T E N Ǝ T
Appreciation for Nolan’s Brilliance
J. Y. Gao
NOLAN’S MOST RECENT FILM, TENET, HAS BEEN CIRCULATED AND RECIRCULATED behind the backdrops of popular culture for two and a half years now. Yet still, its convoluted exploration of time and fate, as well as its complex scientific underpinnings bar me from grasping one of the most crucial elements of any film: the plot. Debate within Tenet’s small, but passionate, following has covered a number of theories about the film’s storyline and the character arcs embedded within it. A journey through a fraction of these social media debates and a handful of YouTube videos prepared me for my third watching of Tenet. This time, with the versatility of my laptop’s back-arrow key, the ability to rewind was exploited to a shameful degree during Nolan’s exposition scenes. I’ve gained a more cohesive picture of the film’s narrative structure and a re-invigorated appreciation for his virtuosity with the film medium. This article would thus aim to capture some of the magnificence of his conceptual practice by focusing on the relationship between the film’s protagonist, whose name is never revealed, and Neil, his partner in crime (figuratively and literally).
From our conventional subjective standpoint, where we seem to move forward on the film’s timeline, Protag is saved by a geared-up Neil during a terrorist attack at the Opera – Protag could not see his face. Protag then meets Neil for the first time as part of a pre-mission meet-up. They scale a building to retrieve some information. Their mission then becomes a conflict with the film’s main antagonist, Sator (Russian), and the storyline unfolds with explosions, paintings, yachts, and other usual blockbuster-movie elements. As the narrative grows, the plot becomes a carefully crafted back and forth between the characters moving forward in time and those moving backward in time. Vehicles crash, re-crash and un-crash, the multi-million-dollar highways stunts immerse the audience in the film’s shifting timelines, as well as Protag and Neil’s closing friendship. The climax of the film features an organised military siege to capture the MacGuffin. The siege’s main strategy is dubbed the “temporal-pincer”, where two teams move in opposite directions in time: one moves forward, and one moves backward. Information about certain events, like explosions and enemy movements, can be relayed between the two teams and provides a great tactical advantage. Both teams are able to send information about their past, allowing the teams to receive information about the future they haven’t experienced yet. Protag and Neil split up and plan a divergence from the main confrontation to retrieve the “Algorithm”. As impressive as the scenes of this cognitively taxing climax may be, it ends with a beautiful and revelating moment.
PROTAGONIST
Hey, you never did tell me who recruited you, Neil.
NEIL
Haven’t you guessed by now? You did. Only not when you thought. You have a future in the past. Years ago for me. Years from now for you.
PROTAGONIST
You’ve known me for years?
NEIL
For me, I think it is the end of a beautiful friendship.
PROTAGONIST
But for me, it’s just the beginning.
NEIL
We get up to some stuff. You’re gonna love it. You’ll see. This whole operation is a temporal pincer.
PROTAGONIST
Whose?
NEIL
Your’s! You’re only halfway there. I’ll see you at the beginning, friend.
In Protag’s future, he would recruit Neil, set up the entire Tenet organisation, and plan this whole mission shown in the film. Indeed, the two would have built a close friendship, and, from the perspective of Protag, this is the last time he will see Neil as the person he has grown to know. The next time he sees Neil will be when Neil has yet to learn about Tenet, the manipulation of time, the danger of the mission, and the fate of the world; he would only be a naive, young recruit about to board this extraordinary adventure back through time.
For Protag, that future would possess all of his past memories of Neil ‘the knowledgeable’ (the one we see in this film), whilst trying to teach and work with Neil ‘the naive’ in order to send him back. This concept is not at all unfamiliar to the audience. For Neil, the Protag’s first encounter with him at the pre-mission meet-up would be his last time seeing Protag, and the course of the film is Neil mentoring a ‘naive’ Protag to become the ‘knowledgeable’ Protag that sends him back in time. Hence why Neil explains, ‘This whole operation is a temporal pincer’.
Nolan’s ability to consider the entire plotline of the film whilst planning, and to incorporate this fundamental and palindromic nature to the whole film is a tribute to his filmmaking intuition. Not only are the backward and forward motions of time physically shown within the film, but he also embeds the concept in the structural form of the narrative, as well as his thematic exploration of fate and autonomy. Nolan chose this part of the characters’ friendship to end the film as this final moment is when both characters mutually know each other the best, after which they restart their own segment of this temporal cycle.
The film’s final scene ends with a final surprise, and one of the most sigma lines ever delivered in cinematic history:
“I realised I wasn’t working for you. We’ve both been working for me. I’m the protagonist”.