Christopher Nolan’s Tenet: Best enjoyed on the big screen

Tenet is an enthralling big-screen experience with eye-popping action effects. (Photo: Warner Bros)

It is no surprise that Tenet was referred to by many as Inception 2. It has a lot of similarities with the 2010 sci-fi thriller — the heist elements, an ensemble cast, twisty plot, a knotty central concept that drives the plot (inception in Inception and inversion in Tenet), and so on. However, Inception had an emotional core that Tenet, to a certain extent, lacks. The characters are paper thin.

That is not to say that Tenet is a bad movie. I believe Tenet is one of the best movies I have seen this year so far. And if you can, please go watch it on the biggest screen possible. More than any movie in recent memory, it offers spectacle on a gargantuan scale. It is a perfectly-paced, smartly crafted thriller with stunning special effects and a thumping soundtrack. And yet, if you want to be emotionally involved with this story and its characters, you are going to be disappointed.

It is hard to talk about Tenet without spoiling much, but I will try.

John David Washington’s Protagonist (for that is what he is called) is a CIA agent who is part of an undercover operation at a performance in Kyiv opera house in Ukraine. He is captured and swallows a cyanide pill, only to wake up very much alive. Turns out, the pill was fake and a CIA officer tells him he passed the test and he is ready to become an operative of Tenet, a secret organisation that is trying to prevent the destruction of the world by nefarious forces from the future.

Nolan, as we all know, likes to play with time in the cinema he makes. Whether it is time-travel in Interstellar, how time slows down in dreams, the unusual narrative structure of Dunkirk; time as a concept is a recurring theme in his work.

Tenet also deals with time in a way. The said antagonistic forces that are pulling the strings from the future have learned how to ‘invert’ things. That is not time-travel per se, but it is more about making their entropy run backwards, making them retrace their steps.

Like many of his films, Nolan is reluctant to fully explain everything and for the most part that helps you to get immersed into this world of sci-fi espionage. It is all suitably complex and yet one understands enough to find the story engaging. The story dangles the word Tenet in front of the Protagonist and us for a long time until it begins to dole out information around the end of the first half.

Also Read | Tenet review: Christopher Nolan’s film is underwhelming and confusing | Every Christopher Nolan film ranked: Inception, The Dark Knight, Memento and more

Sadly, the way Tenet explains stuff is clunky, and Nolan’s preference for exposition dialogue still does not impress. For a film that is stuffed with some superb action sequences, expository scenes in Tenet instantly pull you out of the experience.

Tenet is one of the best action films in quite a while. (Photo: Warner Bros)

Speaking of action, it must be said Tenet is one of the best action films in quite a while. First, action in Tenet gives off an authentic air that is missing from CGI whirlwinds that most action movies today are. Being a Nolan film, there is little to no CGI, and nearly everything you see on the screen was shot as is, and that includes blowing up the actual Boeing 747 in that scene. It might sound wasteful, but it undoubtedly looks great.