It was three years, one month, and thirteen days between the domestic releases of Christopher Nolan’s last film Dunkirk and his newest release, the long-awaited and much-delayed Tenet. I lead with those numbers because the auteur director and most of his films, Tenet not withstanding, seem obsessed with the concept of time.
A lot has changed in the last three years, including the way most of us watch movies. The movie industry has evolved since the release of Dunkirk. That evolution has reached a crescendo in 2020 as face masks and home viewing have become the new normal. Movies theaters closed their doors in March and I now go through more hand sanitizer than I do artificial popcorn butter, which feels crazy. It’s a weird time to be alive and an even weirder, more precarious time for the film industry at large.
Finally, movie theaters are reopening. They started the reopening process on August 20th, with over two-thirds of theaters open as of September 3rd. To do so is an admittedly mixed bag; movie-nerds such as myself are elated to see new movies in a theater but there’s an inherent trepidation about the safety/sanity of doing so. One of the most hotly anticipated films of the year is set to open and the big question is whether anyone will actually go out to their local cinema and see it. A year ago, we never would have questioned whether we would be going to the theater to see Tenet.
Weird times indeed. And in these weird and confusing times, I find it incredibly apropos that theaters are set to reopen on the back of a weird, confusing film about time. Enter Tenet.