Christopher Nolanis one ofthe most exciting directors working today, making some of the most jaw-dropping experiences an audience can have in a movie theater. He’s accomplished this through his unique filmmaking sensibilities that present mind-bending stories that aren’t afraid to break conventions typical of most movies. Whether it’s altering the perception of time or showing events out of order, he always finds exciting ways to challenge the audience. His two most recent films, the harrowing historical dramaDunkirkand the thrilling spy adventureTenet, are no exception, but they also work as perfect examples of the strengths and weaknesses that come with Nolan’s signature style. A comparison of the two highlights what can make watching his films feel so special but also so alienating.
Playing with Time
Dunkirk’s approach to time is wonderfully inventive, but rarely confusing. It presents three different perspectives ofthe Dunkirk rescuewith differing frames of time. The land portion of the ragged soldiers waiting is one week, the sea portion of patriotic civilians going to save them is one day, and the air portion with brave pilots trying to protect the fleeing troops is one hour. This bold approach works beautifully, cutting between the three perspectives to ratchet up the tension or relieve the audience from it as needed. It also fits each of the perspective’s emotional momentum, with the soldiers' long wait of desperation, the civilians' anxious but hopeful day-long trip across the water, and the fighter pilots' intense dogfight to save their people. This bold use of time is something most directors would struggle with or avoid altogether due to how complicated it would be to pull off, but Nolan executes it in a way that only he could. He makes it one of the great strengths of the film that avoids confusing the audience and keeps them constantly engaged by never having a dull moment.
Tenetis all about time, with a story following spies trying to stop the end of the world through a unique form of time traveling that resulted in some of the most inventive action sequences ever put to film. It’s sad to say thatTenet’s use of time also holds it back through its poor execution. The film has a problem of over-explaining its concept, which confuses rather than informs, something Nolan has done with greater success in other films. The more the audience is told, the more questions they have, and the less sense it all makes. This is something that occurs progressively throughout the movie, eventually coming to a head at the film’s epic conclusion, with two small armies fighting in different directions of time. The audience may know the basic goals to stop a world-ending bomb, but the moment-to-moment action, while very cool to look at, is difficult to grasp. Nolan should be applauded for his unique approach to time travel, but he should have considered telling them less and trusting them to believe.
Related:Why Christopher Nolan Is Slowly Shifting Toward Historical Dramas
Non-Linear Structure
For a story all about desperate survival, the intercutting perspectives inDunkirkensure a razor-sharp tension is maintained throughout. With the different time frames, there is a danger to lose an audience in the back and forth, frustrating them by cutting away at integral moments. Nolan uses it to build excitement through excellent foreshadowing or give more context to a particularly harrowing moment. That can be seen in moments like the fighter pilot crashing into the water without knowing their fate until we jump to another perspective later on to see his last-minute rescue. Another example is the audience seeing a moment of a sinking ship early on which is later shown in an earlier moment of the story being boarded by significant characters, hoping it will be a means of escape. Nolan masterfully weaves all these threads to make the experience a constantly gripping one.
Tenet’sstory is like a circle, which is fitting for the ideas of time being played with. We follow the main character of the story in a relatively straight line, but the experience still has an element of nonlinearity in how the events loop. The beginning teaches us about the heady concepts at play and goes through exciting moments of spycraft action. About halfway through, the film reverses, even revisiting pivotal moments in another direction of time. This leads to exciting reveals, with the previously explained concepts becoming more complex in the process. This is also when it starts to break, with the characters visiting previously seen moments further back in time to a point that doesn’t make much sense. It does result in some interesting twists, but doesn’t enhance the story as much asit pushes the audience away from it, bending their minds too much to the point of confusion. Perhaps Nolan trusted the audience to be so taken by the excitement to just go along with it or invent their own satisfying explanations with what they’re given, but he may have expected too much.
Related:Quentin Tarantino Was Just as Confused by Tenet as Most of Us
Emotional Distance
Nolan is often criticized for the lack of character in his films. WhenDunkirkwas first released,some critics maligned the film for this very thing. The audience is told little to nothing about anyone on screen, only viewing young soldiers desperate to survive the constant barrage from German forces. While some may see this as a weakness of the film, it is actually one of its greatest strengths. It presents a story where the audience becomes one of the broken soldiers on that beach, not thinking about anything except getting out alive. It makes the experience a visceral one that abstains from the heroism and brotherhood present in most war movies, instead choosing a story of men reduces to the one motivation, survival.It feels like a conscious choice from Nolanin this film that makes it a one-of-a-kind masterpiece unique to his specific tastes.
The characters inTenetsimilarly have little to nothing about them, and this is the film’s greatest weakness. Where the lack of character added a special element of immersion toDunkirk, Tenetbecomes more empty for it. The audience doesn’t feel for the people on screen because they don’t know them. The only emotions felt are the excitement of the events happening and the thrill of seeing what has never been seen before from a technical standpoint. This is exemplified in the main character having no name, being credited only asThe Protagonist. There’s no real emotion to anything happening, leading to a weaker experience that leaves the viewer cold. Nolan may be trying a bold experiment of reducing the story to its basic elements, but it reveals a movie more concerned with its concept than the people that make us care about that concept.
