Tenet (film)

''Tenet'' is a 2020 science fiction action thriller film directed and written by Christopher Nolan, who also produced with his wife Emma Thomas. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, it stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh. The film follows a former CIA agent who learns how to manipulate the flow of time to prevent an attack from the future that threatens to annihilate the present world. Nolan continued his relationship with Warner Bros. and his production company Syncopy for the film's production and distribution.

Nolan took more than five years to write the screenplay after deliberating about ''Tenet'' central ideas for over a decade. Pre-production began in late 2018, casting took place in March 2019, and principal photography lasted six months, from May to November, in Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot on 65 mm film and IMAX. After being delayed three times because of the COVID-19 pandemic, ''Tenet'' was released in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2020, and in the United States on September 3, 2020, in IMAX, 35 mm, and 70 mm.

It was the first Hollywood tent-pole to open in theaters after the pandemic and grossed $365 million worldwide on a $200 million budget, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film of 2020 but also a box office disappointment. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its ambition, direction, musical score, VFX, action sequences, and cast performances (particularly Washington, Debicki, and Pattinson), but received criticism directed towards its confusing story and "difficult to hear" sound mixing. It won Best Visual Effects at the 93rd Academy Awards, where it was also nominated for Best Production Design.

Plot

On a date named "the 14th", the Protagonist leads a covert CIA extraction during a staged terrorist siege at the Kyiv Opera House. Their goal is to find an artifact. He is saved from KORD forces by an unknown operative with a red trinket. The Protagonist retrieves the artifact but his team is captured and tortured. He swallows a suicide pill but wakes up to find it was a fake; a test that only he has passed. He is recruited by a secretive organization known as "Tenet", which briefs him on bullets with "inverted" entropy that move backwards through time. With his handler Neil, he traces them to Priya Singh, an arms dealer in Mumbai.

Priya reveals she is a member of Tenet and that her bullets were inverted by Russian oligarch Andrei Sator, who is communicating with the future. Sir Michael Crosby advises they approach Sator's estranged wife Kat Barton, an art appraiser who authenticated a forged Goya painting that Sator purchased from her friend Arepo, which he now uses to blackmail her. To get Kat's help, they try to steal the Goya from Sator's freeport facility at Oslo Airport, but are thwarted by two masked men who emerge from either side of a machine. In Mumbai, Priya explains it was a "turnstile", a device that inverts entropy – the two men were the same person, traveling in opposite directions through time. She reveals that Sator sabotaged his Kyiv CIA team but KORD got the artifact, a sample of plutonium-241, and are moving it through Tallinn.

Unaware of his failure to steal the Goya, Kat introduces the Protagonist to Sator, who plans to kill him until he mentions Kyiv. When he saves Sator's life after Kat tries to drown him, they cooperate to intercept the plutonium. The Protagonist and Neil steal the artifact in Tallinn but are ambushed by an inverted Sator holding Kat hostage. The Protagonist hides the artifact and rescues Kat, but they are recaptured and taken to Sator's Tallinn freeport, where the inverted Sator interrogates them for the location of the artifact, eventually shooting Kat with an inverted bullet. Tenet troops led by commander Ives arrive, but Sator escapes via a turnstile. To save Kat's life, they all invert themselves. The inverted Protagonist drives back to the ambush to retrieve the artifact but encounters Sator, who takes it.

To un-invert, the Protagonist must travel back in time to the freeport in Oslo. There he fights his past self to enter the turnstile. In Oslo, Priya tells him Sator now has all nine pieces of the "Algorithm", a device that future enemies of Tenet need to invert the entropy of the world and destroy its past. She planned for Sator to get the artifact so as to reveal the location of the other pieces. Based on his earlier conversation with Crosby, the Protagonist realizes it is a nuclear hypocenter detonated on "the 14th" in Sator's hometown of Stalsk-12.

On a Tenet ship traveling back to "the 14th", Kat reveals Sator has terminal cancer and is omnicidal. They deduce he will return to a happy moment on a family vacation in Vietnam that was also on "the 14th" and commit suicide, sending the Algorithm coordinates to the future via a dead man's switch. Arriving at "the 14th", Kat goes to Vietnam to pose as her past self and keep Sator alive until the Tenet forces in Stalsk-12 recover the Algorithm. They use a "temporal pincer movement", with both non-inverted and inverted troops making a diversionary attack so the Protagonist and Ives can discreetly steal the Algorithm before detonation. One of Sator's men, Volkov, traps them in the hypocenter, and Sator calls from Vietnam to explain the antagonists are trying to escape the effects of climate change.

As Sator hangs up, the soldier with the red trinket sacrifices himself, letting the Protagonist and Ives escape with the Algorithm as the hypocenter detonates. Kat kills Sator. As Tenet breaks up the Algorithm to hide it, the Protagonist sees a red trinket on Neil's bag. Neil reveals he was recruited in his past by a future Protagonist; this mission is his last in a lengthy career with Tenet and the end of a long friendship with the Protagonist. Later, as Priya is about to kill Kat to preserve the secrecy of Tenet, the Protagonist, realizing he created Tenet himself, kills Priya first.

Cast

Also appearing are Jefferson Hall, the Well Dressed Man, who the Protagonist tries to rescue (with the package) at the Kyiv opera house; Andrew Howard as yivDriver, who sabotages the CIA's Kyiv operation and tortures the Protagonist; Wes Chatham as SWAT 3, a member of the Protagonist's covert CIA team in Kyiv; Denzil Smith as Sanjay Singh, Priya's husband; Jeremy Theobald as the steward at Sir Michael Crosby's club; Laurie Shepherd as Max, Kat and Sator's only son; and Jack Cutmore-Scott as Klaus, an employee at Sator's Rotas freeport in Oslo.

Production

Writing and pre-production

Writer and director Christopher Nolan conceived the ideas behind ''Tenet'' over the course of twenty years, but began working on the script in 2014. The title, as well as being a palindrome, is an allusion to the Sator Square. Inspired by a feeling about how he imagined Sergio Leone made '' Once Upon a Time in the West'' (1968), Nolan tried not to watch any spy movies that might influence him while making ''Tenet'', instead relying on his memories of the films.

The science-fiction aspect of the film revolves around the ability to reverse the entropy of things and people, resulting in time reversibility. While the film does refer to real concepts from physics, among them annihilation, the second law of thermodynamics, Maxwell's demon, the grandfather paradox, and Feynman and Wheeler's Absorber Theory, Nolan stated in the film's press notes that "we're not going to make any case for this being scientifically accurate".How real is the science in Christopher Nolan's ''Tenet''? We asked an expert
''Los Angeles Times'' EMILY ZEMLER, September 4, 2020 Commenting on the scientific aspects of writing the script, he stated: "I think the scientific method is the best tool we have for analysing and understanding the world around us ... I've been very inspired by working with great scientists like Kip Thorne, who I worked with on '' Interstellar'', who also helped me out with some early analysis of the ideas I wanted to explore to do with time and quantum physics on ''Tenet'', although I promised him I wasn't going to bandy his name around as if there was some kind of scientific reality to ''Tenet''. It's a very different kettle of fish to ''Interstellar''."

For both the production and the distribution of the film, which had an estimated budget of $200 million, Nolan continued his relationship with Warner Bros. and his production company Syncopy. Nolan and production designer Nathan Crowley traveled to scout for locations in February and April 2019. Disappointed with the Royal Swedish Opera as a potential stand-in for the Kyiv Opera House, Crowley instead chose the Linnahall, which fit his affinity for Brutalist architecture. The production decided to film at the National Liberal Club after management at Sotheby's refused to participate, at Cannon Hall after Thornhill Primary School in Islington and Channing School were deemed unsatisfactory, and at Shree Vardhan Tower after it was determined that security at the Antilia was too high to film there.

Casting

Washington, Pattinson, and Debicki were cast in March 2019. Each of them was only permitted to read the screenplay while locked in a room. Nolan chose Washington based on his performance in ''BlacKkKlansman'' (2018). Washington kept diaries in which he expanded the Protagonist's backstory. Pattinson took some of Neil's mannerisms from political journalist and author Christopher Hitchens. Kat was originally going to be an older woman, but Debicki's appearance in '' Widows'' (2018) convinced the filmmakers otherwise.

The casting of Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh was announced as filming started. Kapadia's screen test was put together by director Homi Adajania while working on his 2020 film ''Angrezi Medium''. Caine was only given the pages from the script that included what was filmed on his one day of work. Branagh rescheduled production on his own directorial venture '' Death on the Nile'' (2022) to take his part, claiming to have studied the manuscript more times than any other in his career. Himesh Patel joined the production in August. Martin Donovan's inclusion was revealed in the first trailer for the film.

Design and special effects

Special effects supervisor Scott R. Fisher watched World War II films and documentaries to find reference points for the film that were based in reality. Prop prototypes were often 3D printed. Costume designer Jeffrey Kurland and his team cut and stitched the clothing for the film in the United States, manufacturing it for the main cast and thousands of extras. Production designer Nathan Crowley ordered around thirty military wristwatches from Hamilton Watch Company, each analog with a digital countdown.

Filming

Principal photography, involving a crew that Pattinson estimated at 500 people, began on May 22, 2019, in a soundstage in Los Angeles, and eventually incorporated seven countries—Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Filming in Estonia took place in June and July, with the Linnahall, Pärnu Highway ( E67), and adjacent streets closed to facilitate the production. Kumu Art Museum doubled as the fictional Oslo Freeport. Barbara's office was built in a former law court, the Tallinn Freeport exterior was at the city docks, and a room at the Hilton Tallinn Park Hotel was also utilized. Mayor of Tallinn Mihhail Kõlvart expressed concerns about potential disruptions, as the shooting schedule required that the arterial Laagna Road be closed for one month. A compromise was eventually reached, involving temporary road closures and detours.

Scenes were shot on the Amalfi Coast (Italy) and at Cannon Hall (United Kingdom) from July to August, and on the roof of the Oslo Opera House, at The Thief hotel (Norway), and in Rødbyhavn

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