Christopher Nolan's most despair-driven movie yet

 #Tenet

[Disclaimer update edit :: I saw this 6 times already -4 in IMAX- and absolutely love it. This text talks about the world where the movie takes place, how depressing it is, and thus, why it makes for great drama.

And thus...]

I saw this three times already (one in IMAX, and I don’t plan to stop there), and I’m starting to understand how I feel about this movie, and why it speaks so much to me on a level I didn’t understand intellectually at first. Spoilers Ahead, Obviously. And sorry for the bad english, maybe.

It’s no secret, there’s always a pivotal element of tragedy in Christopher Nolan’s movies. 

Someone loses a wife, a brother, a life. A world, even. But there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. Always the perspective of something to fight for. A happiness, something to look forward to, a new world, a love, a future. If not for the main protagonist, for the world. Even in Memento, there’s always a tomorrow.

Tenet is the story of characters whose lives are locked in time. What happened happened. This is true for everyone if you look backwards. You look at what you did, all your successes, all your mistakes, everything that’s lost. It happened. No going back, you are the sum of all of it. There's no being someone else here and now. Only, maybe, you might be someone else in the future if you extract yourself from this life by taking action. In an upcoming second, whichever it will be.

But for those characters, as soon as Tenet dawns on their lives, they are progressively bound to knowingly follow a precise and definite path. Because if they don’t, they won’t. Ever. The End. And neither will anybody else. What happens in their past is directly impacted by what they do in the future. No escape. No choice. No freedom. Maybe the illusion of free will. But not even if you think about it. Lying and secrets are operating procedures on a need to know basis and you don’t need to know.

Thankfully for the protagonist, what he does is his raison d’être before it is imposed on him. Before he gradually realises he has to follow his destiny, he choses to defend the people. It’s his job. His morals overtake his duty as a definite agent of whichever organisation he works for. As he choses to save the people in the Opera, as he choses to end his life to save others with a pill. Giving his life is a choice he makes willingly before it’s locked on him with no possibility of escape.

There’s a TALK of a multiverse. Maybe destroying the past won’t affect the future. Maybe the grandfather paradox creates a parallel world while the past it comes from is destroyed. But time and time again, by ACTION, the movie shows this is not the case. They can save themselves because of what they did in the airport, and they know because they met their future selves there. The Algorithm part is hidden in a car driven by the protagonist as he sees himself in it, and the past wouldn’t have been possible without the future coming back to meet it at the same time. Andrei disappears before his wife comes onboard with their son because she made it so later. It will happen because it already has.

The tragedy here, is that, again, the characters are progressively brought to this realisation with no possibility of escape. And I think seeing what would happen in the hours, days and years following the events of the movie is a slow slip towards global insanity. Because what happened, happened, Neil will always meet his fate. And is crazy enough to do so with a smile, taught by a man that already knows what will happen in the past. Christopher Nolan’s very own Kyle Reese. Except Kyle Reese believes his actions will bring him love, and his sacrifice might save the human race.

Because what happened happened, the world will always come to its own suffocating destruction, so much so that the mad minds of the brightest scientists to come will think the only way to maybe save themselves is destroying the past. Without knowing if it will destroy them too. And knowing in the back of their minds that it won’t, that they will fail, because this is where the world is because of it. The Tenet Gesture is taught to the protagonist by Neil, who knows it from the protagonist. No beginning and no end. No escape but to save the world until it has to be destroyed. As surely as Andrei would not be killed by a fake death pill issued by the CIA.

Maybe >NEIL is Max-(imiLIEN<), Kat’s son, who chose to be called in reverse as he travels to the past. To save a mom driven mad in his time because she realised what happened in the events we are shown to us only assures her that going forward in time will only lead to absolute destruction. Because as the protagonist cannot reach the future fast enough to meet the instigators of the catastrophe, he can only train people in his time. People that will, like Neil, understand from a young age where this is going. Mad enough to think that since “if there's no hope in the future and I have to die, why not go back, enjoy it before it all goes to shit !”. 

There’s no telling how much Niel goes back in time before getting back to open the door. We don’t see his face when he gets shot. We don’t see his face when, before opening the door, he goes back to the Opera to save the protagonist. Let’s not even assume he gave his backpack to somebody else, because who would know how and when to open the door ? Neil knows his mission is a suicidal one, and he gladly accepts it. Because everyone dies, whether it be in the future or the past, and sooner than later, it seems. So why not see his mom before she goes crazy ? Why not meet and save the substitute father that is the protagonist, before he gets killed by a duty driven Ives, mad that the protagonist didn’t end his life but created Tenet instead 20, 30 years from now ?

Tenet is a glimpse of a desperate and darker universe that we are only allowed to imagine. Madder that the 12 monkeys. A world where the future doesn’t even try to save the past anymore. Maybe they tried countless times, but it never worked and there’s no other alternative than to try to create a paradox, just to see what happens. And knowing that if anything changes, it’s not the past that will be destroyed. It’s the future. You might think that is the glimpse of hope. That if the future changes the past, the world can be saved. Take a new direction. But it won’t, because the change would be caused by a future that would never exist without it. Hence it is locked, like the rest. And humanity is doomed. Knowing it irrevocably is. Because everything that initiates it comes from the future. As in Terminator, a Paradox. One might even think those scientists only exist and get the technology the manipulate entropy because they are part of an old faction of Tenet, driven mad. That would be a fun thing to watch, too.

A tragedy this deep doesn’t come everyday. It’s fitting to our time, because for the last 30+ years, we’ve been hearing that if we don’t do something, it’s gonna be too late very soon. That we mostly live on old ressources because we currently use in 5 months what we currently create in a year. Because every person who attempts to make it right is brought to the ground by ten. Because the less there is, the more we have to be the ones to use it instead of letting it grow. 

And we just don’t want to accept it. 

And if we don’t believe in miracles, we know where this is going. 

Certainly not backwards, where our best chance for a brighter and sustainable future lies.

TENET (2020) - a Syncopy / Warner Bros production

Director / Writer :: Christopher Nolan

Cast :: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, Dimple Kapadia, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Himesh Patel, Michael Caine, amongst other equally talented actors.
Music :: Ludwig Göransson

Cinematography :: Hoyte Van Hoytema

Editing :: Jennifer Lame

Production design :: Nathan Crowley

Casting :: John Papsidera

The rest is on IMDB and in the end credits roll