TENET directed by Christopher Nolan (UK/USA, 2020)
Up till now there has been plenty to celebrate in the movies of Christopher Nolan. With his redefining of Batman as The Dark Knight and visually striking films like Dunkirk, Interstellar and Inception he has established himself as a director whose films are made to be appreciated on the big screen. Streaming may provide the same information, but the spectacle is lost.
Nolan’s are the type of movies that Mark Cousins, in The Story of Film, spoke of as transforming the viewers experience and expectations from the ‘want see’ into the ‘can see’. In other words, the action is not limited by what is possible but transformed and expanded into a world of limitless possibilities.
The release of Nolan’s latest move, Tenet, was delayed to coincide with the end of Covid-19 restrictions and the media has gone into hype-drive pitching Nolan as a kind of savior of the multiplex. It’s a pity therefore that it is easily his worst movie to date and far from being the masterpiece we had good reason to hope for. Continue reading
Boardwalk Empire may have been set in the 1920s but what it has to say about megalomania and wheeler-dealing has strong resonances in today’s squalid political climate.
