Why Tenet is the most important movie of 2020 – and why it has nothing to do with anything on-screen

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In the boring ol’ Before Time of 2019, Tenet was just a movie. A highly anticipated movie, given that it comes from the bendy brain of Christopher Nolan, the most successful director of contemporary blockbusters. But still – just a movie. This week, as the sci-fi thriller premieres in 70 countries around the world, including Canada but pointedly not the United States, Tenet is more like a symbol. And symbols can be tricky, slippery things.

While the entire 2020 movie season was shredded and burned and buried in salted earth when COVID-19 disrupted reality this past spring, Tenet stood defiantly firm. Nolan and his long-time studio Warner Bros. seemed determined, come hell or high pandemic, that their movie would not only be released this summer but in real-deal theatres. Streaming and video-on-demand and drive-ins would not suffice. Only the big screen, preferably with IMAX capability, could showcase the awesome cinematic power of Tenet, a thrilling riff on the time-travel genre that is packed with fiery terrorist attacks, exhilarating highway chases and one very large airplane explosion.

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet makes absolutely zero sense, but it’s one hell of a thrill ride

At first, the film seemed like it might just keep its brazen promise of a July 17 premiere, becoming the first big Hollywood movie to welcome audiences back to the theatre since March. But then things changed, so it would be Aug. 12. Then more things changed. Tenet would be held indefinitely. Wait. Things changed once again. Now it would open Aug. 26, but only in countries where most markets were open. If things don’t change even further, select U.S. cities will get it Sept. 3. Maybe.

Either way, Tenet has now transcended its role as a mere movie, trading blockbuster bragging rights for something more profound. If it succeeds, then it portends a new path forward for the entire film industry. If it fails, then it underlines just how difficult, maybe impossible, the future of moviegoing might be.

And at least one of the film’s stars knows just what we talk about when we talk about Tenet.

“It’s been an interesting process for me, psychologically,” says Elizabeth Debicki, who plays one of Tenet’s central roles, a mysterious art appraiser who might hold the key to the world’s survival in her hands. “Obviously this year has presented enormous challenges for people, and I think as an actor, to have made something like this in what we call the old world, it was taken for granted that it would come out just like any other movie. To then go into what this year has felt like, which has been so suspended and extremely precarious, but to also know that the film I made may be something that keeps cinema houses open and functioning, it feels remarkable and quite surreal.”

At the same time, Debicki adds, there is the question of “What’s the best thing for people? What should or shouldn’t we be doing with it?”

Yet, when the Australian actress, who first broke through with her role in 2018′s crime drama Widows, eventually saw Tenet on the big screen – “in a safe and socially-distanced way” – she understood that moviegoing is more than just a distraction. It is something of an essential act.

"It had been five months since I experienced any entertainment on that scale, and I realized how much I psychologically needed it," she says. "I was convinced after that that this is something that can give people not a return to normalcy, but what cinema is supposed to do, which is really good escapism. No one could have foreseen any of this, but it feels monumental."

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It is a refreshing take, since no one else involved with Tenet appears eager to discuss its cultural, social and economic importance – or at least no one who was present during an international press conference that producers held last week over Zoom. During a panel appearance, Nolan, his wife and producer Emma Thomas and stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Kenneth Branagh all had a delightful time ribbing each other and reminiscing about the difficulty in blowing up a 747 jet. But no one brought up what Tenet means to the world right now – even though every conversation about moviegoing in the age of COVID-19 has started and stopped with the question of: Whither Tenet?

At one point late in the proceedings, Nolan got close to discussing the film’s place in the world, albeit unintentionally. While talking about the film’s globe-trotting action – scenes take place everywhere from Mumbai to Kyiv – the director said that the international set-pieces inform “the stakes of the narrative. What we’re dealing with in Tenet is a threat to the entire world, and by showing more of the world, you’re reminded of the scale of the threat, something that threatens us all around the world.” He wasn’t talking about the pandemic, but he could have and maybe should have been.

Granted, it is somewhat unfair to load Tenet up with such immense weight. While Nolan may have been asking for it by insisting on a summer theatrical release in this cursed year of 2020, it is also undeniably silly that every conversation about the future of filmgoing is tethered to a movie whose central conceit – a time-travel-esque concept called “inversion” – is confusing at best, nonsensical at worst. Though if Debicki thinks so, she’s not letting on easy.

“I [understand] it in my own way,” the actress says. “I don’t think I would be able to write the kind of definitive and particularly clear definition of what inversion or entropy really means, but I have my kind of layman version of it in my head. … But every time we had a conversation about it yesterday, I pawned that question off to Rob, who has a real handle on it.”

Just another Tenet question, then, to sort out during the remainder of 2020.

Tenet opened in theatres across Canada on Aug. 26

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