Tenet (2020)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2020
	Director: Christopher Nolan (Memento, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk)
	Actors: John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman), Robert Pattinson (Twilight), Elizabeth Debicki
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 02.09.2020, CINEMA theater

Synopsis: The Protagonist of this story (Washington) is recruited to be part of a secret group protecting Society against attacks from the Future.   Review: Christopher Nolan likes to play with our senses and to keep us disoriented. Between more linear movies although in different genres (Super-hero movie with his Dark Knight trilogy, Mystery with The Prestige, SF with Interstellar, War Drama with Dunkirk), he inserts more original ones like Memento, Inception or this Tenet which reminds of those two others. In the middle of this strange year that is 2020, I took my chance by going to slowly re-opening Cinemas and felt safe: rows in front of me and behind left empty as well as two seats on each side. The added advantage was to keep the pop-corn eaters at a distance, and they are numerous in that cinema venue which I don't like, but I had little choice. My main feeling when leaving the theater was frustration. Frustration at missing so many things because of dialogs too hard for me to follow. The fact that I am not native speaker isn't helping but I very rarely have the problem, showing that Tenet was particularly tough on me. Indeed I noticed that dialogs are elliptic (not all elements are given), half-spoken under the main actor's beard (as we say in French) and sometimes in a noisy environment. Beyond my understanding of English, those problems I had with the dialogs are director's intentional choices, either when writing them, recording the footage or editing the sound. In the worst of it I felt like in the recent bad James Bond movies (Quantum of Solace I am talking about you), showing scenes switching from country to country with barely understandable justification in between of why travel there (apart that it looks good on film). And a missed dialog can make you misunderstand part of the movie. For example I thought the Protagonist and Niel knew each other before we see them first meet. OK I hate when movies repeat the same information many times or use flashbacks to deal with an inattentive audience, but in Tenet there seems to be to redundancy at all. There is still a lot that I loved about this movie, starting with the convoluted but original story (again, reminding of Memento and Inception). The visual effects are efficient and seem simple but I bet it was in the end not so easy to blend together footage going forward and backwards. Even less simple was probably for the director and the team to keep track of who is doing what and in which order. This is an extra dimension film crews don't have to deal with in other movies. Kudos to them for that. As usual with Nolan, the soundtrack is well-fitting and many shots look very good (like the Opera opening scene). John David Washington plays decently enough, but I was more impressed by the transformation of Robert Pattinson since his Twilight days (he hadn't impressed me in Cosmopolis yet). Watching the movie a second time and/or with sub-titles would probably improve my rating but for now, so it is.   Rating: 6 /10