Tenet is Christopher Nolan’s most underrated movie – and better than Inception

Christopher Nolan returns to cinemas this weekend with his highly anticipated epic The Odyssey, and it has received some of the best reviews of his career.

It is an exciting offering from the celebrated filmmaker coming off his Oscar-winning Oppenheimer, with movie fans keen to see how it’ll rank among their favourite Nolan efforts.

From The Dark Knight trilogy to Interstellar, The Prestige and, of course, Inception, many fans bang the drum for their favourite Nolan movies, but one you’ll rarely hear at the top of fans’ lists is his 2020 timey-wimey action flick, Tenet. 

There’s good reason for that; he’s made better movies. But Tenet is arguably his most underrated and, for my money, is superior to his much more celebrated and beloved 2010 sci-fi movie Inception.

First off, don’t get me wrong, I like both Inception and Tenet. 

Inception is what you can regard as Nolan’s first blank-check movie, having made a billion dollars for Warner Bros with 2008’s The Dark Knight, which gave him carte blanche to make whatever he fancied next. 

The resulting blockbuster is a mix of grounded action and character drama, set against the backdrop of a tantalising high concept: that of implanting ideas into people’s dreams by entering their subconscious, with the stakes rising the deeper our gang of dream robbers go.

It was a massive hit and has gone on to rightfully have iconic status thanks to its inventive visuals and Hans Zimmer’s bravissimo score. 

But there has always been a bit of a roadblock for me in embracing it as top-tier Nolan. While its concept allows for many standout sequences, Nolan’s pragmatism often limits his own imagination. 

There are so many rules to the world-building in its set-up, and then even more rules are put on top of the ones you’ve already learned the deeper you go.

For something that is set in the world of dreams where the possibilities are limitless, it’s really concerned with setting rigid limits, which can sometimes rob it of some fun and threaten to leave it feeling a bit cold.

Enter Tenet.  

Inception is a movie that is so worried about making sure you know how everything works. Tenet doesn’t care.

A similar high-concept sci-fi thriller, except this time Nolan takes the guards off and remembers to have a lot more fun with it.

The 2020 movie, which he held for release until cinemas reopened during those most uncertain times in the Covid-19 pandemic, was met with a pretty mixed critical reception (on Rotten Tomatoes it rocks a 70% approval rating vs Inception’s 87%).

Among fans too, it’s had a more lukewarm reception (its audience rating is 76%, Inception boasts 91%), with many pointing towards it being confusing, or as user @RT39405909 writes, ‘a pointless struggle.’

On first watch, I found it bewildering and thrilling. Granted, that may partly have been because it was exciting to be back in a movie theatre, but it was also because of what was up on screen.

I also couldn’t really piece together exactly what it was, but on rewatches I’ve stopped trying to make sense of it all and simply let the spectacle of it wash over me.

The key to enjoying Tenet is laid out very early on, as The Protagonist (John David Washington) is introduced to the concept of time inversion.

He is given one clear instruction from Clémence Poésy’s scientist: ‘Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.’

Its espionage-heavy stylings that evoke a James Bond adventure with gentlemen in beautifully tailored suits travelling the globe are very reminiscent of Inception, except this time it is time inversion, not dreams, that is its fantastical hook.
 
The theme of time has been a hang-up across many of Nolan’s movies, from his very first movie Following, to the playfulness of relativity in Inception and Interstellar, to his unconventional non-linear approaches to narrative with Memento, Dunkirk and Oppenheimer.

Whereas it’s been used to explore deeper feelings and emotions in his other work, in Tenet, Nolan is more simply going: ‘how cool would it look if one part of this fight scene was going backwards?’ And there’s quite a joy in seeing him be so much more playful.

Sure, the plot is absolutely bobbins and nothing really makes much sense if you stop to think too long; but in terms of original visuals, there’s nothing else quite like it in Nolan’s filmography.

Like many of his movies, Tenet is filled with sequences that simply leave you in awe, making you ask ‘just how the hell did they do that!?’

They are all sequences that feel energised by the visual possibilities offered by its concept of time inversion, in a way Inception never quite fully embraces when it comes to its own concept.

From the aforementioned backwards fight scene to a thrilling highway chase to the climactic assault on an abandoned secret Soviet city, Tenet features the best action Nolan has ever put to screen.

There’s much more of a sense of abandon to the set pieces here than there is in Inception, impressive as they are. While it is less emotionally resonant than Inception, it’s never trying to match that level of drama. Instead, this is something sillier, more bombastic and camp.

Here we simply have well-dressed movie stars trying to save the world from a British thespian actor doing a silly accent (God love you, Kenneth Branagh) driven by some of the most original visual spectacle of the last 20 years. And once again it sounds great, with Oscar-winning Ludwig Goransson on scoring duties this time out.

For those who struggled with Tenet when they first watched it – and fancy another fix of Nolan after The Odyssey – I encourage you to give it another spin.

And when you do, make sure you heed Poésy’s words: don’t try to understand it, just feel it. That’s the Tenet way.