Tenet

What Tomer said (paraphrased because it was a long time ago):

Mike’s verdict:

Despite being shut away for what seems like forever, I managed to let this review slip for more than a year before finally watching the film. And all that time I was expecting to like Tenet – at least, like it enough. I figured it would be a decently entertaining big-budget-lots-of-explosions-clever-dialogue time-passer.  I didn’t know that it was going to be about time-travel, but based on the way people talked about it I figured there would be some wonky gimmick to differentiate it from all the other shiny block couch-busters.

The first few minutes reminded me of The Hurt Locker – so obviously not a good start – but the pace was keeping my attention and the total lack of exposition meant that I had to keep thinking to make sense of the visual spectacle. And visually, the film is quite good. The reversing bits are done so well that often it’s not obvious which direction the action is truly moving.

Unfortunately, that’s about the time that the whole thing falls apart.

Tenet is confusing and convoluted – and not just because of the pseudo* time-travel. Plenty of films use the grand-father paradox as a vehicle to tell a story, with great success. The paradox itself might be hard to follow (obviously, that’s how paradoxes work), but the story being told doesn’t need to be confusing too. The real issue is that, when they are not simply unintelligible, the infrequent bits of dialogue that might help the story move along are like listening to half a conversation between twins who only need to speak every fourth word. More than once the soundtrack let me know that I was supposed to feel tension, but I couldn’t figure out what the tension was about.

The worst part is that Tenet gets lost primarily because it doesn’t spend any effort on making a story that can be followed; the confusion is entirely intentional. The time-bending pieces of the story don’t actually stand up to scrutiny; and you’re not supposed to notice.  You’re supposed to be dazzled by the event, and hopefully walk away thinking the whole thing was so geniusly plotted that it must be your own fault that you can’t make sense of it.

I’m all for silly premises and suspending belief, as long as they are entertaining and tell a story. Time Lapse is equally preposterous from the time-travel point of view, but it has a relatable story. I want to be a participant in the narrative; I want to be invested in a resolution. There is a reason why Bill and Ted haven’t had a Most Serious Adventure… it just wouldn’t be fun.

6/10

* Although the direction of time is inextricably linked to the entropy of our universe, reversing entropy is not the same as reversing time.