Original title: Tenet · Christopher Nolan · UK · 2020 · Script: Christopher Nolan · Performers: John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh…
Before the great spectacle that aims to be the last production of British director Christopher Nolan, the commentator is in front of a crossroads. Each of these paths points towards different plot lines that, safely, they will end up at the same point. In what sense does this or that film deserve our attention?? What aspects of its development make a cinematographic work notable??, We are wondering. In that analysis, There are many elements involved that we must consider: plot proposal, staging, dramatic development, the value and focus of what the film wants us to reflect on, etc. However, There is something that usually goes unnoticed and that is one of the most important aspects when it comes to, not just evaluating a movie, as we say, sino, long before, from the moment it begins to be conceived in the heads of its creators. This aspect refers to the relationship between the artistic piece itself and the potential viewer.. That is to say, Who does the director address with his work?? The answer to this question might seem, in principle, obvious. We have already said it: to the public. But what is truly relevant would be to ask ourselves, how do you do it? Where does the author place us?, as necessary participants, before the work?
In this regard, the first obstacle we face with Tenet It is in the same approach of the plot. Here, and even in the case of wanting to avoid doing spoilers, we have a real problem, well, In fact, We don't know what this is all about until the movie ends.. Nolan tries to escape the classic structure that forces him to establish the premises of the story at the beginning, so that, throughout its subsequent evolution, the conflicts or dilemmas raised there are resolved. There will surely be those who find this an original and even risky proposal.. Y, in part, it is. Others, as is my case, Maybe they consider it a strategic error (that I don't fail, well it's deliberate) or scaffolding. Nolan avoids the classic cause-effect relationship that conditions the events that form the structure of the story.. This, more than a simple occurrence, appeals to the same thesis that the film supports and that invites us to question reality (or the stories, rather) in a linear manner and in constant forward progress (beginning-development of the conflict-conclusion). Time in Nolan's hands is a malleable element. There is no beginning or end, just events that happen at some point. Before? After? It doesn't matter. Vale, the idea is, definitely, very attractive. However, This places the viewer in a very difficult dilemma to solve.. And it is that, hide that information from the viewer (basically, what is this about, that is to say, what is the problem that needs to be solved), He is disoriented most of the time.. He neither knows where he is nor can he sense where he seems to be heading.. To understand each other. It is not that the viewer is lost because he is not able to understand what is happening.. Es, simply, that they have not explained it, They haven't given him any real clue about it. (just some mock justifications; use: Only those who have already seen the movie will understand this.), And of course, ends up tangled in a labyrinth from which it is not that he cannot get out, is that their only escape lies in someone coming, other, The director, and rescue him.
Thus, that spectator cannot by any means adopt, forcibly, a passive attitude towards the supposed drama that Nolan is telling him. Until that moment when someone shows him what is happening, and leaving aside some action sequences whose only emotional implication lies in determining whether the protagonists will emerge from the situation alive. (basically we mean a few fights, to summarize and to understand each other), the viewer has no choice but to wait. So, that viewer discovers nothing, nothing is revealed to him (manifested), There is nothing that is exposed as a consequence of some events, particularly, because the characters in this story don't discover anything for themselves (and with them, the audience in the room). Somehow, the information about what is happening is there, at some point in the development of the story and we will have to wait to reach that moment to “know”. Once we know or have knowledge of any new information (who is this or that character, For example, What is this or that thing for?), We are still waiting for them to give us another one in order to complete, in the end, We said, the supposed puzzle. This, although it doesn't seem like it, forces Nolan to hold the contraption he has built on a single element: the dialogues. Presented as a great visual spectacle, Tenet It is a film that is told to us out loud., which makes it a tedious experience at times.. If I don't know, If I don't know with what elements, What rules am I playing with? I can't participate in the game.. If I can't participate, why have they invited me?, we ask ourselves glued to the armchair. Let's add to that two and a half hours of footage.
But it is that, besides, when the explanations arrive, These are so obtuse or convoluted that it is very difficult, if not impossible, follow them. I try to put in order what I think I have understood and I realize that I have quite a few gaps to fill in.. Tenet puts us, in principle, in the following situation: the possibility of living with a reality that “walks” in the opposite direction to reality itself. This, what does it translate into? Let's imagine that we throw an object to the ground. Well then, in addition to having this experience, we can also have the opposite, that is to say, that the object in question “returns” to our hand from the ground to which we previously precipitated it (when?, It's something I didn't quite understand.). To view it, Let's imagine that we could reproduce reality as if we pressed the rewind button on a movie. So far so good (bueno, more or less). The problem is that for, supposedly, understand the conflict that antagonistic characters push the world into, We must also understand the foundations of this curious phenomenon and its supposed implications in the case of using it as a weapon or tool to achieve things and achieve certain objectives. (get the pieces of a secret weapon, For example). But it is that, besides, that “inverse” reality (Is it possible to turn the world upside down without precipitating it into nothingness??; to go back to the beginning, Isn't there a need for an ending??) we are told that, internally, that is to say, when we immerse ourselves in it from our own reality, It has very particular rules. All of this must be, in addition, explained for, when certain situations occur, keys to the development of the argument, Let's know what obstacles or dangers the protagonists of the story face.
And here I think Nolan falls into a trap that many contemporary fictions fall into. (is there someone who, with my heart in my hand, was able to really follow the series game of thrones?). And cinema is a kinetic art, that is to say, what happens in time and, in principle, in continuity. Unlike literature or painting, the cinema experience cannot stop to notice the development of a plot that is not perfectly outlined for the viewer watching the film.. That imposes limitations. We are going to assume that the parascientific explanations that give consistency to what they say in Tenet have some basis. Se and, So, two situations: or they are so complex that the normal viewer cannot follow them because they address matters that are beyond their knowledge., or they are presented in such a confusing way and with such a wealth of data that we do not understand anything no matter how much effort we put into it.. Result of all this, first attempts passed, is that we give in to apathy and let it pass. This only results in that passive position to which Nolan pushes us as viewers.. And, in addition to hiding the information from us, in addition to attending its transmission in a non-participatory way, it appears to us practically indecipherable, how do we continue the argument? what remains, at this point, They are a series of facts or specific data that support the skeleton of what we have here: a bad guy who wants to destroy the world and a good guy who wants to prevent it. Point.
All of this, It not only determines the plot of the film, It also affects the staging and, above all, to assembly. Go ahead that, despite what has been stated so far, That conflict between realities is not part of the bulk of the film., which already produces a certain disappointment. Quite the opposite, What it is about is that the protagonist gets to know the different characters that participate in the story, reserving the nub of the problem for the final stretch. Actually, if we stick to the most basic, We are faced with a film that does not differ too much from any other action production in use.. For most of the film, The protagonist goes from here to there trying to meet someone who will give him the desired information or overcoming some obstacle without major consequences on the central issue of the story.. So, there are assaults on supposedly inaccessible skyscrapers, car chases and many fights that, as the only peculiarity, They only have to face characters or situations that happen in reverse., but whose incidence is minimal (I still don't understand the airport scene, my fault for sure, I apologize). That is to say, the same as always, but appearing to be different. But it is that, besides, as happens with the explanations that have been given to us, The pace of it all is so frenetic that, apart from letting ourselves be carried away by the spectacular nature of certain actions, It is impossible for the viewer to know if all of this responds to the logic of what is proposed or is a pure shaking from one second to the next without further internal coherence.. Which brings us back to the same question.: what is happening? To understand it, we would practically have to stop the tape at each plane and trace, little by little, the map of directions and meaning that, it is supposed, offer such moments.
What happens to Christopher Nolan is what happens to certain directors who in the Anglo-Saxon industry maintain a certain author's brand with their films., and what was originally original (read Memento), by turning it around it ends up drifting into an empty space. to hide it, the device must be given a package of apparent complexity, in addition to covering it with a growing spectacularity and originality in the approach of some fetish sequences. But if in Origen, even though it is an equally convoluted film, there was room for fascination (I remember the scene in which the characters overcome layers of reality), here the ideas that are considered fail to cause that effect. Summing up. Christopher Nolan proposes a game. on the board, places two realities that move in opposite directions and tries to make them coexist to propose what paradoxes they lead us to. But we neither follow the logic of all this nor does the device take us, in my opinion, to nowhere. We only understand that reality, according to nolan, It is a mirage that, once broken as an idea itself, opens us to different perceptions of it. Breaking that conventional perception seems to be the objective of this work.. That is the apparent meta-dramatic proposal of this film. (It is no coincidence that the protagonist of this story is called, precisely, “The protagonist”). The problem is that this is not something we discover., There is someone who has to tell us, well, as this work is constructed, Nolan is the only one who can (or have enough energy and interest to) follow him. So, When leaving the room, one is left wondering what Nolan wanted from us.. GERARDO LEON
