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Like many Americans, I first saw Christopher NolansTenetunder rather strange circumstances.
The movie left us impressed and perplexed.
)Tenetboth enthralled and baffled me.
I was enormously moved by scenes even as I only vaguely grasped what was happening in them.
Maybe my mind was just refusing to process these images.
I have revisitedTenetmany times since.
Ive torrented cam rips.
Ive watched it streaming.
Ive watched it on Blu-ray and in 4K.
And yes, I have tickets to see it in its brief, long-overdue Imax rerelease.
The entire movie is built on withholding information.
Ours, my friend!)
As an action scene, its beautifully done both times.
Ive never felt such envy … of her freedom, she says.
I dream of just diving off that boat.
Nolan, like his hero Stanley Kubrick, has sometimes been accused of being a cold, fussy technician.
Ive never found this to be the case.
(It wasnt true of Kubrick, either.)
If anything, Nolan seems to get totally wrapped up in the emotional texture of his movies.
For him, a MacGuffin is never just a MacGuffin.
(J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project are even name-checked in the movie.)
SoTenetis a metaphorical science-fiction approach to the scientists who discovered nuclear power, nuclear fission, and then fusion.
But what toothpaste is being put in which tube?
Their world shriveled because of us.
They have no choice but to turn back; theres no life ahead of them.
One moves backward in time.
They are the same man.
Is it any wonder Nolans growing obsession with an incoming apocalypse coincides with his becoming a parent?
But we oftendoknow what the future holds, dont we?
Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world.
Its not an excuse to do nothing.
Hes going off to die in the past, as he knows he must.
This, after all, is the paradox of the human condition.
We know whats to come, yet we have the freedom to act.
This whole operation is a temporal pincer, Neil tells the Protagonist as he walks away.
Theres a reason the Protagonist has no name.
Life is a temporal pincer movement.
Most of us simply havent realized it yet.
