Tenet — an inverted review and analysis.
Let me get it out of the way. Tenet is an acquired choice. Most people might and likely will wince reminiscing their experience of catching it on the big screen/small and rightfully so in my opinion. They have my full empathy. Hell I felt cheated and borderline disgusted for having risked watching it during the heart of the pandemic. It is the 2nd Nolan movie (cough *Dunkirk* cough) where I may/may not have drowsed off at some point and my friend after having loaded up more pounds than dollars (11) worth of food at BBQ nation just a few clicks prior. As my friend cozied into his insouciant nap, I kept fighting committing haram of sleeping during a Nolan movie. However, as the movie skid along and my brain started warping on itself and subconsciously the plot holes starting detracting from being cognizant of the vision in the movie I joined my friend in reposing while entropy of stuff was inverting digitally 30 feet away.
I woke up groggy trying hard to ‘don’t understand it, feel it’ the movie as the scientist lady conveniently had foreshadowed alluding to the fact that Nolan knew he had produced something for the 1% of the 1%’ers. My mind just kept looping back to ‘algorithm’, my natural understanding of it at dissonance with the movie’ definition. As the credits rolled in, thankfully, after what seemed like eternity I half sprinted out of theatre gasping for fresh air infused with the smell of beach outside the Varun IMAX theatre complex, trying to restore sense to my mind before it got inverted and crashed in on itself.
However, like most things that I don’t understand and initially hate on, I started compulsively looking at other reviews/posts which gratified my own biased perception of the movie and found vast majority of ‘critics’ seemed to be on my side which triggered the contrarian firing-pin in my head and I questioned; surely the adage ‘In Nolan, we trust’ hasn’t lost it veracity. Surely such a profound thinker and cinematographer would be trying to convey something super deep underneath that would warrant further examination and thus I started with ‘Tenet explained’ videos on YT and what followed was an avalanche of ‘Eureka’ moments spliced in with rewatchings of Tenet and then going as the protagonist did ‘whoa’.
I do still wish the movie took some extra time / had more exposition scenes where things were ‘dumbed down’ and sampler given before the main course swept us off, akin to how in almost every course we would be given sample question like 1+ 2 = 3 and in the exam it would be 3!^e&-23+12/#2 like this xkcd comic aptly captures.
To be contd…
