Tenet

To be fair, this is my second watch, I wanted to wait to review this until after I saw the movie a second time. Now that I’ve done that, I will say that I’m glad I made this choice. The first time watching the movie, I became far too engrossed in the visuals and special effects (which are fantastic) to truly understand and more or less appreciate the brilliant telling of the spoiler. Also, this probably contains spoilers, but I don’t know, as I’m writing this forward, I haven’t written the rest yet. Unless I’m writing this while inverted…

It goes without saying that a lot was riding on Tenet’s shoulders for the movie industry as a whole. While the movie worked for me in a lot of ways that I’ll get into later, I don’t know how accessible it was to other movie goers. For a movie that was supposed to bring people back to the theaters (at least after it was filmed), I don’t know if it 100% succeeded at that. But, in most other ways, this movie works, at least for me. The movie is confusing, and some often dismiss this fact as an accident. Looking further, it’s quite obvious that Nolan’s entire intention was to make it the puzzle it is. In fact, looking back on the origins of the movie, the word TENET is based off of the SATOR square, an ancient Latin puzzle, which also provides information on the plot within that.

The square itself is composed of four words, SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA, and ROTAS. More importantly, however, is the fact that the square is a palindrome. No matter how it is read up, down, left right, it reads the same. Each of the words in question also relate to the plot. Sator, obviously, is the main villain. Arepo is the name of the head of the freeport art instillation (took me a while to find that one.) Tenet is… well… the title. Opera relates to the first scene which is also crucial to understanding the relationship between the protagonist and Sator. Finally, Rotas, in Latin, means to turn. Likely, this is in reference to the red room blue room scene, where inversion is done via a turning corridor. The fact that this is a palindrome also is a reference to the fact that the plot can be interpreted differently when viewed backwards. For example, Neil’s introduction, chronologically, is completely different from that of the protagonist. Speaking of Neil, I greatly appreciated the fact that, although his character was actually the one who is the stereotypical protagonist in terms of the actions done to move the plot forwards, and in the implied tasks that happen off screen, John David Washington’s character, who is more of a recruiter, is who we follow for this story.

Point is, the movie is confusing and stressful, and that isn’t for everyone. When it comes to a final score, this movie is difficult. There’s a lot I love. The visuals are perfect, along with the music. The acting is good enough to carry the movie forwards (usually), and I enjoyed picking apart the plot. But, on the other hand, it is confusing, the villain is very generic, and I didn’t feel that there was enough time to learn about the characters. I probably could have talked about each of those points in greater detail, but this paragraph truly sums up my thoughts. Overall, while I thoroughly enjoy this movie, I can’t help myself but give it a 7.5/10