Member-only story
Movie Review: Tenet
Through Time Inversion, I Communicated With the Future For this Review.
Felix Quiñonez Jr.
With Tenet, Christopher Nolan proves that he’s one of the most exciting and ambitious directors working in Hollywood today. The movie so confidently charts its own path that you’d have a hard time finding anything to compare it to. Its epic visual thrills are, only, matched by its extraordinary emotional scale. And the dense jigsaw puzzle of a story will have you on the edge of your seat even when you’re scratching your head.
The movie’s many enthralling, visually dazzling, extraordinary set-pieces could make it easy to forget that this is the same director who began his career as an indie auteur. His first movie Following had a $6,000 budget and was as far removed as imaginable from the big-budget movies Christopher Nolan is now synonymous with.
On the surface, it might seem like an extreme 180-degree turn. But a more in-depth assessment makes it clear that the themes and techniques that define Nolan’s blockbusters were there from the beginning. So, this change could be seen more as a natural progression than a dramatic departure. Christopher Nolan didn’t shed his skin to fit into the blockbuster filmmaking mold; instead, he reshaped Hollywood in his image.
