TENET: It hasn't happened yet.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Leah Cim. I am a time detective from the year 2064. I have just finally gotten around to watching Christopher Nolan’s 2020 summer blockbuster, TENET, and I would like to review it for you.

I will do my best not to spoil this movie. But, as I think you know, the beginning of the film is actually the end, the end is actually the middle, and the middle is actually the first half of Denis Villaneuve’s Enemy in reverse order. 

You can’t talk about this movie without talking about Robert Pattinson. You guys don’t know this yet, but Mr. Pattinson is now a very famous restauranteur married to Laura Dern’s animated memories. TENET is his last and greatest performance. He plays a character named Rehpotsirc Nalon who is constantly receiving - but not heeding - advice from the still living actor, Michael Caine.

Pattinson’s mother in the film has lost her mind because the light has gone from her world and he must retrieve the light through recreating life with time magic. Little did the actors know, that upon viewing the film, the language of time was taught to my grandfather, a movie reviewer in his own right. This phenomenon caused him to start “Billy Pilgriming” as he called it. 

People hated it. 

He was always interrupting people at parties saying things like, “Whoa. Sorry you guys I just Billy Pilgrimmed.” Then he would get this far off look as if he was walking into the fucking garden of fucking Gethsemane. It would have been tragic if any part of his life was considered tragic. But it wasn’t. 

Anyways, it turns out that all of Mr. Nolan’s films can be used as a Rosetta Stone for some sci-fi shit if you look closely enough. Interstellar lets you transcend space, Memento teaches you how to have an internal dialogue, and Inception gets you high. I have mastered all these skills by absorbing the lessons of these films like my ancestor before me. This has made me the most formidable intellect of the century. My nemesis, the wretched and bastardly, Snikrep, is no match for my… I digress.

Hoyte Van Hoytema enchants as Nolan’s cinematographer again. Van Hoytema likes to shoot action from a distance when the stakes are highest, thus making the audience feel helpless and at times engendering an urge to call out to the doomed characters on screen. This makes him an excellent collaborator with Nolan, whose scripts often paint concepts as antagonists. The spectre of inevitability is ever present.

Ah and such is our time together inevitably coming to a close. I can feel myself Billy Pilgriming into an intense chase sequence in Chinatown. Whoops! I hope you enjoy TENET as much as I will!