Review: The Film, Tenet...

Time inversion. Temporal entropy. The Grandfather Paradox. What on Earth do these concepts mean, anyway? And why am I bringing them up in a film review? Well, this is a review of a Christopher Nolan film (The Odyssey). That should explain things, or perhaps give you an “ahh right” moment. 

Tenet (2020) is like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) with parallel timelines. Or maybe a James Bond film written and directed by Michel Gondry (The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). The pacing is relentless and the story is cerebral. You also have to pay close attention here; the exposition can get thick, twisty, perhaps borderline confusing. 

The story follows the protagonist called “The Protagonist” (John David Washington, BlacKkKlansman), a “retired” CIA operative on a unique mission to save the world. Recruited to a secret organization called Tenet, he is tasked with stopping a maniacal Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh, Henry V) from starting World War III using a concept called “time inversion”—a futuristic technology that can reverse the entropy of an object, allowing it to move in reverse through time. To define the second head-scratching term mentioned above, temporal entropy assesses how predictable, random, or dispersed events are as they change over time. 

There are plenty of other science fiction concepts used in and created for this film. “Living backward,” which is both surreal and wondrous to watch unfold on screen, is when a person in an inverted state must actually spend a length of time in that reversed condition, living through time in reverse as the outside world continues to progress forward. A “temporal pincer movement” is a strategic military approach where one group progresses forward in time and another regresses. They communicate tactical data in real-time, despite being on opposite ends of the timeline. And how about the Bootstrap Paradox? Which places the entire organization of Tenet in a causal loop: The Protagonist establishes the group in the future, recruits himself and others in the past. In other words, the organization essentially creates itself. “The Algorithm”, developed by an unidentified scientist from the future, is a disastrous scientific equation divided into nine metallic components. 

Not to leave anyone hanging, the Grandfather Paradox refers to the logical contradiction of going back in time to change history. Look at it this way, which the film does as well: if you go back in time to kill your grandfather and are successful, you wouldn’t be able to travel back to do so in the first place, since you wouldn’t exist. Talk about head-scratching. To address this, the film utilizes the concept of "what's happened, happened", showcasing a deterministic universe where time travelers cannot change the past, as their actions were always a part of it. So much for temporal familicide. 

Washington plays The Protagonist as stoic, competent, and loyal-to-a-fault. Robert Pattinson (The Batman), portrays fellow Tenet agent Neil as charismatic and warm; he’s also the perfect foil to Washington’s Protagonist. Branagh's adds menace, intensity, and theatricality to the Russian oligarch Andrei Sator. Elizabeth Debicki (The Guardians of the Galaxy) handles her own as Kat, Sator’s estranged, controlled wife, providing the film’s emotional stakes with the right amount of maternalism and determination.   

Themes of the film include fatalism versus free will, the thermodynamic arrow of time, and the ethical weight of intergenerational responsibility. For the first theme, despite the mutual influence of the future and past, characters like Neil and the Protagonist continue to embrace self-sacrifice and heroism, asserting that moral decisions are important, regardless of a pre-written timeline. For the second theme, time is intrinsically tied to entropy. Reversing physical decay acts as both a literal and metaphorical tool for challenging the idea of linear progression. For the ethical weight theme, the primary conflict stems from a future generation confronting ecological disaster. In their anger and desperation, they try to use the Algorithm to erase the past.

Critics state that there are convoluted mechanics in the film, that the time-inversion concept was so dense that the baseline espionage plot was hard to follow. Characters often disrupt the progression of scenes to explain the concepts of entropy and temporal pincer movements, rather than cultivating genuine drama. The primary character is explicitly referred to as "The Protagonist" and does not possess a conventional backstory or personal motivations, which hinders the audience's ability to relate to him. Also, the film emphasizes intricate puzzle-box mechanics rather than focusing on emotional engagement.

All in all, I recommend watching this film. And then viewing it a second time in case you missed something with the first pass. Kidding aside, this is one of Nolan’s better films. Don’t just watch it, behold it.