Just got out after seeing it for the second. Holy shit does this film works so much better a second time. A lot less confusing and just as engaging. An absolute masterpiece. Honestly could be my favorite Nolan film.
I saw it on Vox’s MAX screen - 4K projector and Atmos sound system and it looked and sounded great. The audio was exponentially better this time. The low end was booming but I could actually here more of everything else. Might come see it here again next week.
If the mix sounds bad, it’s probably the sound system but it seems the mix does push things to the limit at times.
For those who have seen it, are there any (or how many) of those euphoric, spine-tingling, hair-raising moments that I’ve come to expect from a Nolan film?
i.e. the docking scene in Interstellar, the oil scene in Dunkirk, the hallway fight and safe/kick scene in Inception just to name a few (of the many)
Obviously this is a very subjective question, but I’m just curious. I can add my thoughts to this when I see it on Monday.
I saw it for the second time today and the sound and the film were much better. The sound at the Light cinema in Cambridge Uk was shocking. I saw it today at my local cinema (not an IMAX) and it was much better. Is it out in America yet ?
For those who have seen it, are there any (or how many) of those euphoric, spine-tingling, hair-raising moments that I’ve come to expect from a Nolan film?
i.e. the docking scene in Interstellar, the oil scene in Dunkirk, the hallway fight and safe/kick scene in Inception just to name a few (of the many)
Obviously this is a very subjective question, but I’m just curious. I can add my thoughts to this when I see it on Monday.
To me, that moment in Tenet was the airplane crash heist, I think it might be my favorite sequence in the film, it's epic and just insanely badass.
Okay, so here's my spoiler-free review after seeing the film twice, once in IMAX (or more precisely: everything spoilery will be hidden behind spoiler tags) First of all: watch it in IMAX if you can. The experience is just a completely different world from what you'd get in regular theatres. But now: on to the film.
This could be long, sorry in advance.
So, this is a weird one. Everything people are saying about the film is true to an extent. To you, anything I could say would be just hearing the same things over and over again. Yes, it's spectacular, yes, it's loud, and yes, it has weaknesses. Did I enjoy it? My opinion is still changing, getting into its place (and it will take further viewings, but) at the moment... yes, I think I fucking loved it. And not just the surface of the film, I loved the depth of it, because I think - contrary to popular opinion - it has depths. Quite shocking ones, even.
At least this is what I'm getting from the film. And I don't want to be the one who reads too much into it, but it has depths. Depths that the film - surprisingly - doesn't explore in great detail. On first viewing, I thought this was a flaw. There are a few, larger revelations regarding the whole background of this plot that are mentioned, like, once - at first I really wished they delved into these themes, but I was a bit disappointed that some of it was just thrown in there like bones for dogs. But I have a feeling that this might be the same case as with the Joker in TDK: the less we know, the more we assume, and the more we assume, the more we feel its magnitude. Instead of knowing it, we just feel the seriousness of it.
This might sound like total bullshit, but for the protagonists these "background events" are unknowable, literally. And it seems like Nolan didn't want us to truly know about them. I guess he could've still explore them in greater detail, so that the moral and thematic depth of the film would be truly spectacular, but he didn't go down that way. Maybe because he is a bad filmmaker - I guess the negative reviews would go with this option. But I think he simply doesn't care for the details that much, and he trusts us that by throwing in a few relevant, but scarce information, we could build this world for ourselves. The world far beyond the plot of Tenet.
So, I think that if the thematic depth of the film would've been explored in the greatest detail possible, it would be a 3-and-a-half hour long, exhilirating masterpiece for generations to come. But, and this is a positive for me, Tenet is a simpler film than that, and I love it for that.
Weird, but as I was re-watching Inception a week ago in the theatre, it felt really heavy and somewhat tiring. Of course I've seen it twenty times before that, but it didn't feel fresh, it didn't feel "elegant". It felt like a heavy walk in knee-deep snow. And it is that. It's not bad, but for me it might've aged worse than I thought.
Tenet decides to take a chunk out of Inception and work with it. Try to make it more compact, more dense. To me, this works, and I can accept that. Others can see it, once again, as a flaw, because characters can feel one dimensional, lacking any sort of arc. But I think this would be missing the point. These characters are simple, with simple goals, put on the - explosion-ridden - chessboard. I don't mind them as they are - to me they work because they have clear motivation and very simple traits. All the rest is for us to work out. And I truly think this is good filmmaking! Yes, I even liked Kenneth Branagh's Sator. I think it's not overdone, it's not silly (well, maybe the infamous testicle line is a bit cringe, but I can live with that). It's one simple thing, and it's there, and Branagh makes it work. Pattinson, Debicki, Washington are all great, but who's surprised here? Pattinson stands out, but Washington is the true lead, don't be mistaken.
The plot is surprisingly straightforward, the characters are simple, but I still think it's impossible to get the film at the first viewing. And I thought long about whether this is a bad thing. A few hours before this I would've said that the fact that you need to see a film twice to understand it is a flaw. But... are pieces of art (even mainstream films) supposed to work for your first experience with them? I can listen to any choral piece I love or Beethoven symphony and still discover new things to this day. New revelations that put everything into a new perspective. And seeing Tenet for the second time had so many revelations that it just made the whole thing work. And I don't mind!
I think there's one central conclusion for Tenet and its story, and it's the following (HEAVY SPOILERS):
This is not a time loop, because you can actually change things. The thing Neil says at the end is that "Whatever happened, happened. But it doesn't mean you cannot act" on whatever you want. And I think it's - drumrolls - Kat who got to the point where she finally rebelled against Sator. By killing Sator she actually altered their reality. That is the arc for Kat: she decides to rise up against her tormentor. And it literally changes reality. My proof? I was inspecting closely the scene where the inverted, blue containers are taken to the bomb site. "Watch for the shockwave", says Wheeler. And if I'm not mistaken, you see Neil's Jeep backing towards the central hole - without the Protanogist and Ives attached to the car, meaning that in that reality, they never made it. Then, Kat kills Sator. And in the end, Prot. and Ives come out of the hole alive.
I think it's obvious that changing the past/future is possible - it's implied several times, and the point of the film is that it actually happens.
Okay, so that's it for now. At the moment, I think this has the chance to become top tier Nolan for me. And why wouldn't it: Nolan isn't Memento anymore, it's been 20 years since then... maybe this whole "still waiting for the experience TDK gave me" thing is wrong. This is state-of-the-art Nolan, and, to be honest, it's fucking spectacular, head-scratching, demanding, loud, and just an absolute thrillride. I'm not sure if, after this, I could still watch Inception with the same eyes, for example.
Oh, and there's a thing that's not up to the standard of the rest of the film. Scenes of exposition through dialogue. I don't have a problem with the concept (there's much less of it anyway), but a few of them, I thought, were still clunky at my 2nd viewing. And the reason isn't the writing, but more like the cinematography combined with the editing. Some of them just felt truly basic, not in a good way. There's one close to the end of the film which, I just felt, didn't fit with the overall aesthetic of the film because of its down-to-basics visual style. I can't do anything but tolerate these for the rest of times.
Oh, and the music is just fucking insanely good. I loved it - one of the best Nolan scores for me, definitely. In the top 3.
PS: And I forgot to mention the highlight for me so far: the scenes of...
inverted fist-fight between the Protagonist and we-know-who. Both directions, both scenes are so tense, it's just an absolute blast.
So I thought about it again. If JDW got a decent character introduction and change (Who is he? What does he want? What are his flaws?), I would have enjoyed Tenet more. Nolan did it right with Cooper (Interstellar) and Cobb (Inception). But failed with JDW. Yes the acting is charming. But thats just not enough. I can see many people fail to root for him. And if you don't root for the main protagonist, you can't connect emotionally with the movie.
The other big issue is the editing. I'm curious if Jennifer Lame had to many freedoom or did Nolan interfered to much? The viewer don't have much time to save the new gained informations. The viewer doesn't have time to feel the emotions. And if you don't have time, it's harder to believe the emotions. I really missed Lee Smith here.
You have 200 million dollar budget. But forget to do some basic essentials in filmmaking. Really sad. Tenet will nowhere be as popular as his previous films.
The movie is not supposed to be about emotions (in a way). It's an action movie with a very specific goal. The motivation for the characters is there. You know what they want and what they need to do in order to succeed. It's a film to provoque tension on the audience, to give some sorts of anxiety, to understand what is happening and to smash you on the face with the results.
It's almost like the latest Mad Max. The story has a purpose and it's supposed to give it to you with spectacle.
This is not a time loop, because you can actually change things. The thing Neil says at the end is that "Whatever happened, happened. But it doesn't mean you cannot act" on whatever you want. And I think it's - drumrolls - Kat who got to the point where she finally rebelled against Sator. By killing Sator she actually altered their reality. That is the arc for Kat: she decides to rise up against her tormentor. And it literally changes reality. My proof? I was inspecting closely the scene where the inverted, blue containers are taken to the bomb site. "Watch for the shockwave", says Wheeler. And if I'm not mistaken, you see Neil's Jeep backing towards the central hole - without the Protanogist and Ives attached to the car, meaning that in that reality, they never made it. Then, Kat kills Sator. And in the end, Prot. and Ives come out of the hole alive.
The bomb was always set to explode at that date (which coincides with the opera siege and the vacation in Vietnam). Sator puts the Algorithm down the hole to activate it.
So the blue team goes inverts to start right at the explosion and guide the red team who inverted before the event then went through the machine again to move forward. I saw three times and I’m still confused about Neil’s action at the end.
He’s inverted with the blue team then enters the machine and joins the red team (for simplification). He takes the car and tries to warn Ives and The Protagonist but fails. He then decides to just go to the top and pull them out. But at the same time he’s down there too and is inverted. He helps them with the lock then runs out backwards.
Okay, so here's my spoiler-free review after seeing the film twice, once in IMAX (or more precisely: everything spoilery will be hidden behind spoiler tags) First of all: watch it in IMAX if you can. The experience is just a completely different world from what you'd get in regular theatres. But now: on to the film.
This could be long, sorry in advance.
So, this is a weird one. Everything people are saying about the film is true to an extent. To you, anything I could say would be just hearing the same things over and over again. Yes, it's spectacular, yes, it's loud, and yes, it has weaknesses. Did I enjoy it? My opinion is still changing, getting into its place (and it will take further viewings, but) at the moment... yes, I think I fucking loved it. And not just the surface of the film, I loved the depth of it, because I think - contrary to popular opinion - it has depths. Quite shocking ones, even.
At least this is what I'm getting from the film. And I don't want to be the one who reads too much into it, but it has depths. Depths that the film - surprisingly - doesn't explore in great detail. On first viewing, I thought this was a flaw. There are a few, larger revelations regarding the whole background of this plot that are mentioned, like, once - at first I really wished they delved into these themes, but I was a bit disappointed that some of it was just thrown in there like bones for dogs. But I have a feeling that this might be the same case as with the Joker in TDK: the less we know, the more we assume, and the more we assume, the more we feel its magnitude. Instead of knowing it, we just feel the seriousness of it.
This might sound like total bullshit, but for the protagonists these "background events" are unknowable, literally. And it seems like Nolan didn't want us to truly know about them. I guess he could've still explore them in greater detail, so that the moral and thematic depth of the film would be truly spectacular, but he didn't go down that way. Maybe because he is a bad filmmaker - I guess the negative reviews would go with this option. But I think he simply doesn't care for the details that much, and he trusts us that by throwing in a few relevant, but scarce information, we could build this world for ourselves. The world far beyond the plot of Tenet.
So, I think that if the thematic depth of the film would've been explored in the greatest detail possible, it would be a 3-and-a-half hour long, exhilirating masterpiece for generations to come. But, and this is a positive for me, Tenet is a simpler film than that, and I love it for that.
Weird, but as I was re-watching Inception a week ago in the theatre, it felt really heavy and somewhat tiring. Of course I've seen it twenty times before that, but it didn't feel fresh, it didn't feel "elegant". It felt like a heavy walk in knee-deep snow. And it is that. It's not bad, but for me it might've aged worse than I thought.
Tenet decides to take a chunk out of Inception and work with it. Try to make it more compact, more dense. To me, this works, and I can accept that. Others can see it, once again, as a flaw, because characters can feel one dimensional, lacking any sort of arc. But I think this would be missing the point. These characters are simple, with simple goals, put on the - explosion-ridden - chessboard. I don't mind them as they are - to me they work because they have clear motivation and very simple traits. All the rest is for us to work out. And I truly think this is good filmmaking! Yes, I even liked Kenneth Branagh's Sator. I think it's not overdone, it's not silly (well, maybe the infamous testicle line is a bit cringe, but I can live with that). It's one simple thing, and it's there, and Branagh makes it work. Pattinson, Debicki, Washington are all great, but who's surprised here? Pattinson stands out, but Washington is the true lead, don't be mistaken.
The plot is surprisingly straightforward, the characters are simple, but I still think it's impossible to get the film at the first viewing. And I thought long about whether this is a bad thing. A few hours before this I would've said that the fact that you need to see a film twice to understand it is a flaw. But... are pieces of art (even mainstream films) supposed to work for your first experience with them? I can listen to any choral piece I love or Beethoven symphony and still discover new things to this day. New revelations that put everything into a new perspective. And seeing Tenet for the second time had so many revelations that it just made the whole thing work. And I don't mind!
I think there's one central conclusion for Tenet and its story, and it's the following (HEAVY SPOILERS):
This is not a time loop, because you can actually change things. The thing Neil says at the end is that "Whatever happened, happened. But it doesn't mean you cannot act" on whatever you want. And I think it's - drumrolls - Kat who got to the point where she finally rebelled against Sator. By killing Sator she actually altered their reality. That is the arc for Kat: she decides to rise up against her tormentor. And it literally changes reality. My proof? I was inspecting closely the scene where the inverted, blue containers are taken to the bomb site. "Watch for the shockwave", says Wheeler. And if I'm not mistaken, you see Neil's Jeep backing towards the central hole - without the Protanogist and Ives attached to the car, meaning that in that reality, they never made it. Then, Kat kills Sator. And in the end, Prot. and Ives come out of the hole alive.
I think it's obvious that changing the past/future is possible - it's implied several times, and the point of the film is that it actually happens.
Okay, so that's it for now. At the moment, I think this has the chance to become top tier Nolan for me. And why wouldn't it: Nolan isn't Memento anymore, it's been 20 years since then... maybe this whole "still waiting for the experience TDK gave me" thing is wrong. This is state-of-the-art Nolan, and, to be honest, it's fucking spectacular, head-scratching, demanding, loud, and just an absolute thrillride. I'm not sure if, after this, I could still watch Inception with the same eyes, for example.
Oh, and there's a thing that's not up to the standard of the rest of the film. Scenes of exposition through dialogue. I don't have a problem with the concept (there's much less of it anyway), but a few of them, I thought, were still clunky at my 2nd viewing. And the reason isn't the writing, but more like the cinematography combined with the editing. Some of them just felt truly basic, not in a good way. There's one close to the end of the film which, I just felt, didn't fit with the overall aesthetic of the film because of its down-to-basics visual style. I can't do anything but tolerate these for the rest of times.
Oh, and the music is just fucking insanely good. I loved it - one of the best Nolan scores for me, definitely. In the top 3.
PS: And I forgot to mention the highlight for me so far: the scenes of...
inverted fist-fight between the Protagonist and we-know-who. Both directions, both scenes are so tense, it's just an absolute blast.
So having thought about it for a day, here are some more general impressions and things that stood out:
- The prologue, the opening scene might be might faviorite opening scene in a Nolan movie, that thing is a beast, and all the issues I had with the prologue where not there because Nolan intenionally cut it down or used alt-takes. For example, when JDW burst into the assests room, in the prologue version there are two guys in the room with the asset and when JDW enters the second guy isn't there. This time, he shoots the shit out of that guy, and he have a dope insert shot of JDW taking the other guys gun apart. Speaking of something that made me laugh, in a very morbid way, the shot of JDW and the asset stepping on the gassed audiance was a nice touch (1 comedy point). It was a overall an excellent action scene, and very well executed.
-The fact that the plane hiest involves a forger of a Goya drawing is just something I'm so there for...love it.
-Cheese grater to the face....(2 comedy points)
- I thought the interchange between Michael Caine and JDW was fun...got chuckles (1 comedy point)
- The part that made me laugh the hardest...and might just be my fav comedy moment in any Nolan movies: it so small, but during the plane hiest, when the Swedish guy bolts out of the art vault...its that fucking close-up look on his face, he just doesn't even give a shit about getting JDW and RP out of the room, he books it right out. (10 comedy points).
-When Kenneth Branangh is about to beat Elisabeth Dipicke with his belt and starts putting his cuff-links into the belt holes....super creepy.
-When KB beats the guy to death with the gold bar...and then gives JDW the bar covered in blood...also creepy stuff.
-So many background elements with the inversion: for example: when they drive away with the ambulance, they pass themselves running with the stretcher. Rewatch is going to just really reveal more.
- One of the things that hasn't been given as much attention when talking about Nolan's movies is the constant presence of suicide. Almost ever Nolan movie has one, and this movie is full of this motif: JDW and the capsule, Sator's whole plan, and RP's sacrifice. It's a motif that has been shown it a multitude of ways. I find the contrast in Tenet between self sacrifice, and Sator's suicide/master plan to be a nice contrast. Also, isn't the TENET, the orginization/club, a sort of death cult...it's said, and hinted that to be part of Tenet means death.
