TENET : Tuesday 1st September 2020.

'TENET' which I saw this week is an M Rated much hyped eagerly awaited spy drama film Directed, Written and Co-Produced by Christopher Nolan, who I'm sure needs no further introduction, other than his film Directing credits have amassed global Box Office returns of about US$4.7B and he has won 137 awards and been nominated 228 other times, so I guess he must be doing something right! Originally slated for a 17th July release, this was subsequently pushed back because of COVID-19 to 31st July, then 12th August and saw its release in seventy countries from last week, before its release in the US and China this week. Costing somewhere in the region of US$220M to make, the film has garnered mostly favourable Reviews from Critics, and has so far recouped US$54M. Riffing off James Bond with exotic locations, extravagant action set pieces, international espionage, a Russian bad guy hell bent on bringing about the end of the world as we know it, and the good guys working for a covert secret outfit this is sure to please . . . if you can get your head around the premise.

The film opens up with all guns blazing setting the scene for the action set pieces to follow. A CIA Agent takes part in an undercover SWAT mission at the Kyiv National Opera in the Ukraine, where he rescues an exposed spy and recovers a strange artefact, but not before members of the performing orchestra are shot and killed and the entire audience is put to sleep with gas. Another masked soldier with a red tag on his back pack rescues the Agent from being shot, but at this point it remains unclear as to their identities. The Agent (John David Washington) comes around tied to a chair on a railway line with a colleague also bound, with a bunch of nasty looking henchmen counting down the time until a train comes hurtling down the tracks to kill them both.

The Agent swallows a cyanide capsule, bur he later wakes to be told that the capsule was fake, his colleagues are all dead, and congratulations, he passed the test - no others before him have got that far. The Agent's superior, Victor (Martin Donovan) tells him that one word 'Tenet' will open doors for him, but to be wary because other doors will be slammed in his face with potentially life threatening consequences, and he is to use several markers to begin his journey.

His journey eventually leads him to Laura (Clemence Poesy), a scientist studying bullets and other retrieved artefacts whose make up has been 'inverted' so that they move backwards through time, demonstrated when the Agent catches the bullet in the chamber of the gun, rather than discharging it. Studying the make up of the bullets, the Agent traces the bullets to Priya (Dimple Kapadia), an arms trafficker living in Mumbai, and also affiliated to Tenet.

Now simply going by the handle of the Protagonist, The Agent is supported by a local named Neil (Robert Pattinson) and they both successfully infiltrate Priya's heavily guarded high rise home, by reverse bungee jumping up the tower, and learn that the bullets are supplied by Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) a Russian Oligarch who is able to communicate with the future. The Protagonist meets with Sator's estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki), an art auctioneer. He learns that Sator is blackmailing her over a forged Goya painting that she sold him for US$10M, but he discovered her ruse and threatened to hand her over to the authorities if she doesn't comply with his wishes, and at the same time keeping her at arms length from her beloved young son. Kat comments that the last time the couple were truly happy together was on board his super yacht in Vietnam, from which she saw a mystery woman dive when she was leaving on a motor tender with her son.

The Protagonist and Neil work with fixer Mahir (Himesh Patel) to steal the fake Goya painting from the Freeport storage facility (a tax free haven used by investors to secretly store their art works that is heavily fortified, securely guarded and tightly controlled) at Oslo Airport, by crashing a cargo jet into the adjoining hangar as a diversion. By doing so Sator would no longer have a hold over Kat, and she would effectively be free. Inside the facility, they locate a machine from which two masked men emerge, one of which is inverted. After unmasking the normal one, Neil stops the Protagonist from killing the inverted one. Priya later explains that the machine was a 'Turnstile', a time inversion device developed in the future, and that the two masked men were in fact the same person.

The Protagonist subsequently tells Kat that the painting was destroyed in the resultant fire at the Freeport, and she arranges a meeting with Sator who reveals that he had the painting moved before the crash. Sator by now is on to the Protagonist and has him captured, and threatens to kill him. However, the Protagonist mentions the events at the Ukranian Opera, at which Sator has a change of heart - for now. Kat attempts to drown Sator during a boat race but the Protagonist jumps in and saves him. Sator now feels indebted to the Protagonist and so the Protagonist offers to steal a case of plutonium that Sator desires in exchange for Kat's freedom.

The Protagonist and Neil steal the plutonium in an intricately planned and executed highway heist from an armoured convoy in Estonia, but realise upon opening the carry case that it is in fact another artefact. An inverted Sator captures both the Protagonist and Kat, and shoots her with an inverted bullet, forcing him to reveal where the artefact is. A team of Tenet operatives led by Ives (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) frees the Protagonist forcing Sator to flee. To save Kat's life (for being shot by an inverted bullet is far more deadly that being shot by a conventional bullet), the Protagonist and Neil take her through Sator's Turnstile. They travel back to the Oslo Freeport crash the previous week to un-invert themselves inside the Turnstile there. As they re-infiltrate the airport, the inverted Protagonist fights his non-inverted self, before reaching the Turnstile and un-inverting himself.

Travelling back to Mumbai, Priya explains the artefacts (of which there are nine in total) are parts of a future-developed 'Algorithm' capable of catastrophically inverting the entire world, and that future humans are using Sator to activate it in order to prevent the effects of global warming. Kat advises that Sator is dying from inoperable pancreatic cancer. They conclude that he aims to trigger the Algorithm through suicide and through a dead man's switch, believing the world should die when he does. Kat has suspicions that Sator will choose to die on that day on his yacht in Vietnam when they were last at their happiest together.

Kat inverts back in time to delay Sator's death, while Tenet tracks the assembled Algorithm to an abandoned Soviet closed city and commences a 'temporal pincer movement', meaning that half of their troops move forward in time to the blast zone (the red team led by the Protagonist and Ives), while the other half moves backwards (the blue team led by Neil and Wheeler (Fiona Dourif)). The Protagonist and Ives are prevented from reaching the Algorithm stored underground by a locked gate, until an inverted masked corpse with a red tag on its rucksack springs to life, saving the Protagonist from a gunshot and unlocking the gate. The pair fight with a henchmen, who is intent on sending the assembled component parts of the Algorithm into a chasm below and detonating it, but is prevented from doing so with a bullet to the head. Neil driving an armed vehicle above ground drops a line down into the hole in the ground directly above where the pair are located. Clinging on the assembled Algorithm device they are winched up by Neil, just as the ground below them explodes. 

Meanwhile Kat has lured Sator into a false sense of well being and security on board his yacht in Vietnam. She shoots Sator in the chest and then drops him off the side of the yacht from an upper deck as he tumbles end over end crashing against the side of the boat before landing face down in the sea. Kat then dives from the yacht's deck, where she is witnessed by her past self. Kat calls the Protagonist to let him know that she shot and killed her husband prematurely, hoping that they rescued the Algorithm in time, to which he responds with a yes. The Protagonist, Neil and Ives break up the Algorithm's component into three equal sections each vowing to store them away secretly and without the knowledge of anyone else. The Protagonist notices a familiar red tag on Neil's rucksack, and asks him how he came to be recruited by Tenet. Neil reveals that a future version of the Protagonist recruited him to Tenet years earlier, and this mission is the end of a long friendship that the Protagonist has yet to experience. Neil and Ives depart in a helicopter, leaving the Protagonist on the ground.

Sometime later, and in London, Priya attempts to kill Kat while she is picking her son up from school, but is killed by the Protagonist in the passenger seat of the car where she sat.

I liked 'Tenet' a lot, and this is one film that you need to watch on the big cinema screen where you can immerse yourself in the never before seen stunning visuals, the action set pieces, the surround sound while trying to get your head around the meaning of the inversion of time, that is the core of this films premise. Here Christopher Nolan, who allegedly spent the past two decades or so mulling over the story and his Screenplay, has crafted perhaps his most ambitiously bold and audacious film yet; the lead characters all do a fine job with particular nods to John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki and Kenneth Branagh in perhaps his most evil and villainous role yet. The physics of inversion aren't fully explained and as Clemence Poesy's character Laura explains 'don't try to understand it, feel it', you'll leave the cinema having been wowed by the sheer size and spectacle this film offers up, but scratching your head trying to grapple with the science behind it. This epic film is supposedly going to re-establish the movie going experience in a Post-COVID world, and in this respect Nolan has delivered a wildly entertaining thrill ride of a movie that deserves all the success it can muster, and repeat viewings to understand it.

'TENET' meets four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

FINAL PORTRAIT : Saturday 17th June 2017.

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman and printmaker who lived from 1901 until 1966, when he died in Paris, France from heart disease and chronic bronchitis. This film 'Final Portrait' by Director, Writer and Actor Stanley Tucci (in his fifth Directorial outing) tells the story of Giacometti over a three week or so period in 1964, when the world renowned artist asked his American art critic and biographer friend James Lord to sit for him for what turns out to be his final portrait. I saw this film as part of the Sydney Film Festival last weekend, having had its Australian Premier at the Festival on 10th June. It had its World Premier at the Berlin International Film Festival in February this year, is due for release in the UK in early August, and not until early October for its general release in Australia. The film is based on the biography by James Lord 'A Giacometti Portrait', adapted for the screen by Stanley Tucci.

Set in Paris in 1964 we are told in voiceover by American biographer and art critic James Lord (Armie Hammer) of Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush) and his work as a celebrated world renowned sculptor, painter and artist, and that the famed Giacometti has asked him to pose for him, in order that he can paint his portrait. Of course, this is a great honour for Lord, and he can only but oblige his old friend by agreeing, even though he has a flight scheduled back home to the US in 48 hours.

After the first sitting, Giacometti says that his sitting may take a little longer than expected and if he could put his flight back 24 hours. Of course, easily done responds Lord - well, really what else can he say? However, Lord soon comes to realise that the work of a genius cannot be hurried, and it is Giacometti who decides on a whim when it is time for work, drink, food, doubt, destruction, flirtation or laughter in his studio. After the first three days have lapsed, Lord again is asked to delay his flight, but only for a few more days. 

Giacometti is an established artist whose works fetch record prices. When he is paid for his work he hides huge bundles of cash in his studio, fearing the banks as being untrustworthy. He often forgets where he has hidden his wads of cash. He is a man of modest means living in your average Parisian two up two down terrace house with a ramshackle studio. His nonchalant attitude to money is just one of the causes of many an altercation with his wife Annette (Sylvie Testud), another being that his young attractive prostitute mistress and quasi-muse Caroline (Clemence Poesy) receives all his attention. She is his reason for being, his motivation and his incentive to carry on with his life and his work, and she too is mid-way sitting for him for a portrait in progress. His brother Diego (Tony Shalhoub), is also an artist and working in an adjacent studio, is more than familiar with his idiosyncrasies, his mood swings, and his at times unpredictable temperament. 

As another week goes by, Lord is asked to postpone his flight home again due to slow progress with the painting, or it not being upto Giacometti's standard. Often, the artist will start to paint, and then interrupt proceedings with the desire to go for a walk to talk, or to visit the local bistro for something to eat, or drink, or to take rides in the car, or to meet with Caroline. Lord puts on a brave face but becomes increasingly frustrated by the slow progress his artist friend is taking - but what can he do, other than play along, and pacify those in the US who seek his return home. 

Meanwhile Lord has to postpone his flight once more, asking 'how long can this go on for'. By now we are two weeks in, and Diego who overhears Lords rhetorical question says months, years, perhaps for ever, as Alberto seeks perfection in his work, which he knows is in reality unattainable. As three weeks almost clock up and yet more flight postponements, the day comes when Lord has to bite the bullet and leave. Giacometti bids him farewell, Caroline has disappeared off somewhere else with her pimps, leaving the artist and his wife Annette to go about their business, and Giacometti to consider his unfinished portrait.

Here Rush inhibits the character of Giacometti, much as he did with his portrayal of pianist David Helfgott in 1996's 'Shine', and he makes his character study intricate, grounded and nuanced as we laugh at his jokes, relish at his idle gossip, his habits and his foibles, his inconsistent work routine, his preferred watering holes, his insistent chain smoking, his dishevelled appearance, the razor sharp wit of his conversation and his sarcasm and his down beaten studio where everything is presented to us looking in in various shades of black, white and grey. Armie Hammer puts in a subdued but nonetheless commendable performance as the subject of the artist, showing restraint, politeness and conservatism  even as time marches on and repeated postponements to his schedule. As for Stanley Tucci in his fifth turn as Director he here depicts Giacometti as a genius showing us his strengths and weaknesses of his chaotic work life, his self-doubt, and his inner strength to destroy that which he is not completely satisfied with and start over again. A comical, entertaining and engaging study of one of the great artists of the 20th Century, that has been highly praised by Critics.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-