Tenet
Best action movie ever created!
I fully stand by this statement, please hear me out.
During the first half of the movie, the protagonist gets the following instruction:
"Don't try to understand it. Feel it!"
Interestingly enough, I think this line is not only meant for the protagonist, but also for the viewers. As someone who is used to overthinking everything, I believe that this is a fantastic rule to live by (my psychologists have probably said so too, at least a dozen times), but that's besides the point haha. What is in fact relevant however, is that I believe you will only really appreciate the movie once you stop overthinking it and just surrender to the feelings that arise when watching it.
Are there any plotholes to discover when thinking about this movie for hours? Yeah, sure there are. But is that actually important? Hell no! Because the action sequences in this movie are so incredibly creative, they left me absolutely speechless. Seriously: How does Nolan actually come up with this??? And don't even get me started about the final confrontation!!! This has to be my favorite action scene of all time. I haven't seen anything that even comes close to this level of ingenuity in filmmaking except from memento, which is obviously not an action movie. My jaw was in the floor during the entire time. And is that not what the action genre is all about? Creating the most entertaining action scenes that let you look at the screen in awe, and that actually stay with you for years?
I think it is commendable that Nolan tries to create something innovative, and this made me realize what I'm missing with most of the other action movies. Because let's be honest: aren't we all a bit tired of Tom Cruise, Vin Diesel, or Dwayne Johnson doing what they always seem to be doing? I mean, their movies are cool, don't get me wrong. But their plot feels predictable, and more often than not it ends with the protagonists defeating their opponents. Because we have seen the same shit hundreds of times, the stakes feel low. Especially during fight scenes where two people are fighting each other either with their fists, with swords, or with guns. Sometimes a movie such as John Wick succeeds in providing some choreagraphy that is actually good and feels refreshing, even though they don't do anything revolutionary. But Nolan proves with Tenet that this is still possible, making tenet without a doubt the most memorable action movie I have ever seen.
Because of the complexity of the plot, this movie also has an infinitely high rewatchability. This is my 5th time watching, and I still feel like I understand it better everytime I watch it. It's truly incredible, how this movie just stays just as fun as it was the second time watching it (the feeling I got after the first time is unfortunately not replicable).
Oh, and on a more technical note: I watched this movie with a theoretical phycisist, who shared some insights about the invertability of time. Apparently, it was only proven in 2012 that not all laws of nature are time invariant with an interesting experiment regarding the behaviour of subatomic particles. This makes time travel as it is used in this movie impossible unfortunately. It is however still not disproven that it is possible to reverse an objects direction in time while also inverting its electrical charge and its polarity (flipping it in the mirror). The more you know 🌈
