Review of Tenet (2020) by Jluis_001 — 11 Sep 2020

These last few days since the reviews of this film began to circulate, there was something that stood out in many of the reviews from professional critics.

And that is that apparently because of the situation we're currently living in, Tenet became overnight the film that was going to save cinema.

That in my opinion added an unfair burden on the film and unfortunately became a dark cloud that now hangs over it.

Now if in addition to that, we add the weight that the name of Christopher Nolan involves, it goes without saying that Tenet raised expectations that it was going to be unable to satisfy, unless it was an epic masterpiece and Tenet is far from that.

It's funny that after such a huge film as Interstellar, Nolan decided to go to smaller scale with Dunkirk, which was clearly his most sober film since The Prestige, but now going back to present a huge show, I feel that Nolan, perhaps, for the first time in his career, exceeded his ambitions.

Tenet by its very nature is a complicated film. It's not a film that will break your head as a lot of the press has led the public to believe, but it is a complicated film.

But more than anything it feels like a film that gets complicated gratuitously.

I must explain clearly that this is due to its own concept, and the concept is great but what in Inception felt organic, even though it was complex, here it feels like an introduction that never succeeds.

And it's that when you need to explain so much, the emotion that gets paused, it also gets diluted.

And on the action side, I can't deny that Nolan knows his business. You only need to see the scene with which the film opens, because is simply spectacular.

In that aspect I cannot complain and that action it's one of the reasons why this film grows.

Tenet is perhaps the best mainstream film to come out this year, yes I know, we don't have many film in that regard but I mention this because that doesn't make it special in any way.

The problems, from the excessive duration, to the cartoon villain, undermine many of its aptitudes and is that ultimately, the key problem with Tenet is not that it's not going to meet the expectations of the audience, but is that cannot live up to its own concept.

I mean, even Hans Zimmer's absence is notable.

Christopher Nolan delivers an entertaining huge and ambitious film that is also, distant, cold, pretentious and self-indulgent.

His fans will defend him tooth and nail and his detractors will hate it without hesitation, but the last word will be entirely yours.

I enjoyed it but I wasn't impressed. But understand that at no point, not even with the insistence of Nolan and the studio to release it in theaters, that Tenet wasn't going, nor did it have to save the movie theater experience.

That's up to us, the moviegoers.