Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
TheKieslowskiHaze
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2020 10:37 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#176 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Sat Aug 22, 2020 12:24 pm

The final trailer, released on youtube last night (and a bit more spoiler-y than other ones), has me more excited than previous trailers.

I sympathize with those feeling some Nolan fatigue. I feel it too. What makes someone a great artist, and whether or not Nolan is one, is an exhausting discussion. But he's definitely good at making action movies, and Tenet looks like a good action movie. I'm up for some fun, depending on the risk of my catching COVID at the AMC.

User avatar
Never Cursed
Such is life on board the Redoutable
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2016 12:22 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#177 Post by Never Cursed » Mon Aug 24, 2020 9:18 pm

Plot summaries for this have shown up on Wikipedia and other fairly common info or social media sites, so be even more careful if you still want to see this unspoiled

User avatar
Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#178 Post by Roscoe » Tue Aug 25, 2020 9:30 am

Alas, "fun" is the last thing I've come to expect from Christopher Nolan.

User avatar
TheKieslowskiHaze
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2020 10:37 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#179 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:19 am

Roscoe wrote:
Tue Aug 25, 2020 9:30 am
Alas, "fun" is the last thing I've come to expect from Christopher Nolan.
He makes good action movies. They're exciting.

User avatar
Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#180 Post by Roscoe » Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:36 am

Mileage is gonna vary. I've only found Nolan's stuff to be too stilted and cold for anything as base as "fun" or "excitement" to actually happen.

User avatar
Pavel
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2020 2:41 pm

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#181 Post by Pavel » Wed Aug 26, 2020 12:06 pm

I just saw it and pretty much guarantee that everyone knows what their reaction to this'll be — if you think Inception or Interstellar are works of unparalleled genius, you're guaranteed to, at the very least, like this; if you think spectacle is not Nolan's forte and find his increasing trend toward gigantism concerning... well, here people are trying to prevent a time-traveling apocalypse. I enjoyed it immensely on an entirely superficial level, despite it containing most everything I dislike in post-Prestige Nolan. Maybe it was just seeing a film in theaters again. I'll probably watch it again soon.

Also, just so you know the extent to which this is a Nolan film — the soundtrack goes BRMMMM in the very first shot.

User avatar
Slaphappy
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:08 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#182 Post by Slaphappy » Wed Aug 26, 2020 3:39 pm

Roscoe wrote:
Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:36 am
Mileage is gonna vary. I've only found Nolan's stuff to be too stilted and cold for anything as base as "fun" or "excitement" to actually happen.
Yeah. If you want to blow people's minds, it would help to be charming and fun as well as talented.
SpoilerShow
Image
Tenet is not improvement on those aspects.

User avatar
Aunt Peg
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 5:30 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#183 Post by Aunt Peg » Thu Aug 27, 2020 5:20 am

I was bored out of my mind by this. Got to a point where I gave up following it and just went along for the ride in relation to some of the set pieces.

Calvin
Joined: Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:12 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#184 Post by Calvin » Thu Aug 27, 2020 7:32 am

I saw this yesterday when cinemas re-opened in Scotland, and was not impressed. I felt it had all of the negatives of Inception - being exposition-heavy and taking itself far too seriously - without any of the positives, namely actually having an interesting idea at the heart of it.
SpoilerShow
Time travel is hardly a new idea to cinema, but this has the concept of the future wanting to essentially live backwards through time as they've ran out of natural resources owing to climate change and what not. This obviously makes no sense and the film directly mentions the Grandfather paradox but shrugs it off. I'm certainly not in the business of demanding scientific accuracy from films, but if its going to take itself so seriously then it's asking to be read in a serious way and it feels like preposterous nonsense all the way through

User avatar
willoneill
Joined: Wed Mar 18, 2009 10:10 am
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#185 Post by willoneill » Thu Aug 27, 2020 9:34 am

Saw Tenet last night (in an auditorium with just 5 other people). I'm actually quite a big fan of Nolan's movies usually, though probably wouldn't qualify as a pure fanboy since I actively dislike Memento. And Tenet is also on the lower end of the Nolan scale for me. Some thoughts in spoilers:
SpoilerShow
In simplistic terms I would describe this as Nolan making a James Bond film mixed with Primer, and a bit of his Memento structure. I say Primer because in terms of the characters' "time travel" it seemed me like military scientists got a hold of those boxes from Primer and amped them up a bit. I also found the film far more confusing than any other Nolan film (I've actually never had a problem following his films before). I chalk this up to two things: 1. unlike other commenters, I thought there was far less exposition than something like Inception, and I found I was always playing catch-up; and 2. a lot of dialogue (pretty much everyone except for John David Washington) was unintelligible. I'm serious, I understood every word Bane said in TDKR, and I couldn't make out half of this film. I'm honestly looking forward to watching it at home with subtitles. My other major issue with the film is the final set piece, in the abandoned Soviet city, which is a huge action set piece filled with soldiers who are battling ... I have no idea??? ... honestly, I have no idea what the point of it was other than as a set piece.

On the plus side, I really liked most of the performances, with the exception of Branagh, who has biggest scenery-chewing performance ever in a Nolan film (and Nolan once cast Al Pacino and Robin Williams in the same film!). Branagh was downright cartoonish in this film. JDW, on the other hand, gives probably the loosest, funnest Nolan performance yet. Overall, it's better than most action films, but doesn't hold a candle to Nolan's top work.

User avatar
eerik
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 4:53 pm
Location: Estonia

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#186 Post by eerik » Thu Aug 27, 2020 10:19 am

Good to know that Tallinn can double not only as Kyiv, but also as Oslo.

As for the film itself, I am going to copy Pavel's choice of words in saying that my enjoyment of it was completely superficial. I just have to adore Nolan's enthusiasm of doing these big original blockbusters on location, in camera, during an era of endless sequels and "expanded universes" that are all filmed on a green screen in some warehouse. That being said, I did not care much for the espionage storyline, I did not care for the Washington-Pattinson bromance, I did not care for the domestic abuse, and I did not care for the oddly timed and misplaced humour of the film.

User avatar
willoneill
Joined: Wed Mar 18, 2009 10:10 am
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#187 Post by willoneill » Thu Aug 27, 2020 11:02 am

Tallinn looked quite lovely; is that where you live eerik?

User avatar
eerik
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 4:53 pm
Location: Estonia

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#188 Post by eerik » Thu Aug 27, 2020 12:14 pm

willoneill wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 11:02 am
Tallinn looked quite lovely; is that where you live eerik?
Yes, one of the shooting locations is about a five minute walk away from my apartment (although I did not see it / could not identify those scenes in the film), the main road where the car chase sequence was filmed is about 15 minute walk away (though the filming took place a bit further away along the road). The cinema I saw it in is actually right where the chase sequence begins, so I was hoping to see the building in the film, but alas, it was shot from the side of the cinema facing the other direction. After the screening I walked by another location used in the film. (Tallinn is really small place, I guess.) Nolan chose mostly old, ugly, semi-abandoned places for Tenet. Something we would consider a "Soviet legacy". Locals would never choose those locations to show off Tallinn. It was strange seeing my hometown on a big screen that way. Oh, and the screenings over here are preceeded by a 30-second thank you message from Nolan to "the people of Tallinn".

User avatar
Slaphappy
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:08 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#189 Post by Slaphappy » Thu Aug 27, 2020 1:17 pm

eerik wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 12:14 pm
willoneill wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 11:02 am
Tallinn looked quite lovely; is that where you live eerik?
Yes, one of the shooting locations is about a five minute walk away from my apartment (although I did not see it / could not identify those scenes in the film), the main road where the car chase sequence was filmed is about 15 minute walk away (though the filming took place a bit further away along the road). The cinema I saw it in is actually right where the chase sequence begins, so I was hoping to see the building in the film, but alas, it was shot from the side of the cinema facing the other direction. After the screening I walked by another location used in the film. (Tallinn is really small place, I guess.) Nolan chose mostly old, ugly, semi-abandoned places for Tenet. Something we would consider a "Soviet legacy". Locals would never choose those locations to show off Tallinn. It was strange seeing my hometown on a big screen that way. Oh, and the screenings over here are preceeded by a 30-second thank you message from Nolan to "the people of Tallinn".
Hah, I wasn’t quite sure if the Tallinn sequences were actually filmed over there as it looked like nothing I knew.

Btw, did anyone else notice, that two of the ”Iclandic”/”Norwegian” security guys who got taken out were slightly smiling after falling unconsious? Like they were playing along.

User avatar
colinr0380
Joined: Mon Nov 08, 2004 4:30 pm
Location: Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, UK

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#190 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Aug 27, 2020 3:52 pm

eerik wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 12:14 pm
willoneill wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 11:02 am
Tallinn looked quite lovely; is that where you live eerik?
Yes, one of the shooting locations is about a five minute walk away from my apartment (although I did not see it / could not identify those scenes in the film), the main road where the car chase sequence was filmed is about 15 minute walk away (though the filming took place a bit further away along the road). The cinema I saw it in is actually right where the chase sequence begins, so I was hoping to see the building in the film, but alas, it was shot from the side of the cinema facing the other direction. After the screening I walked by another location used in the film. (Tallinn is really small place, I guess.) Nolan chose mostly old, ugly, semi-abandoned places for Tenet. Something we would consider a "Soviet legacy". Locals would never choose those locations to show off Tallinn. It was strange seeing my hometown on a big screen that way. Oh, and the screenings over here are preceeded by a 30-second thank you message from Nolan to "the people of Tallinn".
I cannot let this opportunity pass by, so how successful is Darkness in Tallinn in portraying your city eerik?

black&huge
Joined: Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:35 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#191 Post by black&huge » Thu Aug 27, 2020 4:01 pm

sorry to do this here but I am curious to know the estimated screentime/role of one actor in the film:
SpoilerShow
Fiona Dourif
So whoever has seen it that wants to comment if you can remember

User avatar
Apperson
Joined: Mon Dec 05, 2016 3:47 pm
Location: Oxfordshire, UK

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#192 Post by Apperson » Thu Aug 27, 2020 4:34 pm

black&huge wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 4:01 pm
sorry to do this here but I am curious to know the estimated screentime/role of one actor in the film:
SpoilerShow
Fiona Dourif
So whoever has seen it that wants to comment if you can remember
As far as I can recall
SpoilerShow
She plays a platoon leader for Blue Squad in the climax. I can't even remember if she died or not so take from that what you will.

User avatar
Pavel
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2020 2:41 pm

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#193 Post by Pavel » Thu Aug 27, 2020 4:39 pm

I genuinely cannot remember her being in the movie, and I saw it yesterday, so I guess my answer is: not much screentime.

User avatar
therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#194 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Aug 27, 2020 4:42 pm

Meanwhile Ty Burr of the Boston Globe has refused to review the movie and written an article about how he's not willing to die to see this.

User avatar
eerik
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 4:53 pm
Location: Estonia

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#195 Post by eerik » Thu Aug 27, 2020 5:19 pm

colinr0380 wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 3:52 pm
I cannot let this opportunity pass by, so how successful is Darkness in Tallinn in portraying your city eerik?
That film is from a very unique time in our history. Right after the collapse of the Soviet system, even the Russian military forces had not left yet for another year. "Cowboy capitalism" was taking ahold, crime was skyrocketing, everything was in rapid change. Filmmaking and exhibiting collapsed completely, and did not get any better for the next 15 years or so. I'm not sure Darkness was even shown here in the 90s, it was (re-)released in 2008, which is the only time I've seen it, unfortunately. Tallinn definitely plays a big role in the film, and I remember the film itself being one of the most "stylish" Estonian films I had seen up to that point. Though, as I mentioned, the period between the films initial completion in 1993 and its rerelease in 2008 was a terrible period for film and cinema in Estonia, so there wasn't much comparison.

Coming back to Tenet, I don't think the location choice of Tallinn is important at all. For the plot it just needed to be somewhere between Ukraine and Norway, the rest is down to lobbying by Estonian Film Institute, recently introduced tax rebate program, and availability of suitable shooting locations. Makes it easier for people who have never even heard of Estonia before watching Tenet, I guess. If I remember correctly, Nolan even said they were looking for lesser known places.

PS! Mark Cousins was wrong about the name/word Toivo meaning hope in Estonian. It means hope in Finnish, in Estonian it is just a name. Though it was still a very deliberate and meaningful choice by the Finnish director.

Bonus: there's a short scene in Darkness filmed on the same road as the chase in Tenet, albeit many kilometers away from the Tenet scene.

User avatar
eerik
Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2009 4:53 pm
Location: Estonia

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#196 Post by eerik » Wed Sep 02, 2020 1:31 pm

Biggest opening weekend ever in Estonia: 53,194 tickets sold, grossing €377,046

Expected as it was partly filmed here, but still a bit surprising considering the pandemic. 5-day "weekend" certainly helped.

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#197 Post by tenia » Wed Sep 02, 2020 2:31 pm

The figures in France are also analysed in a very lenient fashion : week end for Warner France is apparently 5 days plus 2 days of premiere.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#198 Post by MichaelB » Wed Sep 02, 2020 2:49 pm

Slaphappy wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 1:17 pm
Hah, I wasn’t quite sure if the Tallinn sequences were actually filmed over there as it looked like nothing I knew.
The first half of my honeymoon was in the picturesque part of Tallinn, and then we took a bus to St Petersburg - and I remember miles and miles of disconcertingly ugly concrete housing, one building bearing some impressively large graffiti that read (in English) "FUCK OFF SOVIET ARMY".

As for Tenet, it's mostly evaporated from my mind already, and I saw it over the weekend in IMAX.

User avatar
therewillbeblus
Joined: Tue Dec 22, 2015 3:40 pm

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#199 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Sep 02, 2020 10:49 pm

I made an impulsive decision to go to the theatres tonight, and I guess I'll be the first to report that I really enjoyed this film as a whole, even if not entirely sold throughout. This is basically Nolan making a James Bond movie (hammy villain and all) with a sensitive, deeply humanistic spy, and using sci-fi to present an intangible threat to combat on intuition that helps Washington and co. assimilate through learned experience. If I had one hangup, it's that the bulk of this film is very clinically cold, and I am a film believer (this is where half of the forum rolls their eyes) that Nolan is an incredibly emotional filmmaker, who uses intellectualization to drive very vulnerable and universal feelings bridging pain and catharsis. Elizabeth Debicki gives us some of this, but as her arc expands we get more than I expected after the stiff first part, and the narrative reaches a cumulative impact well-worth sticking around for. Washington, who also feels 'off' for a while as a soft sweet man doing the job destined for an amoral agent, emerges as the perfect casting choice by the end since the elliptical theme is essentially that
SpoilerShow
compassion, for all humanity, including the comparatively-microscopic in big picture significance, is what can save the world
On a level of spectacle, this is surprisingly toned down for Nolan, with the surges of colorful illustration in milieu notable absent. There are plenty of setpieces, action, and environment shifts, but the atmosphere always felt a bit grey and sterile even in the summery spaces. Honestly, only after the third act came together and I realized what was going on (I mean in the intricacies of the themes, some of the 'twists' were easy to see coming a mile away) did all of this sour exposition make sense
SpoilerShow
by giving us a diluted, dry narrative only to eventually fill it in with the rise of energy going into prioritizing humanity over only a mission. I was initially bothered by how Nolan dispassionately cut from place to place with Washington having just the right intel he needed, which was very unlike Nolan to sidestep any and all connective tissue (he often loves to focus on explanation and process) though this was remedied when he started demonstrating that dramatic control just that in the back half, revealing that he wasn't just scissor-happy in parts and knew exactly what he was doing. It's as if the first half of the film was intentionally edited to be disengaging on an emotional level, as a long wind up for the pitch of sacrifice and love triumphing over logic, finally involving us with the right blend of sentimentality and wit.

I also appreciated how Nolan was able to muse on philosophical possibilities without pretending to know all the answers, best depicted in the scene with Pattinson and Washington nursing Debicki back to health. The explanatory science fiction didn't need to make perfect sense since it was used to push the core idea of adaptation, to learn and grow from information in any given moment, and cherish emotions above intelligence. Or rather, that emotions do inform the intelligence that matters. All the enigmas, science or God or time travel or whatever, are just a path to get there.
I expect that this will mimic my experience with Interstellar. I liked it, it's continuing to grow on me, and revisits just might propel it into greatness. Still, even with the tonal change-up, this is missing the fervent hot-bloodedness of Nolan’s stamp that’s been pretty consistent since The Prestige, and it shows.

User avatar
Slaphappy
Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2018 5:08 am

Re: Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)

#200 Post by Slaphappy » Thu Sep 03, 2020 5:11 am

MichaelB wrote:
Wed Sep 02, 2020 2:49 pm
Slaphappy wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 1:17 pm
Hah, I wasn’t quite sure if the Tallinn sequences were actually filmed over there as it looked like nothing I knew.
The first half of my honeymoon was in the picturesque part of Tallinn, and then we took a bus to St Petersburg - and I remember miles and miles of disconcertingly ugly concrete housing, one building bearing some impressively large graffiti that read (in English) "FUCK OFF SOVIET ARMY".

As for Tenet, it's mostly evaporated from my mind already, and I saw it over the weekend in IMAX.
I visited soviet era Tallinn as a kid. I remember the opressive mood while we visited some local family to trade rubles in black market prices and their tales of endless bureaucracy and the somewhat luxurious hotel we stayed in with three course meals and vaguely erotic cabaret numbers that were awailable to us thanks to our western currency. Everything was pictoresque and melancholic. Of course it's still very picturesque. I know the Soviet era housing is looming somewhere, but still Tenet was kind of disorienting.

Post Reply