‘Tenet’

Nolan Simultaneously Delivers a Mind-bending Plot and Cinematic Spectacle

〰️

Nolan Simultaneously Delivers a Mind-bending Plot and Cinematic Spectacle 〰️

“After one meeting, Chris said this is gonna be harrrdd. Just like that. He was right” — John David Washington

At first, this film was more confusing than my first semester of business calculus freshman year. You are seemingly dropped into the middle of a plot with a character simply named “protagonist”, played by one of my favorites — John David Washington (“JDW”). At this point, you have to remind yourself that this is a Christopher Nolan film and I’m not supposed to know everything all at once. This is the overarching style from Inception that Nolan deliberately brings to this film. He wants the audience to travel simultaneously with the “protagonist” along the plotline.

Nolan himself has stated that he wanted the audience to not just watch the film but feel like they are apart of the journey. One of the ways that he achieves this is through his notorious lack of CGI. Nolan believes that audiences can feel when they’re looking at something real or not, which he’s not wrong about. So he opted to deliver some of the most real scenes that money can buy. JDW had to learn to fight in reverse, they actually went to the country's that the story takes place in, and they found a real Boeing 747 and crashed it into a hangar. The international component of this film was not just about taking the audience to breathtaking landscapes through IMAX cameras. It was about showing the all-encompassing worldwide threat that the “protagonist” faces. Nolan weaves a human component into a seemingly chaotic race for survival to the point that you feel the risk. All of this culminates into not only a convincing storyline but an admiration for the cinematic techniques utilized to deliver the story. Allowing the audience to feel the tension, the action, and the drama all through one lens.

“A lot of these sequences that you read in the script you just think yeah would be cool in a movie. And then you get to set and they say yeah we got a 747 we’re gonna crash it into a building that’s how we’re achieving the 747 crashing into a building. It felt real because it was essentially real”- Robert Pattinson

Nolan was also very vocal about where the inspiration for this film originated. He wanted to excite the audience about an action movie in a way that he remembers when he watched them as a kid. In my opinion, he couldn’t have hit the nail on the head any harder. This is quite possibly some of Nolan’s best work, and there’s a lot to choose from. Also, from a purely logistical standpoint, the work that went in behind the scenes on this film had to be like moving a mountain. They shut down an 8 mile stretch of highway for a high-speed chase involving multiple vehicles and extras, traveled to an untold number of countries and locations, oh and did I mention they convinced an airport to let them ram a 747 into a building.

Long story long, this film is definitely one of my favorites. I know some people had trouble with the sound while watching it in theaters, which lead to them not understanding the plot. So I would recommend subtitles while you sit back and watch Nolan blow your mind.

Courtesy of Warner Bros.