Rocks In The Attic #933: Ludwig Göransson – ‘Tenet (O.S.T.)’ (2020)

The one true blockbuster movie event of 2020 (discounting Patty Jenkin’s disappointingly tepid Wonder Woman sequel), Christopher Nolan’s Tenet didn’t exactly save the cinema industry like it was supposed to do. But it did show Hollywood that – spoiler alert – a global pandemic isn’t good for box office returns. A gross of $363 million against a budget of $200 million puts the film in the flop category, but what a glorious one.

I’ve seen the film three times now. Firstly on Auckland’s glorious IMAX screen, then a second time at the cinema in its standard format, and finally at home when the film was released digitally. The film’s major flaw – and the barrier for most people – was its terrible sound mix.  Much of the dialogue was difficult to make out in the cinema (in both IMAX and standard formats). Particular scenes, such as the yacht race, or the protagonist’s ferry interchange with arms-dealer Priya, were absolutely unintelligible. Nolan’s advice – delivered as a line in the film – was ‘Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.’; which is quite hard to do with such a mind-bending plot. Nolan later blamed the gripes on an overly-conservative audience, rather than admitting his film was at fault.

The audio on the home release has either been corrected, or the cinema mix was just designed so poorly. It’s now much, much clearer – particularly in those problematic scenes, or anytime a character is speaking while wearing a mask (a common trope of Nolan’s films). The audio still isn’t perfect – the subtitle track helps a lot – but at least the dialogue is audible under the music and sound design, albeit muffled from time to time.

Like a lot of Nolan’s work, it’s a brilliant yet flawed film. It’s very clever, don’t get me wrong, but the biggest letdown is his obsession with logistics and narrative. There’s no soul in the film, just like there wasn’t any in Dunkirk. Does that mean all of his future films will be similarly devoid of heart? Tenet’s final battle sequence, like the snow sequence in Inception, has no grounding. The audience is so concerned with the nuts and bolts of what’s happening, that it’s almost impossible to enjoy it for the eye-popping spectacle that it is.

The parallels with James Bond in the director’s work continue here not only with John David Washington and Robert Pattinson’s smart suits, but in the background of Kenneth Branagh’s villainous Sator. His achieving of wealth via his future self’s assistance is a glorified version of golden girl Jill Masterson helping Auric Goldfinger cheat at cards.

Speaking of Denzel’s boy, I love John David Washington – he’d make an awesome 007 in fact – but whether he has enough range to make it out of genre films remains to be seen. I saw the trailer for awards contender Malcolm & Marie, and it looked like we were watching an odd black and white sequel to Tenet.

What an amazing cast though – Washington, Pattinson and Branagh were all excellent. Other newcomers to the Nolan universe were Elizabeth Debicki, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Dimple Kapadia, and in my particular favourite performance, Yesterday’s Himish Patel.

Given that the film deals with the subject of inverted time, my wife asked a particularly funny question on her first viewing. ‘What happens when the characters go to the toilet while they’re inverted?’ She’s a clever girl, pre-dating the brilliant Honest Trailers picking up on this head-scratcher. And just before the final battle, as the three principles are talking on a ship while inverted, she said ‘Look, Pattinson looks uncomfortable there because he’s just been for a wee.’

I love the soundtrack score by Ludwig Göransson (The Mandalorian, Black Panther, Creed), and its incredibly worthy of this 3xLP pressing. As soon as I got out of my midweek evening screening of the film in IMAX, I found the score on Spotify and dived into it on my bus trip home. Somehow, wearing a facemask due to COVID made it seem even more special. I wouldn’t have thought a composer other than Hans Zimmer would compliment Nolan so well, but Göransson knocked it out of the park.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCMENT: If you’ve seen the film and you’re still struggling with aspects of the plot – try this beat-by-beat rundown of the film. I found this extremely helpful, and have enjoyed the film much more since reading it (the revelation of why the protagonist is holed up in a windmill early on in the picture was a revelation).

Hit: The Plan – Travis Scott

Hidden Gem: Foils