After a long game of chicken with the coronavirus, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet finally hit US theaters in September 2020. You probably didn’t see it then. On December 15th of that year, it hit VOD—some of you watched it then, and some of you balked at paying on-demand prices. Eventually it turned up on HBO Max. But even if you've finally seen Tenet, you probably didn’t understand it. And even if you rewatched it, which you absolutely have to do to understand Tenet, you still probably don’t understand it.
Naturally, Tenet explainers exist on the internet, but GQ humbly finds them to be either confusing or incomplete. And sure, the idea of doing homework to explain a movie might not sound exciting, but once you know what’s going on, there’s a lot to like in Tenet — and arming yourself with the proper tools to understand it can let you focus more on the deeply impressive and exciting filmmaking on display for the third, fourth or even fifth rewatch, instead of feeling confused.
After Tenet, of course, Nolan knocked out a little film called Oppenheimer, which is nominated for thirteen Oscars this year; to celebrate that achievement and prime the pump for another mammoth-scale blockbuster-to-be, Warner Bros. will rerelease Tenet in 70MM IMAX and other large-format theaters in February, with new footage from Denis Villenueve's shot-in-IMAX Dune: Part Two as an appetizer. Which means you have another chance to unravel the film's mysteries, or just let them wash over you as the enormous images flood your brain. Either way, here are seven key things to know going in.
Despite what you may have heard, Tenet isn’t really about time-travel--it’s about time manipulation. Rather than jumping forward decades like Back to the Future, the characters are able to do something more like rewinding and fast-forwarding through time. This core idea is known as inversion, and it’s possible thanks to a new technology that can reverse the entropy of people and objects, but thankfully you don’t need to know what entropy is to get it. Inversion is explained around 15 minutes in, when the scientist Barbara (Clémence Poésy) makes loose bullets jump off a table into her hands in order to demonstrate the concept to the Protagonist (John David Washington)--the bullets are moving backwards through time while the people stay stable.
Inversion becomes more complicated as it trickles into complicated action sequences, like the highway chase. Eventually, when we realize that the masked man the Protagonist fought down corridors during the Freeport battle was an inverted version of himself, it becomes clear that scenes from the first half of the movie involved characters who rewound from the second half.
Inversion takes place when a person or thing passes through a temporal turnstile. The turnstiles were created by Tenet’s bad guy, Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh), and are typically housed in a large space. They show up in a few different places throughout Tenet, but the first time is during the Freeport sequence in which the Protagonist grapples with a masked trooper. Later in the movie, the turnstiles are color-coded on either side to let people (and the audience) know what side is which; red signals forward movement through time, while blue is for those going backward.
Crossing through a temporal turnstile automatically inverts whatever passes through it. Once on the other side, time is reversed, but only for the object or person that passed through -- for everyone else, time is still proceeding in a forward direction. And so an inverted bullet isn’t fired by a gun, but instead is caught by it. Cars seem to drive backward. People who are in inverted time can’t breathe air backwards, so they have to carry oxygen machines. If you’re in a fire, the flames draw heat away from the body, which means you freeze instead.
When someone is inverted, they can move backward for a seemingly infinite amount of time--to the point, for instance, where they can interact with an earlier version of themselves. However, inverted time still flows at the same pace, which means if you’re trying to get to an event that took place a week ago, you’d have to wait a full week. This is why near the end of the movie, for example, Neil (Robert Pattinson), Katherine (Elizabeth Debicki), and the Protagonist have to wait things out in an inverted shipping container for a while before returning to the Freeport.
Inversion initially doesn’t seem too dangerous. But it turns out that the unnamed creator of inversion technology allowed it to become weaponized into an object known as the Algorithm (referred to as “plutonium-241” for a large portion of the movie), which is capable of inverting the entirety of time itself instead of just individual objects. Regretting this, the inversion creator decided to kill herself, but not before she broke the Algorithm into nine physical pieces (MCU Infinity Stones, anyone?) and hid them throughout time. If stacked together to rebuild the final formula, the Algorithm would cause all events on Earth to start flowing backward. The inversion of the Earth itself is said to cause a catastrophic event that would destroy everything that ever lived, according to Neil.
Sator is part of a group that wants to acquire the Algorithm and reverse time in order to undo the effects of climate change and other devastation the present has wrought on the future. (Also, he’s dying and decides to take a melodramatic “if I can’t have it, no one can” approach.) This sets up Tenet’s core plot: the Protagonist must recover the Algorithm’s final piece to stop the end of the world. In other words, it’s essentially a fancy Bond movie, with Sator playing the over-the-top villain role.
The Protagonist and his crew sit in a van outside the opera house, waiting for a Ukrainian SWAT team to appear in response to a terrorist attack inside. When they arrive, the Protagonist’s squad puts on velcro badges to match the real SWAT team and sneak in alongside them. As the Ukrainian team pipes gas into the main room to knock the villains out, the terrorists put on gas masks and begin planting bombs in the aisles full of people. The Ukrainian team moves in and begins to take out the terrorists while the Protagonist rushes off to the box seats to rescue an asset, because the whole siege is just a cover to assassinate him. They exchange a code phrase — “We live in a twilight world” and “There are no friends at dusk” — to validate one another. It turns out the asset, listed in the credits as the “Well-Dressed Man,” has brought something to the opera that the Protagonist needs to recover, and the item in question is at coat check. The Protagonist and the suited man zipline down to the main floor to retrieve the item.
As they progress, the Protagonist encounters a member of the Ukrainian team who has placed a bomb; the man asks the Protagonist to place another. When the Protagonist refuses, the SWAT member prepares to shoot, only for the Protagonist to be saved by another member of his own team who also references “dusk” as a code word. The Protagonist then runs to coat check to get the package, which is a piece of the Algorithm — although he (and the audience) doesn’t know this at the time. The Protagonist and his team regroup and change clothes. The Protagonist then rushes out to defuse the bombs, which are tied to a central timer. As the Protagonist collects the devices, he’s cornered by another SWAT team member who tells him to plant a bomb. The Protagonist then notices a hole in the wood paneling begin to fix itself as the SWAT member is shot by a masked third party. As he turns to run away, the Protagonist notices a red string on his mysterious savior’s backpack. We’ll later learn this was Neil working to help the Protagonist.
After the Protagonist and one of his team members gather the last of the bombs and detonate them safely, they head out to escape in a getaway van, only to be caught and captured by a set of mercenaries. The mercenaries torture the Protagonist for information, but he resists, then manages to swallow a cyanide pill. The movie fades to black as the Protagonist blacks out, only for him to wake up and learn — via an info dump from beloved character actor Martin Donovan — that the entire interrogation was a test.
At the end of the movie, we’ll learn a future version of the Protagonist sent the mercenaries to capture him so that he ends up being recruited for the Tenet organization that he’ll eventually create—more on that later.
Tenet is the name of the organization that the Protagonist himself created—more on that in a bit—to keep the earth’s timeline flowing correctly. It’s also an interlocking hand gesture that indicates the flowing of time backward and forward, and a palindrome that’s spelled the same way in either direction. Other instances of inversion symbolism include Sator’s name, which is a reference to Sator Square — a five-by-five interlocking grid of letters, dating back to the early Christian era, that reads the same in every direction. Sator’s name backward is Rotas, the name of the security group that guards the Freeport warehouse. Tenet also contains the word “ten” front and back, and that number comes into play as a measurement of time during the film’s staggering closing setpiece, known as the “Temporal Pincer.”
This is where Tenet really starts to get confusing. The pincer movement is a military maneuver that involves attacking an enemy from both sides simultaneously, closing like a lobster or crab’s claw. Tenet’s pincer involves two different teams attacking a location from both directions in time — forwards and reverse — hence the “temporal” bit. The best way to keep everything straight is to pay attention to the way Nolan color-codes things; red signals forward movement through time, while blue is for those going backward. Also, those who have been inverted wear oxygen masks, which is another handy signifier.
A few different temporal pincer movements happen throughout the film. Sator performs a pincer during Tenet’s highway car chase sequence. The first time we see the sequence, Neil and the Protagonist successfully capture the final piece of the Algorithm. Then the duo see an Audi driving in reverse towards them on the highway. Inside the inverted vehicle is Sator (you know he’s inverted because he’s wearing an oxygen mask) holding Katherine at gunpoint. He counts down from three, preparing to shoot her, as another car that was lying upside down on the road in front of them flips rightside up and begins driving in reverse. As Katherine’s life is threatened, the Protagonist hands over the Algorithm piece by bouncing the case off the second inverted car into Sator’s Audi. Sator escapes into another vehicle as the Protagonist jumps into the Audi and rescues Katherine. From there, the Protagonist is captured by Sator’s crew and is brought to a warehouse containing a turnstile for interrogation.
As the Protagonist is brought into the red side, he notices Sator walking in reverse to the turnstile with Katherine. Sator stands on the other side of the glass (in a blue room to note that he’s inverted) with Katherine and interrogates the Protagonist, eventually shooting Katherine with an inverted bullet. The Protagonist seems to acquiesce, giving up the location of the Algorithm piece to the inverted Sator. At this point, a non-inverted Sator runs into the Protagonist’s room to question him again. As Commander Ives (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his backup arrive to assist the Protagonist, Sator heads through the turnstile, into the past, setting up the events we just saw unfold.
The Protagonist then heads through the turnstile after Sator, after telling Ives he lied to Sator about the location. Now, we see the highway events unfold from the past’s perspective. The Protagonist gets into a vehicle to give chase. It’s at this point we realize the second reversed car was actually an inverted Protagonist coming to help save the day. However, Sator figures out the lie and confronts the Protagonist, flipping over the car, and leaving him for dead. After the Protagonist wakes up, Neil tells him Sator has the final Algorithm piece. We don’t actually see Sator snag it — he just blows up the Saab with the inverted Protagonist — but Neil tells the audience he’s successfully recovered it.
Sator’s crew tries to assemble the Algorithm in the villain’s Soviet-era hometown of Stalask-12, setting up Tenet’s massive concluding set piece. It’s another temporal pincer, with two different teams starting their approach to Stalask-12 from opposing ends of a ten-minute window, in another play on the “ten” portion of the movie’s title. The red, forward-moving team consists of the Protagonist and Ives, while the blue team consists of Neil and a group of backward-moving, inverted troops. As the duo arrive at the Algorithm’s location, an underground bunker, they appear to be too late, because Sator’s crew has pieced all nine parts together behind a locked gate. They plan to bury the Algorithm and then explode the bunker, leaving the Algorithm underground for recovery in the future. As Sator’s crew works, Ives and the Protagonist notice a dead soldier on the other side who suddenly reverts to life, stopping a bullet meant for the Protagonist and unlocking the gate.
Turns out the soldier was Neil. After Ives and the Protagonist head underground, Neil chases Sator’s henchmen through a turnstile. After a beat, he proceeds to cross through the turnstile, uninverting himself in the process, since he was originally on the blue team. Neil then drives a truck to pull Ives and the Protagonist out right before the explosion seals them inside.
The three regroup, having saved the day. It’s at this point Neil states that he’s been working for a future version of the Protagonist this entire time. The two are pals, having met in Neil’s past, which is actually the Protagonist’s future. That’s why in one of their first scenes together, Neil already knows the Protagonist doesn’t drink when working. Neil then states this is the end of his story, as he’ll need to leave in order to put himself in the right place in time to take the bullet underground. However, the two will meet again once the Protagonist recruits Neil at some point in the future. This is the close of their friendship, but their beginning is still to come.
At this point, we can understand that Tenet’s narrative functions as a temporal pincer itself, with the past and future versions of Washington’s Protagonist working to bring the film’s events together, like the aforementioned opera house opening. It’s hard to fully comprehend where the movie truly ends and where it begins. Does your head hurt? This is why perhaps more than any other Nolan movie, it’s worth revisiting Tenet a second—or third, or fourth—time to see how it all comes together.