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October 20 2022

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Tenet (formerly stylized as TENƎT) is a 2020 science fiction spy action thriller film directed, written, and co-produced (with his wife Emma Thomas) by Christopher Nolan. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, it stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The film follows a CIA agent who learns how to manipulate the flow of time to prevent an attack from the future that threatens to annihilate the present world. Nolan continued his relationship with Warner Bros. and Syncopy for both the production and the distribution of the film.

Nolan took more than five years to write the screenplay after deliberating about Tenet s central ideas for over a decade. Pre-production began in late 2018, casting took place in March 2019, and principal photography lasted six months, from May to November, in Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot on 65 mm film and IMAX.

After being delayed three times because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tenet was released in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2020, and in the United States on September 3, 2020, in IMAX, 35 mm, and 70 mm. It was the first Hollywood tent-pole to open in theaters after the pandemic shutdown and grossed $363 million worldwide, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2020. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its ambition, direction, score, visual effects, action sequences, and Washington, Debicki and Pattinson s performances, but criticized its confusing story, characters, and sound mixing. It won Best Visual Effects at the 93rd Academy Awards, where it was also nominated for Best Production Design.

Plot

The Protagonist, a CIA operative, participates in an extraction at the Kyiv Opera House. His team retrieves an artifact but he is captured, tortured by mercenaries, and ultimately consumes a suicide pill.

Some time later, the Protagonist awakens to learn the artifact was lost and the pill was a fake, designed as a test. An organization called Tenet recruits him and briefs him on bullets with inverted entropy, meaning they move backward through time. After meeting his handler, Neil, they trace the inverted bullets to arms dealer Priya Singh in Mumbai.

The pair discovers that Priya is a member of Tenet, and that her cartridges were purchased and inverted by Russian oligarch Andrei Sator. The Protagonist approaches Sator s estranged wife, Kat, an art appraiser who authenticated a forged Goya drawing that Sator purchased from an acquaintance of hers. Sator discovered Kat s mistake and is using it to blackmail her.

In exchange for Kat s help, the Protagonist and Neil attempt to steal the drawing from Sator s freeport storage facility at the Oslo Airport, where they fend off two masked men who emerge from each side of a large machine. In Mumbai, Priya later explains the machine is a turnstile , a device which can invert an object s entropy, and that the two men were actually the same person, traveling in opposite directions through time.

On the Amalfi Coast, Kat introduces the Protagonist to Sator, who reveals he still has the forged Goya drawing. Sator, enraged and jealous, plans to kill the Protagonist, but the Protagonist instead saves Sator s life when Kat attempts to drown him. The men strike a partnership to retrieve a case from Kyiv that supposedly contains plutonium-241 (though it is later revealed the case contains another artifact).

In Tallinn, the Protagonist and Neil successfully steal the case but are then ambushed by an inverted Sator holding Kat hostage. The Protagonist gives an empty case to Sator and rescues Kat, but they are soon recaptured and taken to a warehouse with a turnstile. The inverted Sator demands the location of the object and shoots Kat with an inverted round. As Sator escapes into the turnstile, Tenet operatives led by Ives arrive, and the heroes take Kat through the turnstile to allow her inverted wound to heal.

The Protagonist travels back to the ambush and attempts to retrieve the object, but Sator overturns his car and sets it on fire. Sator gets away with the artifact, and Protagonist is again saved by Tenet operatives.

The Protagonist travels back in time to the freeport in Oslo where he fights his past self and enters the turnstile, followed by Neil and Kat. He visits Priya, who explains Sator has now collected all nine pieces of a device, the Algorithm , which will enable people in the future to invert the entropy of the whole world in order to destroy their past. To complete his task, Sator plans to bury the Algorithm (which the Protagonist deduces Sator will do in his hometown of Stalsk-12) and transmit its location in a digital time capsule. Kat reveals Sator is dying from pancreatic cancer, and the team surmises he plans to travel back to commit suicide during a recent family vacation to Vietnam, sending the coordinates into the future using a dead man s switch.

The Protagonist, Neil, and Kat travel back in time with Tenet troops. Kat poses as her past-self and tries to keep Sator alive in Vietnam until the Tenet forces can recover the heavily-guarded Algorithm in Stalsk-12. They use a temporal pincer movement , with both non-inverted and inverted troops making a simultaneous assault, but Protagonist and Ives are caught by Volkov, Sator s bodyguard, who is about to bury the Algorithm. Sator calls and tells the Protagonist that the people in the future want to reverse entropy to escape the effects of climate change. As he hangs up, an inverted soldier with a trinket sacrifices himself to save Protagonist and Ives, and they secure the Algorithm. Kat kills Sator before he can kill himself and escapes.

The Protagonist, Neil, and Ives break up the Algorithm, agreeing to bury it in different places so it won t be found, and part ways. The Protagonist notices the trinket on Neil s bag, and Neil reveals he was recruited in his past by a future-Protagonist. Later, Priya attempts to assassinate Kat for knowing too much, but the Protagonist, having realized he himself is the mastermind behind Tenet, intervenes and kills Priya instead.

Cast

John David Washington as the Protagonist , a CIA operative
Robert Pattinson as Neil, Protagonist s handler
Elizabeth Debicki as Katherine Kat Barton, an art appraiser and Sator s estranged wife
Dimple Kapadia as Priya Singh, an Indian arms trafficker
Michael Caine as Sir Michael Crosby, a British Intelligence officer
Kenneth Branagh as Andrei Sator, a Russian oligarch who communicates with the future
Martin Donovan as Fay, Protagonist s CIA boss
Fiona Dourif as Wheeler, leader of Blue Team
Yuri Kolokolnikov as Volkov, Sator s bodyguard
Himesh Patel as Mahir, a fixer
Clémence Poésy as Barbara, a scientist
Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Ives, a military commander
Andrew Howard as Driver, the man who tortures Protagonist
Wes Chatham as SWAT 3, a member of Protagonist s team at the opera house
Denzil Smith as Sanjay Singh, Priya s husband
Jeremy Theobald as the Steward at Sir Michael Crosby s club
Laurie Shepherd as Max, Kat and Sator s son
Jack Cutmore-Scott as Klaus, an employee at Rotas Oslo freeport

Production

Writing and pre-production

Writer and director Christopher Nolan conceived the ideas behind Tenet over the course of twenty years, but began working on the script in 2014. The title, as well as being a palindrome, is an allusion to the Sator Square. Inspired by a feeling about how he imagined Sergio Leone made Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Nolan tried not to watch any spy movies that might influence him while making Tenet, instead relying on his memories of the films.

The science-fiction aspect of the film revolves around the ability to reverse the entropy of things and people, resulting in time reversibility. While the film does refer to real concepts from physics, among them annihilation, the second law of thermodynamics, Maxwell s demon, the grandfather paradox, and Feynman and Wheeler s Absorber Theory, Nolan stated in the film s press notes that we re not going to make any case for this being scientifically accurate . Commenting on the scientific aspects of writing the script, he stated: I think the scientific method is the best tool we have for analysing and understanding the world around us … I ve been very inspired by working with great scientists like Kip Thorne, who I worked with on Interstellar, who also helped me out with some early analysis of the ideas I wanted to explore to do with time and quantum physics on Tenet, although I promised him I wasn t going to bandy his name around as if there was some kind of scientific reality to Tenet. It s a very different kettle of fish to Interstellar.

For both the production and the distribution of the film, which had an estimated budget of $200 million, Nolan continued his relationship with Warner Bros. and Syncopy. Nolan and Production designer Nathan Crowley traveled to scout for locations in February and April 2019. Disappointed with the Royal Swedish Opera as a potential stand-in for the Kyiv Opera House, Crowley instead chose the Linnahall, which fit his affinity for Brutalist architecture. The production decided to film at the National Liberal Club after management at Sotheby s refused to participate, at Cannon Hall after Thornhill Primary School in Islington and Channing School were deemed unsatisfactory, and at Shree Vardhan Tower after it was determined that security at the Antilia was too high to film there.

Casting

Washington, Pattinson, and Debicki were cast in March 2019. Each of them was only permitted to read the screenplay while locked in a room. Nolan chose Washington based on his performance in BlacKkKlansman (2018). Washington kept diaries in which he expanded Protagonist s backstory. Pattinson took some of Neil s mannerisms from political journalist and author Christopher Hitchens. Kat was originally going to be an older woman, but Debicki s appearance in Widows (2018) convinced the filmmakers otherwise.

The casting of Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh was announced as filming started. Kapadia s screen test was put together by director Homi Adajania while working on his 2020 film Angrezi Medium. Caine was only given the pages from the script that included what was filmed on his one day of work. Branagh rescheduled production on his own directorial venture Death on the Nile (2022) to take his part, claiming to have studied the manuscript more times than any other in his career. Himesh Patel joined the production in August. Martin Donovan s inclusion was revealed in the first trailer for the film.

Design and special effects

Special effects supervisor Scott R. Fisher watched World War II movies and documentaries to find reference points for the film that were based in reality. Prop prototypes were often 3D printed. Costume designer Jeffrey Kurland and his team cut and stitched the clothing for the film in the United States, manufacturing it for the main cast and thousands of extras. Production designer Nathan Crowley ordered around thirty military wristwatches from Hamilton Watch Company, each analog with a digital countdown.

Filming

Principal photography, involving a crew that Pattinson estimated at 500 people, began, on May 22, 2019, in a soundstage in Los Angeles, and eventually incorporated seven countries—Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Filming in Estonia took place in June and July, with the Linnahall, Pärnu Highway (E67), and adjacent streets closed to facilitate the production. Kumu Art Museum doubled as the fictional Oslo Freeport. Barbara s office was built in a former law court, the Tallinn Freeport exterior was at the city docks, and a room at the Hilton Tallinn Park Hotel was also utilized. Mayor of Tallinn Mihhail Kõlvart expressed concerns about potential disruptions, as the shooting schedule required that the arterial Laagna Road be closed for one month. A compromise was eventually reached, involving temporary road closures and detours.

Scenes were shot on the Amalfi Coast (Italy) and at Cannon Hall (United Kingdom) from July to August, and on the roof of the Oslo Opera House, at The Thief hotel (Norway), and in Rødbyhavn at Nysted Wind Farm (Denmark) in early September. A five-day shoot occurred later that month in Mumbai, specifically at Breach Candy Hospital, Cafe Mondegar, Colaba Causeway, Colaba Market, Gateway of India, Grant Road, Royal Bombay Yacht Club, and the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. A restaurant named Chaand was erected near the hotel, but was never used, serving only as an unneeded alternate location. Forty boats were positioned at the Gateway of India, where the crew rescued a man who had attempted suicide.

Production proceeded in Los Angeles, where Hawthorne Plaza Shopping Center functioned as the interior set of an icebreaker and a shipping container. The Victorville Airport was disguised as Oslo, with more than ninety extras involved. Instead of using miniatures and visual effects (VFX) for the plane crash sequence, Nolan determined that purchasing a Boeing 747 proved more cost-effective. In October, filming moved to Eagle Mountain, where an abandoned town had been constructed and hundreds were clothed in military camouflage uniforms. Over thirty buildings were prefabricated in Los Angeles and shipped to the site. Four Boeing CH-47 Chinooks were loaned out for four days. Outside shots of a tunnel were done in the desert, while the cavernous insides of the Hypocenter were fashioned on Warner Soundstage 16, their largest, with 32,130 square feet. Tenet wrapped on November 12, after 96 days of shooting.

Director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema employed a combination of 65 mm film and IMAX, prioritizing Panavision lenses that would best accommodate lower light. Segments of the film that concerned time inversion were captured in both backward- and forward-mobility and speech. To ensure proficiency in handling firearms, Washington and Pattinson attended the Taran Tactical firing range in Simi Valley. They also did some of their own stunts. Over one hundred watercraft were recruited for the film, including two F50 catamarans, the superyacht Planet Nine (onto which an Mi-8 helicopter landed), an icebreaker, a cargo tanker, fishing boats, and speedboats. The windfarm vessel Iceni Revenge was utilized for the three months spent filming in Denmark, Estonia, and Italy.

Post-production

During filming, sound designer Richard King sent a team to Eagle Mountain to record the Chinooks and Mi-8, and to Southampton to record the F50 catamarans. Others were hired to capture the aural atmosphere of Oslo, Mumbai, and Tallinn. King got audio of both live and blank automatic weapon rounds at a gun range in San Francisquito Canyon and rented a runway to test how the vehicles in the film sound.

Jennifer Lame replaced Nolan s long-time editor Lee Smith, who was occupied with 2019 s 1917. Visual effects supervisor Andy Lockley said the film s VFX shots involved the participation of 300 employees at DNEG.

Music

Ludwig Göransson was chosen to compose the film s music after Nolan s frequent collaborator and first choice, Hans Zimmer, turned down the offer in favor of the 2021 film Dune. Researching retrograde composition led Göransson to generate melodies that would sound the same forward and backward. He experimented with distorted industrial noise and, to represent Sator s irradiated breathing, asked Nolan to tape his own breath in a studio. Göransson produced ten to fifteen minutes of music each week. The first scoring session was held in November 2019, and sessions continued into early 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Göransson recorded musicians at their homes. The Tenet soundtrack contains The Plan, a song by Travis Scott, which plays over the film s closing credits.

Release

Theatrical

Warner Bros. originally scheduled Tenet for a July 17, 2020, release in IMAX, 35 mm, and 70 mm film. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was delayed to July 31, and then August 12. The studio finally arranged for the film to be released in seventy countries, with a run time of 150 minutes, on August 26, following preview screenings in Australia and South Korea on August 22 and 23. The film opened in select cities in the United States on September 3, gradually expanding in the ensuing weeks. On September 4, it was released in China. Tenet was the first Hollywood tent-pole to launch in theaters following their prolonged shutdown. The lack of available movies afforded it more screens per multiplex than would otherwise have been possible.

On March 2, 2021, Warner Bros. announced that, in light of the New York state government allowing movie theaters in New York City to re-open on Friday, March 5, following a nearly year-long shutdown (causing theaters in the city to miss out on the film s initial theatrical run), they would be re-releasing Tenet at select theaters in the city.

In the Philippines, the film was released on HBO Go streaming platform on June 12, 2021, following the year-long indefinite closure of theaters in the country in response of a potential COVID-19 surge, becoming the last major Asian country to do so.

Marketing and promotion

Initial marketing and promotion of the film was significantly hampered due to postponements caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, with executives calculating that each postponement cost Warner Bros. between $200,000 and $400,000 in marketing fees. Eventually, after briefly being held up indefinitely, Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Times noted that Warner Bros. did not put Tenet on the Academy s streaming platform or send out screeners to awards voters.

Given the large investment in the film, part of its marketing campaign involved dual promotions with the watch manufacturer Hamilton and the game site promotion firm Fortnite, both of whom assisted in increasing public awareness of the forthcoming film. Hamilton featured Washington wearing the watch and endorsing it in multiple ad campaigns, while Fortnite worked on the pre-release trailer for the film and created an interview with Washington which was featured on multiple videogame websites.

Home media

The film was released on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download on December 15, 2020. It was added to HBO Max on May 1, 2021.

Reception

Box office

Tenet grossed $58.5 million in the United States and Canada and $305.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $363.7 million. With a production budget of $200 million, it is Nolan s most expensive original project. IndieWire speculated that marketing costs pushed the final sum to $300–350 million, though some analysts predicted it would incur lower advertising costs than usual, owing to inexpensive live sports ads. Box office analyst Jeff Bock estimated the film would need to make $400–500 million to break even. In November 2020, rival studios expected the film to lose up to $100 million, but Warner Bros. insisted losses would not top $50 million. Nolan reportedly received twenty percent of the film s first-dollar gross.

The film was projected to make $25–30 million internationally over its first five days. In South Korea, pre-sale IMAX tickets sold out, and weekend previews earned $717,000 from 590 venues. Another four days in the country yielded $4.13 million from about 2,200 screens, bringing the cume to $5.1 million by the end of the week. Tenet debuted to $53 million in forty-one countries, grossing $7.1 million in the United Kingdom, $6.7 million in France, and $4.2 million in Germany. It made $58.1 million its second weekend, with China ($30 million from first showings), the U.K. ($13.1 million), France ($10.7 million), Germany ($8.7 million), and South Korea ($8.2 million) as the largest markets. It made $30.6 million its third weekend, earning $16.4 million in the U.K., $13.2 million in France, $11.4 million in Germany, $10.3 million in South Korea, and $10.2 million in China. The film earned $11.4 million in its first two weeks in Japan, and, after opening in India on December 4, 2020, made about $1.2 million in its first ten days in the country. In Estonia, Tenet became the highest-grossing film of all time, with a total gross of $1.2 million.

In the United States and Canada, with 65% of theaters operating at 25–40% capacity, the film earned $20.2 million from 2,810 theaters in its first eleven days of release: $12 million in the U.S., $2.5 million in Canada, and the rest from previews. The second, third, and fourth weekends added $6.6 million, $4.6 million, and $3.3 million, respectively. Tenet remained atop the American box office its fifth weekend with $2.7 million, before ceding the number one spot to The War with Grandpa its sixth weekend.

Critical response

Tenet divided critics, with USA Today s Jenna Ryu and the Los Angeles Times s Christi Carras respectively describing the reviews as mixed and all over the place . The Independent s Clémence Michallon wrote that the film was perceived as both entertaining and cerebral by some, but lacking and confusing by others . Ellise Shafer of Variety found that, while some were weary of the film s metaphysical babble , reviews were largely positive , with critics overall naming it a mind-blowing addition to Nolan s already-impressive arsenal . On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 69% of 364 critics gave Tenet a positive review, with an average rating of 6.9/10; the website s critical consensus reads: A visually dazzling puzzle for film lovers to unlock, Tenet serves up all the cerebral spectacle audiences expect from a Christopher Nolan production. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100 based on 50 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews . Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of B on an A+ to F scale, and PostTrak reported that 80% of those gave the film a positive score, with 65% saying they would recommend it.

Guy Lodge of Variety described Tenet as a grandly entertaining, time-slipping spectacle . The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw felt it was both madly preposterous and amazing cinema . Kevin Maher of The Times awarded the film a full five stars, deeming it a delightfully convoluted masterpiece . Robbie Collin of The Telegraph likened it to Nolan s Inception and praised the depth, subtlety and wit of Pattinson and Debicki s performances . In his review for Rolling Stone, Peter Travers described the film as pure, ravishing cinema and called Washington a star-in-the-making who brings a natural athletic grace to the stunts and hand-to-hand combat . The Dispatch s Alec Dent found Tenet to have a gloriously innovative storyline with incredible visuals to match . Mark Daniell of the Toronto Sun gave the film four out of four stars, deeming it the cinematic equivalent of a Rubik s Cube . Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 3+1⁄2 out of 4 stars, praising Debicki s mesmerizing portrayal and concluding that it s the kind of film that reminds us of the magic of the moviegoing experience , despite not reaching cinematic greatness . Keith Phillips of The Ringer wrote that Tenet has the makings of a cult film, with a failed release due to the pandemic, a muted critical reception, and a twisty narrative that demands multiple viewings . Director Denis Villeneuve called the film a masterpiece and an incredible cinematic achievement .

James Berardinelli noted that the film may be the most challenging of Nolan s films to date in terms of the concepts forming the narrative s foundation: backwards-moving entropy, non-linear thinking, temporal paradoxes , but questioned whether its runtime might prove to be problematic . Leslie Felperin of The Hollywood Reporter felt that Washington was dashing but a little dull and that Debicki s performance adds a color to Nolan s palette, and has persuasive chemistry with Branagh in their joint portrait of a violent, dysfunctional love-hate relationship . She concluded that Tenet is rich in audacity and originality, but lacks a certain humanity . Jessica Kiang of The New York Times described the film as Nolan s time-bending take on James Bond, praising the film s cinematography, score, editing, acting, and immaculately creaseless costumes , while also deeming it a hugely expensive, blissfully empty spectacle . LA Weekly s Asher Luberto also highlighted the similarities between Tenet and the James Bond films, but also felt it was a daring, surprising and entirely original piece of work, reverent in its spectacle and haunting in its mesmerizing, dreamlike form . Branagh s character was described by some critics as a stereotypical Russian villain. Christina Newland of Vulture.com called Branagh silly-accented … as a Bond-villain-esque Russian mastermind .

Mike McCahill of IndieWire gave the film a C− grade and called it a humorless disappointment . Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune awarded it two out of four stars, writing that he wished the film exploited its own ideas more dynamically . The New York Post s Johnny Oleksinski also gave it two out of four stars, calling it Nolan s most confusing work so far, but acknowledged being swept up by Nolan s incomparable cinematic vision . Kathleen Sachs of the Chicago Reader gave the film 1+1⁄2 out of 4 stars, concluding that Nolan doesn t show much growth in his most recent self-indulgent work . Brian Lloyd of Entertainment.ie said poor sound mixing often rendered dialog inaudible when viewed on 35 mm film, suggesting viewing the film on Digital Cinema Package files to reduce the problem. The San Francisco Chronicle s Mick LaSalle also found Tenet difficult to understand, and continued that even worse, it inspires little desire to understand it .

Accolades

Tenet received nominations for Best Production Design and Best Visual Effects at the 93rd Academy Awards, winning the latter. At the 74th British Academy Film Awards, the film won the Best Special Visual Effects award, and also won an award in the same category at the 26th Critics Choice Awards, out of its five nominations. It received a nomination for Best Original Score at the 78th Golden Globe Awards. Other nominations include five Satellite Awards (winning one), nine Saturn Awards (winning one), and one Hugo Award nomination.