Tenet (Slight Spoiler Warning!!!): "Don't try to understand it. Feel it."

The much anticipated offering from visionary director Christopher Nolan stays true to his signature style and manages to boggle the mind perhaps even more than it's predecessors prompting the question "How complex is too complex?" when it comes to cinema.

Tenet follows the story of 'The Protagonist' played by John David Washington, a CIA agent who is tasked with finding the source of certain 'inverted' objects that have been popping up in our world and could possibly be linked to a cataclysmic event that would mean the end of our world as we know it.

Along the way he meets a mysterious rookie agent played by everyone's favorite sparkly vampire and future Batman, Robert Pattinson (yes I know he is a fantastic actor now) who aides him in his quest to save the world. The main antagonist of the movie is soon revealed to be a Russian oligarch by the name of Andrei Sator (you know he's evil because he owns a yacht) portrayed by actor Kenneth Branagh.

**Spoilers Ahead!**

Though the central plot of the film may seem familiar to many, Nolan uses the concept of time expertly with certain events taking place in a forward moving linear fashion as is the norm and certain other events happening backwards. This conundrum is further compounded with the introduction of a concept that is referred to as a 'Temporal Pincer Movement', a military tactic where one team moves forward towards a particular moment in time while the other team moves towards it backwards.

**Spoilers Ended!**

Now as complicated as all that seems, it still begs the question, "Is Tenet actually good?". In my humble opinion, I believe that yes it is a good movie with a very ambitious plot, solid acting performances, tense action sequences, great direction and a decent musical score by Ludwig Goransson (Miss you Hans Zimmer). Although one thing that definitely irked me here was the absence of the 'Eureka' moment that has become a signature of Nolan films where he neatly explains the entire movie in a scene or series of scenes to the audience and we then get to enjoy the warm feeling of comprehension, knowing that we can henceforth flaunt our superior intellects in the faces of our peers and colleagues.

Tenet provides momentary glimpses of clarity and with it sparks of Nolan's brilliance, but they are few and far between, making it a film that requires a rewatch (or three) to fully appreciate it's mind bending plot and the vision of the mad genius behind it.

To sum up, there is nothing more perfect than the words of Clémence Poesy's character in the film who says to the protagonist, "Don't try to understand it. Feel it." and that is Tenet in a nutshell. Christopher Nolan has always trusted his audience to maybe not fully understand his films but to experience them as the unique gems that they are and which Tenet can definitely claim to be.

Verdict - 5/4 Inversions

Downside - Complexity of the plot even more so than usual.

Similar to - Previous Nolan works like Inception and Memento but a wholly unique concept on its own.

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