Tenet

A spy film in which time runs in two directions at once. They raid an opera house. An agent whose name is never given is caught during the operation, interrogated, and swallows a pill; then he wakes up. He is given a word and taught a concept: some objects move in reverse. A bullet leaves a wall and comes into the hand. From there the film is an investigation. A house in Mumbai, a lunch in London, a free port in Oslo and a motorway in Estonia. There is an arms dealer on the other side. Sator receives messages from the future and holds his wife like a hostage. What the narrative is interested in is not time travel but direction: the film does not go to the past; it inverts objects and people, and the two directions advance together in the same scene. The motorway chase is the clearest demonstration of the idea. The same sequence is lived again later in the film, in reverse. The characters are deliberately thin. The lead has no name and no past, and the film presents that as a choice rather than a lack. The dialogue is hard to make out. The mix pushes music and effects forward; this was criticised and the director said the decision was deliberate. The action was largely filmed for real. An aircraft was actually driven into a building; it was said to have cost less than doing it by computer. The film opened in cinemas in the middle of the pandemic, a decision argued over within the industry. John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh and Dimple Kapadia are in the cast. Christopher Nolan wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes structural puzzles and large-scale action. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to understand everything on a first viewing; the film withholds information on purpose.