I need to be focusing on winding things down and bringing things to an end. I need to face up to what I have to do and just do it. Instead, I'm watching Chris Nolan's Tenet on HBO. I had heard about it being confusing and near-incomprehensible and that's one of the reasons I didn't see it in theaters. The main reason is simply that I don't see movies in theaters anymore, but I was considering it as an exception since Chris Nolan films are meant to be experienced and not just watched, that's why he shoots in IMAX. But why disrupt my dearly-held daily routine and pry myself from my hermit-like existence to experience a movie that I'm not going to understand and will require multiple viewings, yo'm sayin'?
So when I saw it on the HBO schedule (old habit, I really don't watch movies at all anymore) I decided to watch the movie initially without trying to understand or make sense of it, just get the scenes into my eyes. I may have even drifted off once or twice, didn't matter, and I had the TV volume too low – it wasn't my imagination as I later learned the poor sound design of the movie is a recurring complaint. Then before it aired again I binge-watched as many explanatory, expository videos on YouTube as possible to get as good an understanding what was going on for when I watched it again. I don't think it's possible to spoil this movie. If a video didn't say *spoiler alert*, I wouldn't have watched it.
You wouldn't believe how many videos have been made about Tenet. Binge-watch I did and probably watched only about half of what got recommended to me on YouTube. They could be a subgenre of their own. They cover all sorts of things like the timeline, time inversion, the front/backstory plot, who's who as well as who might be who and who's who in what scene and where and who knows what when, etc. They run scenes backwards, forwards and backwards again because like Steven Tyler you don't want to miss a thing, they stitch scenes together chronologically or from character-specific perspectives or from parallel but different time viewpoints. They use graphics, snake diagrams, line drawings, animated 3D renderings, Feynman diagrams, bell curves, sign language, semaphore and finger puppets (OK, calm down, get a grip). I think I spent more time watching Tenet YouTube videos than the running time of the movie. All useful, mind you. Insane, confounding, incomprehensible, but strangely useful and brilliant.
I know, I know, latching onto a movie and exhibiting quasi-obsessed behavior like this is stupid when I'm supposed to be winding things down and bringing them to an end. It's not conducive to lessening ego-attachment and finalizing any realizations about the nature of reality. Maybe it's a vain distraction from all that. Maybe it's something to occupy time during de facto lockdown (which has been extended to mid-July despite daily cases falling under 100 for several days; better safe than sorry and to keep our guard up). Maybe it's a last hoorah reminding me of when I did watch movies quite a lot and held value in them. Silly me thinking I had something to say about movies when kids these days are making videos about them that are far more astute and sophisticated. Even John of the cancer blog wrote an entry towards the end about his love for film and created a video montage of his favorite films. I didn't even know he had the technical facility to make that; I sure don't (although his paltry montage can't compare to the geek-supreme monstrosity that is the collection of my mix-CDs-of-every-year-of-my-life vanity project).
Film for me is one of modern civilization's greatest accomplishments in terms of art and expression. How it encapsulates life and all the many and diverse facets of meaning, subtle and obvious. I'm pretty out of touch with popular movies today and with exceptions generally don't think I'd think very highly of them. I know there is art being created by people who actually have something to say or a vision to express, but those don't reach me.
Christopher Nolan I imagine will enter the pantheon of greatest directors. Tenet? It's definitely art, high-concept art. There are a lot of people calling it a masterpiece and it may be so, but I wouldn't be so quick to bestow that rank on a film that requires multiple viewings to understand, if not hours of explanatory YouTube videos. There's a difference between a film that invites multiple viewings because it's so good and a film that requires multiple viewings to even understand. On the other hand if it's a film that so many people are willing to view multiple times just to understand it, the director is doing something compelling at the least. That I think Tenet is. Still, by no means is it in any way near perfect. There are elements in the concept that are a stretch to work or make sense and that's unsatisfying. For people willing to watch it multiple times to get it, I think one group of viewers will grow to appreciate and love it more and more while another group might still like it, but find perceived faults becoming amplified. I won't venture to guess which category I fall in.
