a type of ammunition:

Arms dealer: Why should I know who supplied it?

Protagonist: The combination of metals is unique to India, If it’s from India it’s from you.

Arms dealer: Fine assumption.

Protagonist: Deduction.

Arms dealer: Deduction then. Look, my friend. Guns are never conducive to a productive negotiation.

Protagonist: I’m not the man they send in to negotiate. Or the man they send to make deals. But I am the man people talk to.

The protagonist, played by John David Washington, is a black guy working I think for the CIA but unlike the real CIA he doesn’t assassinate conservative thinkers and overthrow democratically-elected governments during the day and kick back at night with child porn and cocaine; he seems to be some manner of CIA paramilitary who ends up investigating ammunition that is “inverted”, travelling backwards in time, and this opens a whole can of worms about time travel and the future reaching back into the past. After that it gets complicated.

In a sense it’s a temporal version of Inception’s complication, and I was happily resigned to not understanding everything. However, where Inception’s human element is comprehensible & interesting, I couldn’t fully engage with Tenet’s characters & motivation. 

The casting is one problem. It’s mostly good but just a little bit off. I thought Washington was a good actor and casting a negro in an otherwise white film works well – he stands out, like a black king on a board of white pieces. He has some great moments, e.g. when some Russian bodyguards are going to take him to a restaurant kitchen for a beatdown, Washington radiates contained rage and the desire to inflict violence; and when he glares, it’s not some hood thug’s belligerence, it’s rather the controlled intensity of the professional. He’s a likeable and fine actor, the problem is when the film becomes, as it were philosophical, he just looks like a typical actor (i.e. not very intelligent) trying to look intelligent. There’s a particularly flat scene between Washington and an Indian woman called Priya, where she’s trying to explain the film’s temporal dynamics, and neither character seem to really inhabit the concepts; it really just feels like they’re repeating their lines and trying to emote. Of course it is difficult for an actor – most of whom are dumb – to simulate that moment of intellectual comprehension, when as it were a mental landscape opens up before one; Jeremy Brett could do it reliably well as Sherlock Holmes

and William Peterson manages it in the classic “you’ve seen these tapes” scene in Manhunter. 

I didn’t feel that frisson of intellectual discovery & comprehension in Tenet, and I think it’s because of the casting – none of the actors could simulate real intelligence.

Another problem, as regards the human element, is the, I suppose, “love interest”, played by Elizabeth Debicki: she has a repellent coldness and self-satisfaction to her, so whenever anyone turned their back to her, I expected her to whip out a stiletto and attack like a shrieking Italian. She just looks like a snake, and indeed her character acts like one throughout. I often find Nolan’s female leads unlikeable at best, repulsive at worst. Debicki evinces a clear facial bifurcation, that is, one side of her face is doing something very different to the other:

Serial killer stuff. I found her not merely unlikeable but repellent; every time her character appeared all of my Psycho Woman alarms went off, which is probably due to Debicki, not the character or direction, at least judging from a quick Google Image search of her in other roles & public appearances.

The rest of the cast is however very good, Kenneth Branagh is meaty & horrifying as a Russian villain, who as a Russian villain should know better than to trust any woman played by Elizabeth Debicki; and Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame is superb, nervy, seedy, knowing, inhabiting various roles in one character.

The soundtrack (by  Ludwig Göransson) is also fitting, a weird syncopated rush as if time is folded upon itself in micro-packets of sequenced alteration.

The visuals, as ever with Nolan, are great, fantastical, unreal; his London is the London of most Hollywood films: clean, white, Georgian (in reality the city looks more like Mogadishu today). It’s a film one can really enjoy, I think so long as one knows what to enjoy: if I watch it again I’ll try to ignore Elizabeth Debicki’s repulsive face, and definitely have subtitles, and let my mind roam free over the fields of time and impossibility.