Nolan misses the mark on "Tenet".
For 15 years, "The Prestige", "The Dark Knight", "Inception", and "Interstellar" ... almost every Nolan movie received high acclaim. "Tenet" holds an IMDB score of 7.3, which is the lowest score for his directorial feature films.
Whether we like it or not, we have to admit that Nolan is the master of playing with time in a film. "Tenet" is full of the brain-burning timeline we enjoy, but it also puts all of his flaws to the max.
This time, why did Nolan's "time magic" not work?
｜The time structure is too complex
The central concept in "Tenet" is "going against the grain". The objects and humans in the movie have access to a reverse timeline. The screen display is a reverse-time world spectacle: seagulls flying backward, the wind blowing backward, crowds walking backward, cars driving backward, and sound in reverse.
Further, Nolan also arranges for the two timelines of retrograde and prograde to intersect. For example, he lets the characters in the same scene, the clockwise and counter-clockwise characters fight each other. The war scene at the end is a time operation to the extreme. Without watching this movie two or three times, no one can not figure out what it is talking about.
I believe that Nolan did a sophisticated rehearsal to ensure the logical flow. He also ambushes enough details to make the audience marvel at his precision after multiple viewings.
But there is a question: is this complexity what we want to see?
｜ Emotional thinness: only complex structures without emotional satisfaction
To be honest, I think "Tenet" is just another editing show of Nolan.
He uses "cross-cutting" to mix multiple timelines. But why did he do that? Peeling away this sophisticated technical skin, we ultimately see a boring, no conflict, no enemy event. It doesn't even qualify as a story.
You can appreciate the precision and complexity of a mechanical watch, but will you be moved to tears by it?
That's why Nolan's magic loses its effect. He is so addicted to complex structures that he no longer cares about anything else.
The characters in "Tenet" are functional. I can not empathize with them, nor put myself into the story.
I do not know how the protagonist suddenly establishes a good relationship with that Indian arms queen; nor do I understand how the heroine becomes the main character from a passerby. Moreover, I do not understand what psychological motivation the villain has in this world-destroying event ...
All these characters' emotions are abandoned. All the characters, including the protagonist, are reduced to instrumental people who do not act logically. They just keep rushing to the big ending. All the elements in the film give way to the reverse time structure that Nolan painstakingly comes up with.
What is important is what we can get after figuring out this time structure. Can we get emotional satisfaction from it? In the end, what is the point of this film? At least for now, the meaning lies only in the structure, which does not point to anything more.
｜Exhausted Narrative: Nolan's way of telling a story with a timeline is at an end.
The movie is non-interactive. With the length limit, the possibilities of the movie timeline are fewer.
A commercial Hollywood director like Nolan has more restrictions. If commercial movies want to make money, the timeline can be complicated, but it must allow the audience to unravel. That's why cinema masters have created bizarre forms of time, like "Last Year at Marienbad". But as a commercial film director, Nolan can only film a clear timeline.
Alain Resnais directed "Last Year in Marienbad" (1961). The movie contains three timelines: past, present, and future.
This is the problem Hollywood faces. In the past decade, starting with superhero films, film projects increasingly move closer to big-budget productions. The "Tenet" can't be filmed without blowing up a few planes. The timeline can only get more complicated. However, the audience no longer likes movies that rely on complex timelines alone.
Planes blew up in "Tenet"
In "Tenet", the exhaustion of Nolan's narration is very obvious, even in the commercial possibilities. Of course, the failure of a film can not make a conclusion about Nolan. If Nolan could complete a transformation, he may go to the next level like other film masters.
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