TENET review

For 20 years, Christopher Nolan has been churning out one amazing film after another. Nobody other than probably Quentin Tarantino is a more sure thing.

The catch is that when a bar is set so high, anything short of that bar can feel like a disappointment.

And yeah, I kinda feel disappointed by Tenet.

It's an amazing film to watch, don't get me wrong. It has all the grand spectacle of a Nolan film, with some of his most technically marvelous set pieces. It has big ideas. It has an excellent cast.

But holy shit is it tough to follow in any way. It is one of the most thoroughly confusing plots I have ever encountered. And, for at least this one film, Nolan's gift for making complicated films easy to follow eludes him. I was lost almost the entire time, so surprising from a filmmaker who has made films with complicated plots (Inception, Interstellar) and structures (Memento, Dunkirk) feel so streamlined. 

We knew from the trailers that the plot involved some sort of time travel. And it does, although I won't even attempt to describe the plot.

As usual, Nolan assembles a hell of an ensemble. The superb John David Washington is the lead, a sort of special forces guy who gets pulled into this crazy new world. Robert Pattinson is excellent as Washington's sort of partner. The statuesque Elizabeth Debicki is also quite excellent as the embattled wife of the mysterious Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh as a real sonuvabitch) behind this whole thing.

The performances and the spectacle keep you hooked. The knowledge that Nolan does as much of this stuff practically as possible makes it that much more impressive. There's a big battle scene at the end of the film that had to be a logistical nightmare to get right.

I just wish I could make sense of anything in the film. It's like I could grab onto little bits here and there, but that's it. And the movie flies, so it's not like it ever slows down to really let things sink in. (It also doesn't help that the sound mix makes some of the dialogue almost inaudible)

It's not a dealbreaker. There are some films I really like even if they confused the hell out of me. But it does tend to limit my enjoyment of them. 

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