I enjoyed Christoper Nolan’s Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014), and had high expectations for this one… and it did indeed deliver! It has been quite some time since I last went to the cinemas to catch a movie… largely due to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Note: Though they may be spoilers as you continue reading, trust me, it’s highly likely that you’ll need to rewatch the film to fully understand it.
The Infatuation with Time Travel and Temporal Paradox
I’ve always been fascinated with time travel. The idea of going back into time, to right our wrongs – an unlikely bridge, to reverse the things we wished we never did; or into the future – to see how the world turns out.
What’s happened happened. Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It’s not an excuse to do nothing.
Niel (Tenet)
Unlike mainstream time-travel movies, this movie is somewhat different. The events are actually told twice – once forwards and once backwards, as Nolan explains the concept of inversion. It’s a simple idea, though complex to explain through a movie. The concept of time inversion is much more complex than the idea of time in Inception and Interstellar. In Tenet, we are told that cause doesn’t come before effect, and that past and future can exist in the present. Events can play out the same way forwards and backwards, and it can be difficult to tell which one you’re watching.
The grandfather paradox is a potential logical problem that would arise if a person were to travel to a past time. The name comes from the idea that if a person travels to a time before their grandfather had children, and kills him, it would make their own birth impossible.
Another difference that made Tenet stand out among the others is, unlike the other time-travelling movies whereby it’s always the main character who journeys through time, Tenet’s protagonist stays in the 21st century where he searches for clues about the devices that are being manufactured in the future and sent back to current time.
Action packed at every turn
It’s action packed. Period. The movie opens with terrorists storming the stage of a symphony. From there onwards, watch our hero scale up and down the side of a skyscraper, a restaurant kitchen fight, and take part of an art warehouse heist that involves a crashing of a cargo plane. At the verge of solving one mystery, just leads to discovering that it was part of something bigger. Do take note of every little detail, because as the movie progresses on, you’ll begin to link the dots and see the bigger picture.
Final Comments
Go catch Tenet at your local cinemas! It will definitely blow your mind. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie… and perhaps at the end of the movie, walk backwards out of the cinema.
Movie rating: ★★★★★
Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.
Laura (Tenet)
