What is the allure of a palindrome?
The question lingered through much of Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet,” which presents itself as a kind of filmic palindrome. The title of the film is palindromic, and an allusion to the Sator Square – a complex Latin palindrome. The film itself, a heist-film in a way about inverted entropy and a race to the end of the world moving backwards through time, is one that centres on the ideas of things being the same – backwards and forwards. But, what’s the pull?
Ultimately, a palindrome seduces because it’s a puzzle. The thrill is not so much in what is communicated at the end but in the complication of its unravelling. The very thrill of a palindrome is that it exists. Consider the famous English palindrome, “A man, a plan, a canal – Panama”. There’s no meaning to be derived from the sentence itself; the thrill comes from the fact that it is a palindrome. Any communication of meaning beyond its existence as palindromic is incidental. The palindrome is the medium and the message. This is not unlike the narrative meanderings at work in “Tenet”, where meaning is supplementary to the thrill of the puzzle.
“Tenet” premiered in selected movie theatres a few months ago in August. Despite the anticipation of its release locally, the closure of cinemas over the course of the pandemic prevented that. The film’s digital premiere, currently only available for purchase and not for free streaming, this past week coincided with Nolan making the news for other reasons. Earlier this month, WarnerMedia announced that it would release its entire 2021 slate simultaneously in cinemas and digitally via HBO Max – a streaming service not yet available in Guyana, or the Caribbean. The implications of this for the region, where cinemas mostly remain closed, are still uncertain. The end of cinema as we know it? Who knows? But Nolan has expressed great consternation at the development, especially at the lack of consultation with filmmakers.
It’s a complicated situation, though, and when Nolan pushed for a cinema release for “Tenet”, the presumptive last hope for blockbuster tentpoles in a changing world, it’s a gamble that didn’t quite pay off – for reasons beyond the quality of the film. The entertainment industry has been gutted by the pandemic. Nolan’s insistence on a theatrical release for “Tenet” seemed quaint in a way, but considering that the film will premiere for many of us in the comfort of our own homes, puts “Tenet” in a weird position of trying to justify its theatricality before its existence. Is “Tenet” something I would have braved the pandemic to see in a potentially crowded theatre? Unlikely; but then, what film can hold up that litmus test?
Considering the months-long build-up about “Tenet’s” abstrusity, its complications and its deliberate opacity – what I found most surprising about it were the ways, at its root, it seemed so familiar. In a way, it makes some sense. The film is very much a culmination of Nolan’s power as Hollywood symbol and director, so a lot of “Tenet” comes across as a well curated potpourri of the director’s most familiar preoccupations. Time has always been a notion of concern for Nolan, as has stoic heroes, damsels in distress with penchants for being both dangerous and vulnerable, vague nods to politics that manage to be apolitical and an interest in puzzles. It’s all there. In “Tenet”, though, it’s amped up at the expense of a story that’s dazzlingly straightforward – even if the way it’s being delivered insists on something more complicated.
Our protagonist here is played by John David Washington, a character who without any hint or irony declares, “I am the protagonist.” We never learn his name. It’s not important. These are not people, so much as they are ideas. Our nameless hero (?) is a CIA operative drafted into a mission against time. Sometime in the future, tools of war become ‘inverted’ threatening the then-past (or current-present). This malevolent future has turned time into a weapon, so our protagonist must now fight against things that do not yet exist. The primary villain is a Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh somewhere between the bombast of his Iago, and the sheer tomfoolery of his work in “Jack Ryan”) who has somehow gotten into illegal trading of inverted arms. He has a weapon that could destroy the world. The key to stopping this? His, estranged wife of course. Enter Elizabeth Debicki in all her long-legged glory as Kat, an art appraiser whose not-quite flirtatious relationship with the protagonist could hold the key to saving her son, the present world, and the future world.
Additional plot-points are incidental. Specific plot-details are less important than the general pieces of the puzzle that Nolan has clearly spent time crafting. The last important member of the film’s central quartet is Robert Pattinson as Neil – a mystery operative that’s sent to help our protagonist, although the source of his arrival is ambiguous. If the four main characters are all types – moustache swirling villain, vulnerable but smart damsel, stoic hero and cavalier sidekick – then Pattinson does the best at turning a type into something compelling. It’s not so much that Neil is a particularly complex character, but freed from the weight of having to push his own distinct arc, Pattinson exists in the background of the film, able to irreverently poke at the potential silliness that’s occurring. It provides a much-needed element of levity to the proceedings (which also pick up with a similarly charming and insouciant turn by Aaron Taylor-Johnson in a brief late-film turn). For the most part, though, “Tenet” is so committed to ensuring that its moving pieces result in a palindrome – it feels like it’s more intent on hitting its mark than relaxing and being personable. It leaves little room for the actors to do much, especially as Nolan seems ambivalent about playing to the strengths of his performers especially Washington whose diffidence seems out of place here.
Many have commented on the self-reflective irony of a line from early in the film where a scientist explains the idea of inverted time to the protagonist. He is baffled by the idea of this inverted entropy. But she chides him on the limits of his understanding. “Don’t try to understand it,” she cajoles it. “Just feel it.” It’s not so much that “Tenet” is beyond feeling. There are two set-pieces – an early heist gone wrong, and a later chaotic car chase – that are both thrilling in their own way. But, for one to luxuriate in the feelings of “Tenet,” the palindrome would have to have some meaning beyond its mere existence as palindromic. But even as “Tenet” engages in loads of hand-wringing about the implications the characters’ actions have for the future, it’s hard to really form any worry for that future that exists only in prolepsis.
It’s something I’ve always found fascinating about Christopher Nolan’s films – they exist in the “present” and yet they seem completely devoid of any sort of cultural or political markers. There’s an airlessness to their idea of the contemporary that seems both trapped in some vague idea of the past, but propelled into the some whittled down version of the future that is marked by a kind of geopolitical colourlessness. “Tenet” might play the same way in two decades, as it plays now, nodding back to vague ideas of the Cold War and Russian crisis but with no kind of context for anything around it. This is not even much of a judgement on quality, it’s just a fact of “Tenet” that – like its palindromic preoccupation – is all about the now without looking backwards or forwards. It makes for a film that’s so beholden on to itself it’s kind of fascinating. When “Tenet” ends, little of it lingers. It’s as if the effervescent energy of the film tidies itself up, because the film’s entire arc is wrapped up in the temporality of its existence. The palindrome has ended and we are back right where we started. It’s a neat trick. But, there’s nothing there to sustain future thought. It only exists as credible or valuable while its playing.
Tenet is available on Prime Video, iTunes and other streaming platforms for purchase.
