Don't be surprised if a conspiracy theory-minded Nolan fan goes on Reddit, claiming to have found the answers to Inception's ending and if life itself is just a dream on watching Tenet in reverse. Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is a mysterious movie, one I can’t possibly explain, at least not without a dozen more viewings. Either the emotional throughline or the more conceptual metafictional question could have been better integrated into the story, but both are lost in the storm und drang of Nolan's action sequences and narrative complexity. r/tenet: The biggest subreddit dedicated to Christopher Nolan's Tenet. I've long thought that Branagh is at his best when he's playing bad guys, whether he's hamming it up shamelessly (Wild Wild West) or providing nuance, warmth and appeal to the most horrific of people (Conspiracy). Meanwhile, I'll post some short reviews on the movie. Any of these review praise the soundtrack? Robert Pattinson plays second fiddle without letting himself be put in the shade. Random thoughts: the opening sequence seems inspired by the 2002 Moscow terrorist hostage crisis, and one of the characters' homes, an Indian billionaire, seems clearly modelled on this real-life home of an actual Indian billionaire. All in all, Tenet delivers a mix of outstanding performances and unforgettable inverted sequences in another masterpiece of film making that will leave you on the edge of your seat. It shares many traits with Inception and/or other Christopher Nolan films. Tenet (M, 151 mins) Directed by Christopher Nolan **½ . Loved the concept, construction and execution. But it isn’t just Nolan’s films. Because the device I think is essentially only there to allow Nolan to put an unusual spin the big action sequences. Tenet will get people to the theatre, but it’s a bittersweet taste of cinema for the first time back. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts As he adds layers he has to make sure he can still hear the words. The intent of this review is not to encourage or discourage anyone from attending a theatrical screening at this specific time. But cinemas will often play the film at 4 (around 75 decibels). It's not. The depth, subtlety and wit of Pattinson and Debicki’s performances only becomes fully apparent once you know where Tenet is going, or perhaps that should be where it’s been. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. This article was amended on 4 September 2020. Tenet Review. Nolan’s films occupy a unique space in pop culture. Linkedin. Entire sections of dialogue were missed, making the already jumpy plot nearly impossible to follow. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Press J to jump to the feed. Which makes it fascinating when a movie like Tenet comes along, because Tenet is a complete misfire. Beatty realised that projectionists, not directors, have final say on a film. Tenet Review: John David Washington carries the weight of the film. The "gimmick" in the story is expressed through the conceit of "inverted" objects, objects sent back in time and which - upon arrival - somehow run backwards in contravention to normal entropy. Thanks to the rewind feature and internet access, the movie is … Tenet review: Christopher Nolan's thriller is a palindromic dud, Rain is sizzling bacon, cars are lions roaring: the art of sound in movies | Jordan Kisner. But I think Tenet ends up being too clever (or silly) for its own good. It is an analysis of the work itself for posterity. TheAbsolution. Don’t be. This means that even “a crazy, batshit scene” with numerous layers of sound is easy for a mixer to control. With John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Juhan Ulfsak. ‘Listen to Apocalypse Now – you hear everything’. There are two sequences that suffered most in this last regard. This is kinda what I imagined it'd be like, really cool and entertaining but ultimately just Nolan on steroids, probably has a really long third act too. News & Discussion about Major Motion Pictures, Looks like you're using new Reddit on an old browser. Although I did see the poster and ran across a comment recently that speculated it might be a sequel to Inception. вЂ�Tenet’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Long-Anticipated Time Caper Is a Humorless Disappointment "Tenet" is big and ambitious, but Nolan is more caught up in … In my cinema the sound mixing was off. And there are many action sequences, most of them heists of some sort, all delivered in typical Nolan style: technically assured, eschewing visual effects in favour of practical effects when possible (there's one involving a Boeing 747 and I'm willing to bet that Nolan used a real plane instead of CGI), but also sometimes confusing. Just came out of this film in Australia. As sound technology advances, why are films getting harder to hear? His narrative structures are often complex, even convoluted, to illustrate his films' premise. One was the opening, where I had some problems following the beats (something that was not an issue in other - better - Nolan opening heists, like the ones in The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises or even Inception). Cookies help us deliver our Services. It's a conceit that feels like one you could just maybe get away with in a Golden Age or Silver Age era comic book. No one could possibly mistake “Tenet” as being by anyone but Christopher Nolan. ReddIt. I just got out of an advance screen in Sydney and I agree. “Think about it: the first few Star Wars [films], we heard them all. There were other sequences where we revisit previous scenes from another perspective. There are some nods at both in Tenet. That's certainly true of Tenet, and not unusual in a story involving time travel. Markey says that they could, for example, raise the volume of the dialogue specifically, but they never do – it would mean having to readjust it for every film. here is a wonderful exchange in Christopher Nolan’s latest film. FlipBoard. The sheer meticulousness of Nolan’s grand-canvas action aesthetic is enthralling, as if to compensate for the stray loose threads and teasing paradoxes of his screenplay — or perhaps simply to underline that they don’t matter all that much. “The more expensive movies have got, the more of a bombardment they become on your senses.”. Although many viewers claim that films are getting louder, Bochar says that the opposite is the problem: “All of us in the industry will tell you point-blank that generally every single cinema is playing it lower than it should be.” A studio’s reference level tends to be around 85 decibels, or 7 on the Dolby scale, he says. It did so partly by becoming bigger and louder. Soundtrack/Sound mixing : like i said outside of the issues with dialogue in parts to this movie which did hurt it my god the rest was fantastic, opening scene in particular was pulse racing. Casting : Excellent as always , became a fan of Pattison in this one and Washington definitely carried himself as the main character. Maybe it's possible that Christopher Nolan has been put on this earth just to provide an excessively interesting retirement for Michael Caine. When he watches films or TV shows at home, he turns on the subtitles in case of clarity issues – he is far from the only one – and will limit the TV’s dynamic range. I don’t think that was just your cinema. Given how hard Nolan’s blockbuster would be to understand even if all the dialogue was crystal-clear, it is curious that the director has made it doubly difficult to hear the story of a screenplay he supposedly spent five years writing. This is a film that will cause many to throw up their hands in bamboozlement – and many more, I hope, to clasp theirs in awe and delight. Or a car might find itself flipped on a road before it's flipped. But it’s hard to escape the sense that less might have been more. I think it's funny because it seems like some reviewers are just over it. And if you can, you need to see this visually stunning movie on a big screen. It's still a great movie and a true big-screen experience, but it does stop it reaching the heights of Nolan's best work. The first critic reviews for Tenet range from scathing to glowing, but they all agree it is very much a Christopher Nolan movie, for good and bad. Also the sound mixing issues and the lack of clear dialogue has to be addressed, i don't know how you can nail great action, soundtrack (which this has) and keep missing this, extremely frustrated and only added more to my confusion. Tenet review: Christopher Nolan's thriller is a palindromic dud. Everyone is fine or better. Italy looked gorgeous and a place i wanted to return to due to this. Reopened theaters finally have a major new movie to show in Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet,' a sci-fi thriller that looks great while confusing you. by Eric Ital 2 months ago Facebook. Right now, as it belatedly crashes a dormant global release calendar, it seems something of a time inversion in itself. The sound drove me nuts. For me, it was "Inception." It’s a much-repeated claim that movie dialogue is becoming harder and harder to hear. “Hngmmhmmh,” says Pattinson. There are timeline twists, back-stabs, and more than a few paradoxes. Cool movie though but yeah that let it down for me. Warner Bros. You know I had to look up exactly what “jump the shark” means? Mathew Price is a production sound mixer who has worked on The Sopranos and The Marvellous Mrs Maisel. Marvellous. The Tenet ending might have you scratching your head. I also want to know how the soundtrack is. “When they take the sound we record on set and kind of undermix it, it feels like, ‘What did we try so hard for?’” he says. It may echo the cleverness of Rian Johnson’s “Looper” and Shane Carruth’s “Primer” in its dizzying disregard for linear chronology, but the plotting is muddled rather than complex, with less to say about the flow of time than “Interstellar” or “Memento.” In the end, “Tenet” isn’t one of Nolan’s most satisfying films. Seek it out, if only to marvel at the entertainingly inane glory of what we once had and are in danger of never having again. Working with other editors, his job is to layer a film with multiple levels of sound. Cinematography : someone below mentioned that this had a mission impossible feel where the locations dictated the storyline and i agree with this. Dimple Kapadia makes an … Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time. As with other movies, the scores are set to change as time passes. ), Is it actually a modern phenomenon? You literally just have to watch it. Price believes the problem is partly that modern directors have so many more tracks to play with, causing “track overload”, the result being that “the dialogue gets short shrift a lot of the time”. That, by the way, isn't a criticism - after all there are very few original ideas left, and those sequences themselves worked pretty well. Which is advice I eventually took to heart. I think Nolan is fascinated with the time travel gimmick mainly for its own sake. Tenet ending spoilers follow.. In a 2019 Reddit AMA, sound designer Richard King – who has worked with Nolan on seven films, including Tenet – said: “He wants to grab the audience by the lapels and pull them toward the screen, and not allow the watching of his films to be a passive experience.”, It’s hard to imagine that Nolan is unaware of the criticism. I found the time bending made sense in Inception but in this movie it didn't. Tenet is the cinematic equivalent of a Rubik’s Cube, presented in towering Imax and featuring a polished cast set amidst some of the world’s most gorgeous locations. Though it’s sometimes hamstrung by clumsy dialogue – a necessary evil, perhaps, given how much Nolan needs to explain – Tenet is rarely less than thrilling to watch. Price suspects the director wants to make the audience work harder to understand the dialogue; he thinks Nolan believes this will make the film a more immersive, engaging experience. The result is that as impressive as the craftsmanship and originality of Tenet is, other aspects of the movie prove to be frustrating. There's not a lot to say about the acting. Debicki does as much as she can with what she's given, and Kenneth Branagh most easily rises above the material. There is a wonderful exchange in Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Tenet, between Robert Pattinson and John David Washington. He's always watchable as a villain no matter how good, bad or mediocre the surrounding movie. Like the films are made by scientists. These were better handled, but the idea is one we've seen before and so didn't come as a particular surprise (even the movie's title serves as foreshadowing), whether in science fiction short stories (eg Heinlein's "All You Zombies", later adapted as the movie Predestination), comic books (Alan Moore's Chronocops) or other movies (eg Back to the Future). In a typical 2020, it would've been just another blockbuster set amongst half a dozen others. (In cinemas the dynamic range – the range between the loudest and quietest sounds – is wider than on home TV screens, and, although the sound is compressed in the transition to TV, the range can still be so wide that you are forced to turn up the volume for dialogue, then down again for action. Scott Davis - Aug 21, 2020. A sentence detailing how cinemas judge which Dolby level to use has also been clarified. In a time when cinema is struggling through arguably its most difficult time in its entire history, Tenet works as a fantastic reminder of what blockbuster filmmaking can aspire to be, and why it’s best experienced in a huge, dark room. Sound engineer Ron Bochar, who was nominated for an Oscar for his mixing on Moneyball, thinks so. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. To complicate matters, there is a disparity between the environment in which the director hears the final mix of a film and the one in which it is screened. “Somebody wrote the words and actors are saying those lines, so there’s got to be some priority.” He doesn’t know any re-recording artist who would deliberately obscure a story point. Half the dialogue was unintelligible. Critics Consensus: A visually dazzling puzzle for film lovers to unlock, Tenet serves up all the cerebral spectacle audiences expect from a Christopher Nolan production. There were more than a few parts where I could not make out the dialogue. Still confused? “It really isn’t a mystery. We know how to do it.” This means that Nolan’s use of noisier Imax cameras in Tenet would not explain the problem, as some have suggested. Reddit. ... Facebook 0 Twitter Reddit Tumblr 0 Likes. I can’t even explain it. IM SHOCKED!! Read more. Walked away confused and so did most of my group. It's been almost a month since Tenet was released and all these weeks later, we're probably still no closer at understanding it all.. Yes, after months of impossible impossibilities that … Easily my favorite film from him because I always found his stuff lacking a soul. Tenet is a cerebral experience and I left knowing I loved it but didn't totally understand everything. I found it very hard to follow what was going on. Well, that and the suits. CRISTOPHER NOLAN?? But ultimately, this sequence just failed to cohere for me, and I watched with detached interest at best, and boredom at worst. I can't recall watching a film like this and throwing my hands up in the air. I think Nolan is aware of this, cause he lampshades it by having a Doctor Exposition tell the main character (and us) that he (we) shouldn't try to make sense of it. It’s very fire. Listen to Apocalypse Now – you hear everything.” Price agrees: “If you watch old movies, you might hear some sound effects here and there but now they go nuts: somebody’s walking across the room in a leather jacket, you hear the zippers clink and the creak of the leather and every footstep is right in your face.”, When television became commonplace in the mid-20th century and challenged cinema’s dominion, cinema needed to distinguish itself; it needed to prove that it could justify people leaving the comfort of their homes. “The first thing I do is create a solid dialogue track, and then everything else has to come up to it and not exceed it,” he says. They're often one of the best parts of Nolan films. Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster is already infamous for its barely audible exchanges. Facebook. The projectionist was turning the volume down. I just finished watching it in Dubai and had the exact same issues with the sound and the dialogues. For Bochar, the priority is dialogue. Email. There was even an introductory briefing to the big climax (in fact, laying out the plan before seeing it executed is a trope used multiple times in the film) which is supposed to explain everything about the mission, like the fact that there were two teams, one normal and one inverted. “Tenet” is no holy grail, but for all its stern, solemn posing, it’s dizzy, expensive, bang-up entertainment of both the old and new school. No other artform could quite present such a collision of time, place, idea and emotion, and it’s clear that Nolan’s pure intent is to give us the utmost of what this medium can uniquely provide. Twitter. The other was the climax, which quite frankly I thought was a mess. Just hundreds of men running, yelling, shooting at things (not exactly what) and blowing things up (or whatever the opposite is of blowing things up in time-reversed action), while there was a "B" line following two characters, and a "C" line following two more. In a world where blockbuster cinema is dominated by franchises and sequels, it serves as an accomplished demonstration of the pleasures of unconnected and non-serialised original storytelling. What is going on? Member. The site may not work properly if you don't, If you do not update your browser, we suggest you visit, Press J to jump to the feed. Mumblecore … Robert Pattinson and John David Washington in Tenet. He gives the most entertaining performance in Tenet, investing even hoary cliches like "If I can't have you, no one will" with intensity, and is probably the best thing about it. Sound effects and music tracks exist on faders that can slide up and down. But while it does tread new ground, Tenet is the ‘safest’ film from Christopher Nolan in some years. In this case it involves the question of who is the protagonist (rather awkwardly actually put in those terms: "I'm the protagonist of this story" is an actual line in the film). In other words, say what you will about the tenets of Tenet, at least it has an ethos. WhatsApp. Imax expects about 90% of its global network of about 1,400 theaters to be back open by the end of August. The film’s dialogue has been criticised by reviewers and audience members for often being impossible to make out. Oct 25, 2017 5,290 Atlanta, GA. Aug 18, 2020 #37 ... review … 'Tenet' Review Thread Rotten Tomatoes : 78% (41 reviews) with 6.98 in average rating Critics Consensus: A visually dazzling puzzle for film lovers to unlock, Tenet serves up all the cerebral spectacle audiences expect from a Christopher Nolan production. 71 Share on Reddit; ... Blu-ray Video and Audio Review: Tenet looks flat out gorgeous in 4K, which shouldn’t be surprising when it comes to a Christopher Nolan blockbuster. The Irish Film Institute has been playing Tenet at 4, Markey says, because 6 was “ridiculously loud” when tested. 0. At its best this is a ride that manages to be viscerally thrilling while still being emotionally and intellectually engaging, all in ways that are truly, uniquely cinematic. Cinemas will not necessarily play a film at the recommended level of 7 if they feel it is too loud. So a bullet might leave a hole in a glass before it's fired. I felt like Dunkirk was the same way but the nature of that film lends itself very well to Nolan's cold, detached style. Twitter. It’s a real shame Tenet isn’t it. Last modified on Fri 4 Sep 2020 14.49 BST. Rotten Tomatoes: 78% (41 reviews) with 6.98 in average rating. Scenes would be very loud and you could hardly hear any of the dialogue. Reddit LinkedIn ... Talk “Tenet” Warner Bros. View Gallery 20 Photos. There are undoubtedly more recurring motifs, but these are the main ones I noticed. "Tenet" is big and ambitious, but Nolan is more caught up in his own machinations than ever before. But I wish he had used it to better tell either an emotional story or a more thematic one. It’s a challenging, ambitious and genuinely original film packed with compelling performances – Washington and Debicki are especially excellent – which confirms Nolan as the master of the cerebral blockbuster. Nolan clearly likes to play with his toys, and is fascinated with the concept of time, whether it be in a non-fantastical genre (Memento, Dunkirk) or science fiction (Inception, Interstellar). Final Trailer Full spoilers via Reddit and Pastebin: ... to see this (including me) in the next few weeks is made to sign an NDA and can fined and/or put in jail for spoiling Tenet . The world is more than ready for a fabulous blockbuster, especially one that happens to feature face masks and chat about going back in time to avoid catastrophe. If the film is available in your area please follow local public health guidelines if you chose to see it in the theatre. TLDR: It's a Christopher Nolan movie. Following two recent ambitious movies from the filmmaker, Tenet feels a little conservative, as if Nolan’s style is a franchise rather than a framework. Elizabeth Debicki's character carries the emotional weight of the story, but it feels detached from the main idea. Christopher Nolan directed a technically impressive, emotionally cold movie? Felt NOTHING at the end. As the above list might suggest, Tenet felt familiar. Here, we answer all your questions about Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, including what happened in the ending. Someone described Nolan films "people who give awkward hugs" and boy is it apt. It's been funny to watch people come to this realization. And after five months stuck in front of the small screen, maybe being a little overwhelmed is no bad thing. Our Tenet spoiler review digs into why the international spy thriller starring John David Washington and Robert Pattinson is Christopher Nolan's worst film. Tenet, which has been pushed several times by … Tenet is not an easy movie to understand. Nolan devotees will still get a kick out of Tenet’s cerebral ideas and no doubt forgive its overloaded climax, while the more casual cinemagoer will get plenty of bang for their buck amid its vast visuals (cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema drenches the Nordic location in cool slate greys, while one clifftop shot of the Amalfi Coast is utterly beguiling). And, like Inception, which based the different characters' roles in the team on key film making roles, there is a metafictional aspect to Tenet. We heard all the lines. This made what is an already confusing movie even harder to follow. вЂ�TENET’ Review: Christopher Nolan Finally Jumps The Shark In Arguably His Worst Movie Yet #Tenet. Big, bold, baffling and bonkers. So much weight has been placed on Christopher Nolan's newest film Tenet that it almost isn't fair. But after I’ve seen it four or five more times, maybe I’ll change my mind. Previous 'The Devil All The Time' Review. The upside to not going to such a screening is that I’m not bound by any embargo; I’m free to scour stray Reddit posts in order to piece together a semblance of Tenet’s plot and climax. Altogether, it makes for a chilly, cerebral film — easy to admire, especially since it's so rich in audacity and originality, but almost impossible to love, lacking as it is in a certain humanity. In Nolan’s case, Price and Bochar are confident that the director does it intentionally. IMHO, his best film is "The Prestige", because that story perfectly fits his approach to film-making. Markey says Warren Beatty watched a screening of Bonnie and Clyde when it came out and couldn’t understand why the sound of the bullets was so quiet. This is how much of Tenet sounded to viewers in cinemas. This review is not meant to encourage people to take risks, but since I am one of the first people in the world to actually be able to see a first run movie I thought it would be good to share my experience. Nolan outsmarted himself on this one. Tenet is one of those movies that must've felt like a great idea in the writing process but really didn't come through on screen. Tenet (2020) But, Price says, “I think he is the only one in the world who believes that.”. That was basically my takeaway from the movie. In an era – and a pandemic – in which home streaming dominates, cinema may be forced to pull out the stops once more. Don’t worry, it’s happened to all of us. Time has run out. Tenet review: Christopher Nolan's thriller is a palindromic dud. Once again seizing control of the medium, Nolan attempts to alter the fabric of reality, or at least blow the roof off the multiplexes. But I think it is fair to consider it a companion piece to Inception. I created a separate thread on this, but it was removed by the mods and I was told to post my thoughts in this thread instead, so here goes: I went into Tenet knowing nothing about it. By. This has been corrected. As with most problems, every department assumes that another department is to blame. This is probably his worst for sound mixing. Or rather do be, and savour it. Despite this, it remains more interesting than most other tentpole movies and acts as a beacon for the director’s strengths. “I think we’re bombarded,” Paul Markey, a projectionist at the Irish Film Institute, says of modern films. An earlier version incorrectly said the dynamic range of TVs was “more extreme” than in cinemas. Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real-time. These include, in no particular order: playing with the concept of time and narrative chronology, a hallway fight that demonstrates the central "gimmick" of the movie, characters talking about their backstory, interspersed with very brief flashbacks showing us what they're saying (really leaning into the "flash" in flashback), men in tailored suits and slicked back hair, men in masks, making it difficult to understand what they're saying (although it's not as bad in Tenet as Bane in TDKR before they went and adjusted his sound mix), an, at times, overpowering soundscape (music and sound design), a dearth of female characters (I counted four women with speaking lines, three of whom are there for exposition, and only two of whom have any significant screen time), the central emotional throughline (such as it is) expressed primarily by the main female character through her relationship with the main character, elaborate heists, or heist-like action set pieces featuring planes, cars, trucks and automatic weapons - nothing is ever simple in a Nolan movie, an opening sequence that serves as an audition of sorts, the idea of death being an escape out of an alternate reality (not really the major plot point in Tenet that it was in Inception, but it comes into play early on for a bit). But in a story that, like most Nolan movies, is ostensibly grounded in reality (something that was one of the defining aspects of his Batman movies for instance), it just doesn't come across as plausible. Tenet is not Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece, but it is another thrilling entry into his canon. Still cant wait to see it however, first movie in the cinema for what seems like ages. “Mmghh nmmhhmmmm nghhh,” replies Washington. I'd avoided the trailers (not intentionally, just haven't been to the cinema in the last few months, don't watch TV with ads, and don't generally seek trailers out online), and wasn't even sure what genre it was.