Christopher Nolan
Tenet

I think it is fair to offer a different perspective from the negative one already expressed in a previous review of this new film by Nolan.

Tenet is undoubtedly the most talked-about film of the year. But even without the turmoil that overtook the world, unfortunately closing movie theaters for far too long, it would have been anyway. Because a Nolan film is always an event, an event that triggers thousands of opinions and very divisive comments; opinions, alas, always far too polarized and never truly serene and objective. On one side, obviously, are the fans of the English director, who see him as a contemporary prophet, capable of competing with the greats of cinema, hence the recurring, most senseless and misplaced comparisons. On the other side, those who tend to disassemble and belittle Nolan's work at any cost, as if in the grip of a contrary reaction, rejecting it a priori, without recognizing the merits the author of Memento, The Prestige, and the Dark Knight trilogy unquestionably has. And they let themselves go to reviews that are objectively out of touch with reality.

Personally, I recognize Nolan as a director of great and undeniable talent and a filmmaker of unquestionable value, with his importance in the cinema of our era. While absolutely rejecting the excesses of mythification and exaltation by the most enthusiastic.

I am very fond of The Prestige, the aforementioned Memento, and Interstellar, and I greatly appreciated the last two, Dunkirk and indeed Tenet. Less so Inception and the reimagining trilogy of the bat.

We live in a twilight world.

Tenet is an exciting and original action and espionage film, spectacular and greatly entertaining. It is certainly also an intricate film but not difficult to follow in its main plot (undoubtedly infinitely less so compared to the Kaufmanian masterpiece I'm thinking of ending things, to draw a comparison with a current film). More complex are the nuances, the individual details, the theoretical, physical, and quantum implications, and it certainly keeps the mind well engaged. Mereghetti even provocatively speaks of the necessity of two degrees in theoretical physics to understand the film. Clearly, it is not like that, but that doesn't change that the subject matter stirs quite a bit of curiosity.

It is surely a film very consistent with Nolan's poetics on time and its relativity (the fact that the film presented itself with a palindromic title already anticipated a lot about it). Nolan, moreover, as already in Interstellar, talks about a world near its end due to climate change, and therefore the possibility of something radical on the horizon, the bomb that no one sees explode but will explode. Given that the theme, in this case, involves not a space-time journey, nor anything in DARK style (and related paradoxes, cited by the always excellent Pattinson's character, like the famous grandfather one - but moreover Interstellar already ruled out the possibility of traveling backward through wormholes), but the inversion of the direction of time's arrow, through a complex discourse on inverted entropy, I wanted to leave an informative contribution about it:

"Suppose a mad scientist creates a laboratory where time runs backward and equips it with a billiard table. In normal play, the ball hit by the cue strikes in turn the target balls arranged in a triangle and scatters them. Reversing the process, the target balls moving chaotically manage to arrange themselves into a triangle simultaneously, colliding in a way that they stop, concentrating the released energy into the ball that will hit the cue moving backward across the table.

This might be the scene a scientist would observe, peering through the window of the laboratory during a phase of play. This strange way of the balls coming together is extremely sensitive to the slightest disturbance. The smallest perturbation of a single ball's motion would compromise the splendid choreography and destroy any hope of orderly arrangement into a triangle.

The extreme sensitivity of a system where time is inverted implies that accidental influences coming from the outer universe would soon thwart the experiment. If the laboratory were completely sealed, then in principle, the time inversion would be possible.

But in practice, it's not like that. Heat and gravitational perturbations will always penetrate to some extent, affecting in a slight but fatal way what is inside the laboratory, destroying the delicate orchestration. Molecules are much more sensitive to perturbations than billiard balls. Even the occasional photon penetrating the imaginary laboratory through the observation window could be enough to produce a significant modification.

Once the disturbance element was penetrated, the effects would quickly follow one another in a ripple effect, unable to be controlled, amplifying the initial perturbation until the consequences pervade the entire laboratory, including billiard balls."

Paul Davies, The Mystery of Time (chapter X "Back in Time")

The setup staged by Nolan undoubtedly has narrative exaggerations and potential weaknesses, and clearly, the entertainment aspect remains the predominant one. No one demands that everything must necessarily be realistic, nor, certainly, is anyone expecting that while watching Tenet; although Nolan is (among other things) known for the scientific accuracy shown especially in Interstellar, and the famous, much-vaunted realism in the approach to the Batman character. This does not detract from Tenet being a filmic product of great power and charm, which I consider successful and satisfying. And that making certain recurring matters interesting and engaging for a broad audience is a merit. Perhaps stimulating debates and further explorations.

Remember, beyond its nature as a product of entertainment, and as already Villeneuve did in the splendid (far superior, it is clear, to Nolan's films) Arrival, how time is not a line - a disastrous legacy of Judeo-Christian culture, which, unfortunately, went on to consider the cyclical conception of traditional peoples as surpassed -, is always a good and right thing.

The adrenaline does not drop in level, and the audiovisual aspect always remains at high standards.

Nolan is and remains a director of high-budget blockbusters, films for a wide audience and not for a niche. Exaltation and harsh criticism are equally senseless. It is perfectly fine to recognize Tenet as a good film, even an excellent one in my opinion. Certainly not among Nolan's best, but also more interesting than others (I prefer it to Inception, for example, I like it less than Interstellar), and still always well above average in its field of expertise. That is, the cinema of entertainment.

Approved.