Tenet (2020)

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Bondurant

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Went to watch it again tonight with friends, this time in a 70mm theater: impeccable image and the sound was top notch. It was a genuinely fantastic experience, way better than the first time 35mm and questionable sound mix). The action scenes are incredible, especially the
car
one.
 
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I live in Taiwan, all movies here show with Chinese subtitles. My wife had a much better understanding than I a lot of times due to reading the dialogue. English subtitles would have been great.
 
Szlia

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It was a bit gimmicky but the magic square was used sorta :

SATOR is the name of the antagonist
AREPO is the name of the unseen forger
TENET is the "fight the future" organisation
OPERA is where the opening operation took place
ROTAS is the free port company

That being said I feel it's a meh movie with good ideas. The problem is that I am not sure it's possible to make a good movie with these good ideas. The script manages to convey the overarching stakes of the plot, but things are not clear enough to make the plot work on a scene by scene basis. The delay we have as an audience to try and make sense of what is happening also totally dulls the impact of any kind of plot twist or revelation. Maybe there were ways to make things work, like having it character driven (here we have empty shells and caricatures) or making it unintelligible to the point of abstraction (a bit too artsy for such project though, Nolan has a lot of freedom but not to the point of turning a blockbuster into Last Year at Marienbad), but we'll never know for sure.

I see some people have been very impressed with the car scene and the finale, but I must say I am less convinced. It feels to me the inversion concept did not translate into action scenes as creative and impressive as one might have hoped. I mean the car scene does not hold a candle to Matrix Reloaded or even some of the Fast & Furious ! And the finale battle is advertised in the briefing as "having everything", but it's mostly a whole lot of nothing except for the building caught in the temporal crossfire.

Still, it's a mostly enjoyable watch, thanks to a nice pace, an intriguing - even if flawed - original plot, some nice lines and, as always, Elizabeth Debiki.
 
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kegkilla

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Szlia said:
It was a bit gimmicky but the magic square was used sorta :

SATOR is the name of the antagonist
AREPO is the name of the unseen forger
TENET is the "fight the future" organisation
OPERA is where the opening operation took place
ROTAS is the free port company

That being said I feel it's a meh movie with good ideas. The problem is that I am not sure it's possible to make a good movie with these good ideas. The script manages to convey the overarching stakes of the plot, but things are not clear enough to make the plot work on a scene by scene basis. The delay we have as an audience to try and make sense of what is happening also totally dulls the impact of any kind of plot twist or revelation. Maybe there were ways to make things work, like having it character driven (here we have empty shells and caricatures) or making it unintelligible to the point of abstraction (a bit too artsy for such project though, Nolan has a lot of freedom but not to the point of turning a blockbuster into Last Year at Marienbad), but we'll never know for sure.

I see some people have been very impressed with the car scene and the finale, but I must say I am less convinced. It feels to me the inversion concept did not translate into action scenes as creative and impressive as one might have hoped. I mean the car scene does not hold a candle to Matrix Reloaded or even some of the Fast & Furious ! And the finale battle is advertised in the briefing as "having everything", but it's mostly a whole lot of nothing except for the building caught in the temporal crossfire.

Still, it's a mostly enjoyable watch, thanks to a nice pace, an intriguing - even if flawed - original plot, some nice lines and, as always, Elizabeth Debiki.
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I wouldn't be surprised if Nolan had the idea for the shot in the final battle of the destroyed building coming back together then being destroyed again and decided to make a movie around it.
 
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rhinohelix

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China Bat Soup said:
I wouldn't be surprised if Nolan had the idea for the shot in the final battle of the destroyed building coming back together then being destroyed again and decided to make a movie around it.
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It's pretty clear to me he has this idea about objects moving backward in time that serve as the basis of a Bond film, and then from there he crafts/utilizes/bolts on (pick your verb depending on your affection for Nolan) other parts of his oeuvre (Memento-Keeping the audience in the dark, Inception-the various heists, etc) in service to a Spy Who Loved Me style plot.
 
Aychamo BanBan

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rhinohelix said:
It's pretty clear to me he has this idea about objects moving backward in time that serve as the basis of a Bond film, and then from there he crafts/utilizes/bolts on (pick your verb depending on your affection for Nolan) other parts of his oeuvre (Memento-Keeping the audience in the dark, Inception-the various heists, etc) in service to a Spy Who Loved Me style plot.
Click to expand...

Also the watch in Interstellar!
 
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Jozu

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Momento is truly a great movie. Guy Pierce delivered a stunning performance IMO, a single guy carried the entire movie and at no point was I bored or annoyed. I could watch that movie 5 times and still would watch again.

Perhaps tenet moves into the rewatchable category but its missing....something. It could be Washingtons tin can performance, Im not sure. He wasnt awful, but I wasnt convinced that he was this singular force who is a badass and cunning leader. The movie FORCED you to believe this, with the whole he didnt give up his team or talk when being tortured at train tracks, so we now are led to believe he has high character and resolve. Yet he displayed little of that throughout the rest of the movie. A mostly flat performance. And again, the movie tries to oversell his prowess by showing him do push ups and pull ups randomly. lol.
 
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rhinohelix

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Falxy-US said:
Also the watch in Interstellar!
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You aren't wrong; there are a LOT of elements from his other movies, more of which I think I touched on in my initial post. This is the most Nolan of all Nolan movies for better AND worse. It's so self-referential as to almost be Tarantino-esque. I still love it, though; I mean, after the single viewing, I still love that experience of watching it: It hasn't lost any of its allure in the days since with the analyses and thinking on it, although:

The Future CLIMATE CRISIS reasoning to kill the past and the closed nature of the "puzzle" of Tenet: once you figure it out, there isn't anything to envision. The story always leads back to this moment at the end, the closed time loop. Plus you know that the Future is fucked, more or less, at least enough to risk killing everything in 300? years.
Jozu said:
Momento is truly a great movie. Guy Pierce delivered a stunning performance IMO, a single guy carried the entire movie and at no point was I bored or annoyed. I could watch that movie 5 times and still would watch again.

Perhaps tenet moves into the rewatchable category but its missing....something. It could be Washingtons tin can performance, Im not sure. He wasnt awful, but I wasnt convinced that he was this singular force who is a badass and cunning leader. The movie FORCED you to believe this, with the whole he didnt give up his team or talk when being tortured at train tracks, so we now are led to believe he has high character and resolve. Yet he displayed little of that throughout the rest of the movie. A mostly flat performance. And again, the movie tries to oversell his prowess by showing him do push ups and pull ups randomly. lol.
Click to expand...

I can't say that I agree; I liked him on camera and thought he did a great job in the role; while people were saying he was no Denzel, neither was Denzel when he first started getting these kinds of roles. There are a couple of moments in this movie that I thought JDW was actually doing a Denzel impression ("Hot Sauce" and when he was getting patted down on the yacht "normally someone buys me dinner first" or something to that effect). By the end of the movie you know that The Protagonist has already moved past the beginning and is well into the stage of becoming who he will be as the head of Tenet. JDW is good actor; who knows what the future holds for him?
 
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Jozu

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One thing about JD Washington is he sounds A LOT like his father.

His voice cadence and everything. And like I said I dont think he is a BAD actor, he is just inexperienced. I thought his range was limited, which led to a flat result imo. Maybe "The Protagonist" is just a cool customer and isn't really rattled by much. Either way he will get better I think.
 
Khane

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Sanrith Descartes said:
Cuomo can suck a dick.
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I played golf in Westchester on Wednesday. Went to order some beers at the turn and the dude in the snack shack notified me we can't have alcohol unless we order a sandwich. At first I thought "Fuck this garbage golf course. What kind of bullshit is this?!". And then I was notified that it's because Cuomo required any place that serves alcohol to also serve food or else you can't serve beer because it's "unfair to bars who have to remain closed". Also found out that wings don't count as food as far as Cuomo is concerned. So glad I moved out of that garbage state.

Here in Covid Shangri-la (Connecticut) the golf courses never closed, we're allowed to pull the pin and have actual rakes we can touch and use in our bunkers to keep the course nice, and also can order whatever the fuck we want for drinks as we see fit. We're also allowed to ride together in carts. Never thought I'd say it but Lamont is killing it compared to our neighbors in MA, NY and NJ
 
Goatface

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Khane said:
And then I was notified that it's because Cuomo required any place that serves alcohol to also serve food or else you can't serve beer because it's "unfair to bars who have to remain closed". Also found out that wings don't count as food as far as Cuomo is concerned. So glad I moved out of that garbage state.
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there were a bunch of covid bar menus that got shared right after that announcement with a single wing or a sm bag popcorn for a buck, but apparently they sent inspectors out and shut down hundreds of bars
 
Sanrith Descartes

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Khane said:
I played golf in Westchester on Wednesday. Went to order some beers at the turn and the dude in the snack shack notified me we can't have alcohol unless we order a sandwich. At first I thought "Fuck this garbage golf course. What kind of bullshit is this?!". And then I was notified that it's because Cuomo required any place that serves alcohol to also serve food or else you can't serve beer because it's "unfair to bars who have to remain closed". Also found out that wings don't count as food as far as Cuomo is concerned. So glad I moved out of that garbage state.

Here in Covid Shangri-la (Connecticut) the golf courses never closed, we're allowed to pull the pin and have actual rakes we can touch and use in our bunkers to keep the course nice, and also can order whatever the fuck we want for drinks as we see fit. We're also allowed to ride together in carts. Never thought I'd say it but Lamont is killing it compared to our neighbors in MA, NY and NJ
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DOJ has officially opened an investigation into the nursing home slaughter in 5 states. NY is one of them. They already requested lots of documents. That little fucker better fry.
 
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kegkilla

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Sanrith Descartes said:
DOJ has officially opened an investigation into the nursing home slaughter in 5 states. NY is one of them. They already requested lots of documents. That little fucker better fry.
Click to expand...
What do you want to wager that nothing comes of it? Name your price
 
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Sanrith Descartes

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China Bat Soup said:
What do you want to wager that nothing comes of it? Name your price
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Depends on Nov. The state is cuck blue so he isn't going anywhere internally. He already had the Assembly rule "no outside investigation was needed". This place is such a shIthole politically.
 
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Bondurant

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Jozu said:
One thing about JD Washington is he sounds A LOT like his father.

His voice cadence and everything. And like I said I dont think he is a BAD actor, he is just inexperienced. I thought his range was limited, which led to a flat result imo. Maybe "The Protagonist" is just a cool customer and isn't really rattled by much. Either way he will get better I think.
Click to expand...

I thought the same and while I already said I'm pretty sure Tenet is a 3h15 movie crammed into the 2h30 IMAX format, I think he's not supposed to have a lot of range in the film. For us viewers he's The Protagonist, which means he's a barebones version of the character who created Tenet in the future, at the point we meet him he's merely your everyday blackops CIA agent who ultimately got caught. His character depth is built into the movie, at the same time he's both (re)living what he already experienced. It's dull when you watch his first development, but really interesting when you understand it's why he created Tenet in the future. Every action he did firsthand lead to Tenet. What we're shown of him, his actions, errors, choices are how he did Tenet.

For me Tenet has an awesome Hitchcock build narrative because it's your typical James Bond spy movie with a time paradox on its own rules. Unlike Inception where everything is contained in characters minds, Tenet actions happens, happened and are happening. The inverted entropy trope isn't there to prove a point (it doesn't haha) but to construct how characters will deal with narration, unlike most time paradox movies where narration deals with characters. Whilst this concept is nerd bait, and Tenet as a film has obvious character development and narrative flaws, watching Tenet entropy action scenes in a 70mm theater made me realize how honest and dedicated Nolan is to cinema.

Tenet has flaws, it's not the best film ever, and I think not the best Nolan, but I think it's telling an interesting story where (almost) mundane people live their lives and save the world not because they're good people, but because they've already seen how it's gonna turn into. I know Nolan likes redemption and Tenet is definitely not a neo-noir flick, it's a movie where people redeem themselves because they had the "chance" to see what's going on. It kind of resonates what's up these days.
 
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A

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Nolan's weakest movie for me. Shit audio, boring protagonist, glossed over motivations, really bad pacing issues, and a story structure that has you spending too much energy figuring out the rules of what is going on only for it to be explained after the fact, at which point your energy switches to trying to verify things are working according to those rules.

I think that more of a focus on The time elements and mythos with some nice twists (like prestige) would have made for a better movie.

Pattison was the highlight, and the concept of the pincer military stuff was neat.
 
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