#16 Tenet

January 16, 2021
Tenet (2020) **
Secret Movie Club Drive- In
$31
Movies From 2020

The Secret Movie Club Drive-In, after taking some time off for the holidays, is back, baby! It is my greatest joy, to see a movie in public, safely, once a week, and to see my friend, Blake, masked, in the car, with the windows open. The best! Well, obviously the best would be no pandemic and armchair seating, but we take what we get in 2021.

There are usually three or four movies to choose from, and this week, one of them was Tenet, which sold out almost immediately, as everyone is super excited to see a new-ish movie on the big screen. I had heard some mixed things about it, but I was really looking forward to it.

Back in 2010, Blake and I were roommates in NJ and ran a theatre company together in NY, and when Inception opened, we were so excited to see it, that we went to a 9a or 10a screening at the AMC on 42nd St. after having been up all night, building a set. Literally awake for 24 hours, we saw Inception. I wondered if it would make sense, but I thought it did, and when I saw it again a few days later, after a good night’s sleep, I found that I did. It was so well-constructed that one could follow that twisty plot even under those circumstances.

You might guess where I’m going with this. I not only slept very well, I even had a nap before seeing Tenet. The conditions were perfect. About 15 minutes in, I said to Blake, “Do you have any idea what is going on?” “Nope!” he answered. Thank goodness we were in a car and not at a movie theatre, because I kept wondering aloud what the hell was happening, or saying aloud where we were in the plot in order to orient myself.

Also, this would have been much better to watch at home, if only to have the subtitles on. Everyone was clearly directed to speak in a monotone, and then half the time, the dialogue was buried in the sound mix. Why don’t you want us to hear what they are saying, Christopher Nolan?

And then, when we did hear what was going on, over and over again the characters would just be explaining the plot to each other. The same exchange happened about ten times, “Do you know what such and such is?” “Yes, it’s the thing with the something and the something else.” “And also the other thing and the whatsit.” One time someone said, “Do you know what such and such is?” and the answer was no! I practically fell over in shock.

At one point I just started laughing hysterically at my own confusion, “Why are they going to Oslo?” I howled, “And how is there 45 minutes left of this movie?” I was pretty sure that not only were the people in the movie going backwards in time, but us in the audience were, too.

I kept saying that what the movie needed was Tom Hardy in Inception, a burst of energy and delight, and I wasn’t until the end of the movie that I realized that that was the Robert Pattinson character, if only Nolan had let him be that way.

Not good. So not good.