{"id":51547,"date":"2020-12-17T13:59:15","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T21:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/?p=51547"},"modified":"2020-12-17T13:59:16","modified_gmt":"2020-12-17T21:59:16","slug":"the-most-palindrome-thing-youll-see-all-week-tenet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/2020\/12\/17\/the-most-palindrome-thing-youll-see-all-week-tenet\/","title":{"rendered":"The most palindrome thing you’ll see all week: Tenet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Did no one explain to Christopher Nolan that the premise for Tenet is absurd?  I don’t mean that as a criticism.  I’m just being descriptive.  Plenty of solid sci-fi works from an absurd premise.  And to Nolan’s credit, it’s an exciting premise.  When it’s introduced, the undeniable pull of Tenet is “how the heck is he going to make a movie out of this?”  It almost sustains the two-and-a-half-hour running time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as that running time stretches out and contorts, it becomes increasingly clear that Nolan is taking it all very very seriously.\u00a0 He will not be fooling around.\u00a0 He will not admit there’s a fundamental but fascinating silliness to what he’s doing.\u00a0 Even the carefully practical visuals can be silly.\u00a0 But it’s a silliness in which the guy telling the joke doesn’t know it’s a joke.\u00a0 He gives it no levity, he has no sense for the cadence of a joke, he leaves off the punchline.\u00a0 It dawns on you he doesn’t realize the joke is a joke.\u00a0 He’s telling it as if it were data.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tenet belongs with someone who understands absurdity.\u00a0 Like the Coen brothers, or Charlie Kaufman, or the latest generation of Spanish language writers and directors.\u00a0 Nolan should have at least let someone explain to him the concept of the absurd, and maybe even humor.\u00a0 I can’t remember a single light-hearted moment in Tenet.\u00a0 It is ponderous with the weight of its seriousness.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider the lead actor.\u00a0 John David Washington is ponderous with the weight of his own seriousness.\u00a0 But he doesn’t have his father’s gravitas.\u00a0 Denzel Washington has built a career on the way he holds a gaze<\/a>.\u00a0 John David Washington has his father’s gaze, but none of its depth.\u00a0 He just reads as blank. Nolan’s movies need the drive of a Heath Ledger or a Matthew McConaughey.\u00a0 They need someone to inject a little passionate chaos into the meticulous plotting.\u00a0 Tenet barely offers the soothing reassurance of Michael Caine.\u00a0 It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo that feels like its there out of a sense of obligation (Nolan’s to Caine or Caine’s to Nolan?).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the spectacle in Tenet feels too tightly controlled and dispassionate.\u00a0 The airplane doesn’t break, none of the trucks flip ass-over-teakettle, the battle scene declines to bother with enemy soldiers.\u00a0 Honestly, I have no idea who we were fighting during the big battle scene.\u00a0 It’s as if someone started the Call of Duty match before anyone joined the other team.\u00a0 Sure, it’s all spectacular, cinematic, and characteristically bombastic.\u00a0 No one makes me long for an Imax screen like Nolan.\u00a0 I love how cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema captures Nolan’s precise art production, burnished colors, and clean lines.\u00a0 Can cinematography be brutalist?\u00a0 But beyond the usual Nolan spectacle, the only thing on offer in Tenet is a premise that folds in on its own lack of self-awareness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did no one explain to Christopher Nolan that the premise for Tenet is absurd?  I don’t mean that as a criticism.  I’m just being descriptive.  Plenty of solid sci-fi works from an absurd premise.  And to Nolan’s credit, it’s an exciting premise.  When it’s introduced, the undeniable pull of Tenet is “how the heck is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"\nThe most palindrome thing you'll see all week: Tenet - Quarter to Three<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.quartertothree.com\/fp\/2020\/12\/17\/the-most-palindrome-thing-youll-see-all-week-tenet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The most palindrome thing you'll see all week: Tenet - 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