A Haunting in Venice

A Haunting We Will Go/A Haunting We Will Go/Hi-Ho-Confuse Poirot/A-Haunting We Will Go

or

"Lighten Up, Pal! You Might Have Fun!"
 

It is 1947. "World's greatest detective" Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), he of fusty ways (oh god, they haul out the "egg joke" again!) and the elaborate mustache—that looks like superimposed Aston Martin/Bentley logos—is in retirement. In Venice. "A gorgeous relic sinking into the sea" compares mystery novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), who has skipped the long line of desperate potential clients waiting outside his door to tempt Poirot with a case which just might revivify her career after three critically-panned books. 

 

Poirot will have none of it. A veteran of the first World War (as was shown in the previous film, Death on the Nile), he has lived long enough to see that its reputation as "the war to end all wars" has proved false and, having seen too much of death, has foregone his profession to ease the strain on his little grey cells. But, Oliver is persistent, and so he joins her on Hallowe'en night to the palazzo of opera star Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly) to witness a festive party for local Venician children, and, for an adult after-party, a seance performed by the medium Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh) to try to quell the spirits haunting the Drake place, one of whom might be Rowena's daughter Alicia, who died "under mysterious circumstances" years before.

"Under mysterious circumstances" may be overstating, as the girl drowned in a city that is nothing but waterfront property—sort of like being surprised when there's an explosion at a munitions factory ("Non-smoking? Who knew?"). I'm just saying that the Venice polizia usually don't ask "cause of death?" as they fish another tourist out of the canal. That aside, there is some question as to whether Alicia's death was a suicide or an accident or...was it murder?

Poirot, he does not care. He's there to expose the medium using his powers of observation and his absolute disbelief in the supernatural ("scary stories make life less scary"), suspecting that some grift will ensue from the proceedings. His convictions are only solidified when Alicia's former fiancee Maxime Gerard (
Kyle Allen) arrives after a mysterious invitation is sent his way so many months after the tragedy. Also in attendance is the family's doctor Leslie Ferrier and his son Leopold (Jamie Dornan and Jude Hilll, who played father and son in Branagh's Belfast) and the housekeeper Olga Seminoff (Camille Cottin), all of whom figured in the care-taking of the daughter before her death. It all seems very neat and tidy.

The seance is anything but. It's a convincing show, with Reynolds going into a trance, speaking in the dead girl's voice, spinning in place and with messages appearing on a typewriter ("I think of myself more of a secretary than anything" says Reynolds), seemingly written by "the lost girl from beyond." Nature conspires with the supernatural as a violent thunderstorm permeates the whole procedure. But, the mysteries linger on with Poirot nearly killed bobbing for apples (true!), strange voices permeating the house, flashes of the dead girl from beyond, and...a couple of grisly murders most foul.

A Haunting in Venice is based on Dame Agatha Christie's 1969 novel "Hallowe'en Party" and in much the same way that later James Bond movies are based on Ian Fleming novels—that is, not very. Scenarist Michael Green (he's done the scripts for all of Branagh's Poirot films as well as Logan and Blade Runner 2049) has retained some of the names, but murdered Christie's plot and hatched one of his own (mind you, all with the tacit approval of the Christie Estate). Although it ties up all physical loose ends, it ends up with an implicit endorsement of the supernatural (if only in sub-text, but is rather jarring when its chief detective is committed to exposing the charlatan exploiters of the belief, and a couple of glaring motivations amidst a couple of suspects.

Perhaps because he knew the weakness of the script, Branagh the director works overtime establishing an atmosphere that disorients and distracts. His compositions are full of dutch angles and high and low shots, fish-eye lenses, and full of conversations with askance sight-lines. That's not "normal" film-making (and by that I mean "professional" film-making that obeys "all the rules" and creates a comfortable-to-the-eye-and-mind viewing experience). Branagh's choices are Wellesian in their disregard for viewer comfort; discomfiture is actually key to making the film work. By setting audiences "on edge" and making things look "off" you can get away with a lot of chicanery in a burst of style over substance.

That may sound dismissive, but Branagh has typically been a director of verisimilitude—making things look real. Here, he deliberately makes things surreal, claustrophobic and, often, acrophobic (which is a lot of work!), but it breaks a cardinal rule—never call attention to your directing (a rule too often ignored by beginning film-makers.) The result is so showy and over-the-top that one just might forget the story-line for all the sights to see.

In this case, it's a good strategy. The script is a let-down, full of incident and the occasional zinger of a line, but too convenient and incredulous simultaneously to make a well-conceived plot both among the movie's conspirators and behind-the-scenes in the writer's room. Branagh's work and collaboration with cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos (he's done Branagh's last few films...AND Meg 2: The Trench), however, overcompensates to a degree that one feels that one has seen a real show, full of acrobatics and elephants in the room (and one abrasive cockatoo!) to marvel at, even if the little grey cells are not entirely engaged and unconvinced.

It sure looks good, even if it's as insubstantial as a ghost. 

Oppenheimer

Ch-Cha-Chain (Reactions) of Fools

or

Fallout: If the Radioactive Doesn't Get Ya, The Political Will 

 

I took a course in college called "The History of the Atomic Bomb," so I already knew about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, and Lester Groves, and Edward Teller, and Enrico Fermi, and Niels Bohr, and Richard Feynman. Our best and brightest...as well as Germany's best and brightest, having escaped the Nazis.

I've listened to the plays, seen previous adaptations, know the story backwards and forwards. I got a C+ on my final paper around the subject of "Should we have dropped the bomb on Japan?" (I don't remember which side I took, but I believe it was favoring the Demonstration scenario).

 

But, I've been interested in seeing Oppenheimer, because I wanted to see what director Christopher Nolan would do with it. J. Robert Oppenheimer led a life that could have filled a few movies, but Nolan has compressed it into one three hour film, with the highs and the lows, and of the parallel tracks and rippling occurrences that underscored and undercut his career, and made the man who oversaw the construction of an atomic bomb from theory to reality become a pariah to the very country he handed it to on a desperately sizzling platter.

And Nolan in the past has been a wizard of sorts playing with the possibilities of story-telling and film-making, and juggling and parsing scenarios so as to create  adrenaline-generating third acts that brings everything together for a thematic jolt. One could say he creates these puzzles in the editing room, if the conceits of the films weren't so inextricably linked to the construction.

But, here, Nolan keeps it rather simple: two stories running parallel to each other, both involving hearings on their subject matters. They're sub-titled 1: "Fission" (in which atoms are split): in color, involving an older Oppenheimer in 1954 being grilled by a back-room secreted committee over whether he would retain his top security clearance; 2: "Fusion" (in which atoms are combined): in black and white, involving the very public hearing of Lewis Strauss to become Secretary of Commerce in Eisenhower's cabinet in 1959.

Two seemingly unrelated stories, but tied together so deeply that to split the two would be like splitting atoms, as they both deal with brilliance, arrogance, ego, and their limitations. There couldn't be one story without the other. And just as you can't have a nuclear explosion without fallout, both men—Oppenheimer and Strauss—would learn of consequences, that will haunt them to the end of their days.

Nolan starts the movie with a peaceful image—rain falling in water—but, as serene as it is, it's the natural image to describe the film. Just as rain falling will ripple out in concentric circles, actions will have reactions and those will spread without much control, a chain reaction that will only dissipate until it runs out of energy. And Oppenheimer is a film interrupted with small moments—a spark, a ripple, the sound of stamping feet, a line of poetry—that will echo throughout the film as mysterious fragments until we see them in context and realize their importance to the whole, like little figments of conscience that haunt until they are reasoned into clarity.

We see the the path of Oppenheimer (brilliantly played by Cillian Murphy) to Los Alamos—a terrain he loves ("If I could combine physics with New Mexico, my life will be perfect"), through European studies—he gives lectures in Dutch—meeting the great minds of physics—Heisenberg, Bohr—then re-enters the U.S. to teach at Berkeley, hoping to initiate a field of study in quantum physics, which starts with one student, then many. Concerned with unionizing the colleges for faculty and techs, he flirts with the Communist Party, but, does more with one of their members, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), who will challenge him, mystify him, and ultimately be used against him.

He marries Kitty Puening (Emily Blunt), has a child, and although he's playing with things nuclear, he can't seem to manage a nuclear family. He's approached by General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) to lead the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear bomb before the Nazis, and although Groves knows Oppenheimer's leftist leanings, he still wants "Oppie" to lead the project—"I wonder if you could tell me how the Army would treat a humble physicist" "I would if I ever met one"—and as part of the project, Oppenheimer figures out the best rail-access for delivering fissionable material from three corners of the country and winds up with New Mexico, isolated, empty of population and surveillance, to build something that is only a theory...before the Nazi's do. "We have one advantage," Oppenheimer tells Groves. "Antisemitism." Germany has driven out its top nuclear physicists.

Well, you know the story. We've all lived in a world with constant nuclear brinksmanship, and the few souls who remember a time before "The Bomb" are dying off. We're used to it now (which seems inconceivable to me) and we're at a time of such complacency that you still hear mentions on the news of "nuclear options" and "tactical nukes." But, Oppenheimer takes us back to a time when the Atom Bomb was not only apocalyptic, but also inconceivable. At the time of its creation, there were a lot of "unknowables" about the Bomb. All they knew was that it would be big and cause a lot of destruction in a wide area—a city destroyer. But, at the time of the Trinity test, nobody knew if the chain reaction in the air would stop or if it would keep feeding on itself, incinerating the area, and possibly more. And, they didn't know anything about fallout.

The fallout—of all kinds—is the new thing here. With the responsibility of building a weapon with so much destructive power—with the complete agency of the government to do it—comes with it the emergence of those who see that power and covet it. And this is where the Strauss story comes in. Played quite amazingly by Robert Downey Jr., Lewis Strauss is a political operative and functionary, whose ego cannot merely appreciate the accomplishments of Oppenheimer and his team, so he must control it, harness it, and by doing so, subvert it to his own ends. As Oppenheimer did to nuclear fission, Strauss does to Oppenheimer and does so with a cold-blooded zeal. And given Oppenheimer's past propensity to fill any intellectual void with affairs and radical politics, Strauss is given the very weapons needed to undermine any attempts to prevent the scientist's efforts to keep the destructive genie contained, slowing nuclear proliferation and ever-increasing mega-tonnage. "Amateurs chase the sun and get burned," Strauss says at one point "Power stays in the shadows."

Oppenheimer is a solid three hours long, packed pillar to post with detail and small roles by very good actors—Nolan newbies like Rami Malek, Casey Affleck, Alden Ehrenreich, Josh Hartnett, James Remar, Jason Clarke, and vets of past films like Kenneth Branagh, David Dastmalchian, Matthew Modine, Tom Conti, Gary Oldman—and one may begin to think that the Strauss story gets a bit superfluous and should even be cut, but it is essential to the story and theme of how one man can make a difference, for good, evil or both. And of how power corrupts—even the pursuit of power corrupts—and though one may blaze with brilliance like a nuclear flash, it is not self-perpetuating...and fades...even if it consumed by itself.

Yeah, I took a course in college. But, you learn something new every day...if you're doing it right.

 

Nolan wrote the screenplay, based on the 2005 biography "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" and starts with these apt words: "Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity."

The haunted gaze of the elder Oppenheimer

—a look both accusing and guilty

Death on the Nile (2022)

Too Heiress Human

or

"It's Nor Just a River in Egypt, Honey..."
 

We talked about the John Guillermin version of Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile" last year in anticipation of this year's release. The story's not one of Dame Agatha's best and is the weakest part of the film, which relies heavily on trying to repeat the success of the earlier all-star Murder on the Orient Express, but with fewer A-listers and an eye to luring the older audiences who flocked to Murder... with older stars like Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, and Peter Ustinov.

 

Well, now Kenneth Branagh follows up his version of Murder on the Orient Express with his version of Death on the Nile (given this route, can Evil Under the Sun be next?), which fixes some things from the earlier version—mostly performance—adds a little tension with a limited time-frame, as well as giving Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Branagh and his mustache again) more of an emotional reason to solve the murder, rather than merely see justice done and the puzzle solved. It has already been well established in the Branagh version of Christie's world that Poirot prefers a tidier world, but, evidently, that is not enough.

Nor is it enough, apparently, that Poirot has a particularly fussy mustache—more than Ms. Christie implied and it was obsessed over in many reviews of Branagh's Murder—now we must know why it is. Necessary? No. But, at least in the opening black and white sequence which shows a particularly glorious and tragic day in Poirot's WWI service, we get to meet Catherine, whose history was hinted at in the previous Murder... Again, none of this is Christie's creation, but if it keeps Branagh engaged, then scripter Michael Green can play with the elements all he wants.

And play he does. Eliminating book characters, substituting others and swapping attributes from one character to another. The basic mystery is the same—a person is murdered on a closed stage—a ship going down the Nile—and no one goes missing and the obvious person with a motive has an airtight, can't-get-by-it alibi, and Poirot must find the killer before the ship docks and they disembark, the culprit possibly to go loose. The only thing helping in determining "whodunnit" is that two of the suspects are also murdered before the issue is solved. Process of elimination had to occur somewhere.

This is it in very general, non-spoilery turns, because the way Branagh and Green set it up, surprises come early and often, whether you've read the book or seen the earlier versions, and they're done in quite inventive ways that would have put Dame Agatha in a dead faint. It is for sure that she would not have approved of the steamy, sweaty dance sequences that open the film proper, not would she have approved of turning one of the passengers from a gossipy (and drunk) romance novelist to an African-American blues chanteuse* (Sophie Okonedo). The socialist on the boat is no longer a radical, but a member of the upper class (Jennifer Saunders), and there are no kleptomaniacs this time, but there is no longer a jewel thief being pursued by a friend and fellow-passenger of Poirot.

That role gets substituted by Poirot pal Bouc (Tom Bateman), back from the Murder... film, and this time accompanied by his mother Euphemia (Annette Bening), who just happens to be a friend of the family on the celebratory but doomed boat trip; in fact, everybody has some relation with the happy couple—they being Linnett and Simon Doyle (Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer), she being the heiress of the super-rich Ridgeway family. 

So, why is Poirot there? Well, that's one of those spoilery secrets unique to this version—although I can say that the happy Doyle's have asked Poirot for his assistance, as they are being stalked by Simon's former fiance Jacqueline de Bellefort (Emma Mackey), who it seems can't let go. They think she's off her nut, and things get dangerous when Simon and Linnett escape being crushed at Abu Simbel. The thing is: "Jackie" hasn't arranged to smuggle herself on the boat yet and crash the party.

The production is lush, and perhaps too much so. The vista is given the full CGI treatment where everything looks so picture-postcard perfect that it feels like it was photographed in Egypt's uncanny valley—there doesn't even appear to be dust in the air, no grit (unusual in a desert environment), no one even sweats in the heat (certainly as much as they do on the dance floor), and there is a distinct difference between underwater shots of the Nile being dragged for clues, and the shots below the boat suggesting the carnivorous nature of life below the surface—there's plenty to show it on the ship, so the pixelated watery detours are completely unnecessary. And the film has a fetish for the Gilded Age right down to the glistening silverware and the sheen on a champagne bottle, lit as carefully as the stars.

And they're good, by the way. Branagh has some moments to flex his acting muscles with both comedy and tragedy masks. Gadot and Hammer are terrific (rumors to the contrary) and Emma Mackey's jilted fiancee simmers to a broil without the full-on hissy-fits that Mia Farrow brought to the 1978 version. Letitia Wright gets to play some drama, instead of playing "the sprite" (and she's great at it), Okonedo pleasantly threatening, Russell Brand just fine without relying on comedy, Jennifer Saunders delightfully brassy along with Dawn French, and Annette Bening a highlight, probably better than is called for.

Branagh direction is a bit stagey and geometric, keeping in mind a proscenium arch throughout as if the curtain just lifted. And the geometry extends to some almost too-perfect tracking shots that would make you suspect Wes Anderson was directing (if you didn't know any better). That being said, his version of a John Woo Mexican standoff lacks the tension that one should expect, except to wonder why there are so many guns allowed during international travel. Maybe it's movies like this that convinced the cruise lines to ban them.

In fact, the movie is a bit like a cruise trip—superficially opulent, until you realize you're stuck on a boat with people you don't like, and you swear to never do it again. But, then there's the lure to get away. Death on the Nile gets away with a lot.

* Dame Agatha was never afraid to use the "n-word" and in fact one of her most famous works contained the word in the title, before it was changed to something equally racist (in today's terms) at the hands of the publisher's, lest sales were hurt. (And you thought "cancel culture" was a new thing? It's been around as long as evolution).

Belfast

In Memory Yet Green (with Flecks of Orange)

or

"I'm Going Nowhere You Can't Find Me" ("All We Need to Survive is a Phone, a Pint, and the Sheet-Music to 'Danny Boy'")

 

Stevedores glow orange in an overcast dawn, looming over the port that shows no signs of life. They hover and oversee everything, reflected in warehouse windows and altering the horizon. They watch over the streets and houses—obvious signs of life as God never plans in straight lines. Then, we start to see walls with scrawls, graffiti decorating the barriers, making them their own or just making them a little less obtrusive, obstructive. 

 

Then the camera settles on a barricade with a collection of faces—dirty, bandaged, hatted—men-folk gathered, but whether they're coming home exhausted, or gathering with malice is a little hard to say. We move up the faces and over the wall, and it's like it's been protecting something. We see an alleyway filled with kids playing, kicking balls, playing knights, but they're in black-and-white. It's like the wall we flew over has scraped away the color, leaving the scene beyond in the bleached shades of a dream...or a memory.

Movies can have thesis statements embedded in them. The first image can be a summing up in some abstract way of what will come after. But, that opening sequence of Kenneth Branagh's Belfast (and, really, that's how it should be called) is as good a thesis as any I've seen. The city may be titular, but it's just bricks and mortar, water and fire, dirt and smoke, the frame. It's the people who make the memory—the city will always appear smaller than it did. But, the people will forever loom large.

August, 1969. Man has landed on the Moon. But, Earth is "the same old place." Buddy (Jude Hill) is a happy nine year old doing battle with a stick-sword and a garbage-lid shield, fighting dragons when he's called in for tea by his mother (Caitriona Balfe). He's having a good time, the street's busy with residents with their "halloo's" and banter so it's only natural that Buddy has a longer travel-time than what a bee-line home would normally take a human being. Just enough delay to get him in a fix. A gang of Protestants enter at the end of the mixed Protestant-Catholic street and start yelling for the Catholics to get out. First, they throw threats, then rocks, then molotov cocktails, then they roll a car with a burning rag in the gas intake.

And Buddy's in the midst of it. And like any nine year old not in charge he freezes, gaping at something new. What are they yelling at HIM for? He's Protestant! But, Ma sees him and, like a banshee, she grabs him, and the garbage can lid becomes a shield for reals as the rocks come flying and she takes her burden and herself back to the door they live behind and slam it and lock it and dive for the floor to avoid any flying glass. Play-time is over. A battle has come to Belfast and it's not an easy game of heroes and bad guys. It's too complicated for a child to understand. To say nothing of the adults.

Where's Da (Jamie Dornan)? He works in England during the week and comes home most often on weekends. So, the day-to-day is left to Ma—the bill-paying, the wondering where the money comes from, the avoiding the rent-man, the raising of Buddy and his older brother Will (Lewis McAskie)—and the making the peace when they've been "up to something" in the neighborhood, and when Da comes home there is the "adult talk" about things the kids don't understand or don't care about because they're so wrapped up in the "now."

Things like the newly-installed barbed wire (which becomes a foreground object through which Branagh shows life), the night patrols, the buzzing of helicopters, the increasing frailties of his parents (Ciaràn Hinds and Judi Dench, both photographed so you see ever seam earned in their faces) and that Da might have possibilities for a better paying, more steady job in England—but it would keep him away longer and he wants his family with him, if only the wife and kids didn't want to stay right where they are.

In the "now." Family is around them, there's a community—sure it's a "mixed" community, but the only ones making anything of it are the thugs and enforcers—there's school—with the cute girl in the class—and TV and movies...and home. The only home the kids have known and they're too young to know that "home" is as transmutable as the future. Or that "home" is changing right before their eyes. It's hard to see when one hasn't had much of a past.

Branagh's film is obviously made of love, living between nostalgia and fear, adult and child, and never completely resigning them into a fixed whole. One can forgive him for keening over into the precious—the "too-perfect" occasional shot, breaking the the use of color at movie images and stage productions (Branagh's dream-homes), and a confrontation scene that could have gone without its musical accompaniment (but we are talking about a child's eye view of it, so....myth?). But, forgive it, because despite its crisp photography, this is a film of filters and scrims of the mind, ultimately, not the HD precision of documentary. It's built of memory and bricks and stones and heart. And it relates to anybody oppressed, anybody in fear, and anybody who's been a child...or a parent. It's certainly the best film Branagh has made in years, and it's certainly among his personal best.

 

Fair play to him.

 

Tenet

Ohmigosh, it's a new movie...in a THEATER!

En-tropical Adventure ("Well, Try and Keep Up")
or
We Live in a Twilight World ("And There Are No Friends who Understand This Movie, Either")

Christopher Nolan finally gets to do his "James Bond" movie, but—being Christopher Nolan—it had to be with a twist. In this case it's the twist you find in a möbius strip for his "Yeah, you can only release this in theaters" spy/sci-fi hybrid Tenet.

And, yeah, at least for the first four/five viewings, it should only be seen in theaters. Having access to a "Rewind" button would only confuse the issue. Plus, the details...the details...some things will get lost on a small screen given some of the intricacies going on, and at times the film is so disorienting that a large screen will make you a bit more sure of what you're seeing.

Nolan likes to stretch the underpinnings of his movies, fracturing time-lines, setting up nesting dolls of narratives, and investigating the possibilities of the image and editing while maintaining a forward momentum. Here, though, he has it both ways.

The film begins with a terrorist attack on a Ukrainian opera house, the perpetrators appearing from the stage as if part of the performance. How they planned all this without somebody noticing off-site that a major counter-terrorist operation was being set up in the general area is one of those post-"Dark Knight" "just-go-with-it" sleights of hand that directors have been taking advantage of when going for spectacle rather than logic. But, Tenet is so full of such things that it would be better to switch one's mind off if one is to experience any enjoyment out of this.

During this sequence, Nolan has one train going forward and one back.
It's a sort of subliminal training for what we're about to see.

 

The operation is two-fold: the extraction of a personage from the scene and the retrieval of stolen plutonium and the situation is so dire that the agent we're focused on—played by John David Washington—basically has to make it up as he goes along. During the raid, he comes to understand that the plutonium is not as it appears and that, at some point, he is nearly shot by a bullet coming out of one of the auditorium steps. Part of his team is captured, and, rather than give anything away, he takes a cyanide pill. He dies.

Short movie.

He wakes up...from a medically-induced coma. He's told that he survived the cyanide...that his jaw has been rebuilt*...but he is officially "dead" and he is to recover and has been chosen for a special assignment as his willingness to take the pill rather than give away secrets makes him a valuable asset. A further briefing tells him there WAS no cyanide...("eh?"), but that his devotion and the planned mission are real. He is given a gesture—interlocking fingers—and the word "Tenet" ("It'll open the right doors. Some of the wrong ones, too" he's told in the evasive generalized way that passes for exposition in the film). 

"Is 'bunjee-jumpable' a word?"

He's taken to a facility—for a second briefing—of what his next assignment (his first as a dead man) is, more specifically what the mechanics of the assignment entails. Turns out the issue isn't plutonium, but a possible WWIII is the end-game. This turns out, also, not to be true, not in the strictest sense, but a world-ending scenario is involved. He is shown what caused that little surprise of the backwards-bullet at the Kiev Opera House was all about: that bullet was manufactured in the future with a technology that allows it to move backwards through time by means of its own inverted entropy. If that's confusing, the scientist studying the ammunition has a handy piece of non-advice that will work for the viewer: "Don't try to understand it. Feel it." Especially when you point a weapon and the bullet jumps back into the gun. The kick-back must be intense.

Already, this is a little headache-inducing. But, it would help if we recall an episode of "The Big Bang Theory" (Season 3 Episode 22—"The Staircase Implementation") and Section 9 from Dr. Sheldon Cooper's Roommate Agreement: If one of the roommates ever invents Time Travel, the first stop has to aim exactly five seconds after this clause of the Roommate Agreement was signed. "Well, that's disappointing..." is Sheldon's reply when nobody shows up. If you laugh at that, you might be alright.

Our Man in Confusion meets up with a British intelligence operative, Neil (Robert Pattinson), who helps him meet up with an arms dealer who gives him the low-down—the man who's behind (or in front of) all this reverse-entropy stuff is a Russian oligarch named Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) who has seen the future and wants to exploit it to his own ends. The Protagonist (as he's called in the credits, but the arms-dealer tells him "You're the fresh-faced Protagonist, and you're as fresh as a daisy" so I will call him "Daisy") is told that he can get to Sator through his wife, Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), who is kept in a bad marriage by her error in selling Sator a fake Goya. 

That is all the story I want to relate, because at this point...or later...or earlier (I'm not sure which) my understanding—or my willingness to understand—started to get a little hazy. My appreciation for what I was seeing didn't dampen, because the logistics and the talent to pull these things off (imagine if you will a "Bourne" type fight where one fighter is moving forwards and "the other" is moving backwards) and you begin to shake your head in wonder at the logistics needed to imagine, let alone carry off, such a sequence. There's a chase down a freeway involving cars moving forwards and backwards that is as twisty and GPS-frying as all get-out, and the final showdown with troops advancing and retreating (backwards) simultaneously has to be seen to believe.

"What happened here?" "It hasn't happened yet."

Or not. One of the stipulations for the production of Tenet is that all the explosions and practical effects had to be practical—in other words, no CGI—things had to really happen. So, yes, troops are running forwards into battle-areas where explosions are reverse-sucking into the ground. Fights happen forward and in reverse. Why, Branagh even had to learn to speak backwards (with a Russian accent, yet...or "nyet"). It's all done for real, so that when things are reversed, it's the real deal backwards. This still produces a feeling of visual deja vu, where you begin to suspect everything of being reversed...at least looking for tell-tale wisps of smoke not rising, but falling.

It's happening...

It's disorienting...like a kind of "magical seeing" where thinking doesn't come into it because that would lead to some sort of synaptic anarchy that would make you distrust the simple action of putting popcorn in your mouth. At one point, "Daisy" is seen doing his customary pull-ups on a ship going backwards—he's been reversed temporally but the ships are going forwards, obviously, because that is what they do. But, from our perspective (which is constantly his) the ships are going backwards, reversing into their own wakes. Okay, but if he's inverted and doing everything backwards, what does he eat? How does he eat?Is there enough negative entropic infrastructure that they have entropic meals? At least, reverse Tang? And if everything he experiences is working backwards, I don't even want to think about how the toilets work!

Kenneth Branagh counting backwards...or is it forwards?

This leads to an audience-disconnect where you begin to suspect everything in the film of being untrue...or at least, the natural order of things. The Daniel Craig Bond's have made an entire through-line of its hero learning not to trust anything, not even his past...but, at least, he's still got his senses. Most movies endeavor—from their core—to create a belief in their reality; "Ignore the crewman out of frame with the pastry in his hand, this is true." Yes, there is music—from an unseen orchestra—and we're directing your point of view, so you don't see the reality we don't want you to see, but we're trying to make this as real as possible. Nolan is making as radical a move in breaking "the rules" as when Hitchcock killed off his leading lady half-way through Psycho: He's trying to make the "real" fantastical, in a way the Wachowski's with their computers couldn't with the Matrix movies.

It is mind-bending. And revolutionary. But, then Nolan has always played with the rules and mechanics of film, both in terms of story-telling and in its expectations. He can leave an audience gob-smacked...and deceived. Sometimes both, simultaneously.

Here's the same car-flip backwards and forwards...hope they called insurance before.

I don't know how advisable it is to question or not question the mechanics of what goes on here. In an era of "deep-fakes," one should always be suspicious of "face-value" and just not take things as they appear. Nor, can I interpret the measure of enjoyment you'll have in the movie if it doesn't make any sense. "Seeing is believing" is the old saw, and though I accepted the images, there was the doubter in my mind that kept kibitzing through the movie saying "that just wouldn't work." The answer, in retort, is to recall Hitchcock's rejoinder—"it's only a moovie."  

At least, Tenet is entertaining enough that you don't want to re-live those 2 1/2 hours...backwards or forwards.

Here's a shot from the battle-climax of Tenet:
Take a moment and think about what you're seeing here.
It looks spectacular...but is it possible?

* Yeah, that's usually not how potassium cyanide works—unless you've seen Skyfall.