Released in 2020, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet was a box office hit (if one can call any movie released during the COVID-19 pandemic that) but it’s also the filmmaker’s most complicated and divisive movie yet. Starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh, the film follows the Protagonist, a former CIA agent recruited into a secret organization, Tenet, that is tasked with tracing the origin of objects that are doing something unusual: traveling backward in time. The objects are connected to an attack from the future on the present that the organization is trying to figure out. The film is now available to stream on Netflix as of November 1st.
Tenet’s Plot Might Not Make the Most Sense, But The Film Is Wildly Underrated
There is a lot to unpack about Tenet’s plot. It is very high-concept and complex as it takes on various concepts about time travel in a way that is a bit unique as compared to other stories where the future wages war on the past, but it is also very abstract and confusing. The mechanics of time inversion that is employed in the film is a little hard to follow even after multiple viewings. It all comes down to the idea that the perception of time is fluid in Tenet and, considering that for most people in the real world it’s much more fixed and narrower, the non-linear aspects of the film are challenging.
But beyond the complex sci-fi elements, Tenet is more about the connections between the core characters. The characters in Tenet are all connected in interesting ways, though those connections do not become clear in most cases until deeper into the film. In particular, the twist involving the connection between the Protagonist and Neil is stunning and emotional and something that works so well because you genuinely don’t see it coming — though you can piece it together once you know it, making the film something of a closed loop. The performances of the cast are what make this all work. Washington is criminally underrated in the film while Tenet might just be one of Pattinson’s best-ever performances. Debicki is also a major standout, bringing the real heart to the story that helps keep it afloat even when the sci-fi elements get overly complex. Between the complex story, the human elements and the performances, Tenet might actually be the most underrated sci-fi film in recent years and now that it’s on Netflix, the time is perfect to watch it over and over again.
