Nolan’s work is unhappy, and here’s why that matters

Matt Davis, The Independent

Like so many other mugs, I spent $20 last week on Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film, Tenet, via Amazon Prime. And I was furious at how bad it is. Kenneth Branagh invented a time machine. That’s the premise on which the plot rests. Ergo Tenet is garbage. I switched it off after an hour and five minutes. This column hereby petitions Jeff Bezos for the rest of my money back. More important: Why does it matter so much that Tenet is garbage? I mean, why have I found myself awake for nights in a row wondering why the critical reception didn’t call it what it was? A turkey. A farce. An emperor wearing no clothes?

Is it because there were aspects of James Bond to it? People have referenced the evolving plot and many locations, as well as the set design: It’s all reminiscent of the franchise I’ve over-watched since childhood. Never mind that James Bond films, at their best, were all made before 1965. This was worse than the worst films made starring Roger Moore. Or even the one with the “invisibility technology” starring Pierce Brosnan. Yes. The association triggers my protective instincts. Tenet is nothing like a James Bond film.

Is it because blockbuster culture can’t harm mediocre white men it has over-promoted? Particularly when their films have grossed more than $5 billion over the years? And all that money has gone to studios accountable to their shareholders? Yes, Nolan cast a Black actor up front — but the character John David Washington plays doesn’t even get a name. There is an Indian character called Priya so two-dimensional I could have stuck her on my fridge. The writing was hardly postcolonial in character. We can do so much better.

Speaking of two-dimensional, am I angry because Nolan made a spy film that flubbed class? Sir Michael Caine is working class, and vocally unhappy about the whole thing. He was cast as a snob, despite having likened classism to racism. Nolan went to a boarding school on the site of a school founded by the East India Company. Its fees for this year are more than £36,000 — or nearly $50,000. He may live in Los Angeles now, but don’t tell me he’s forgotten the piercing claustrophobia of the archetypal British question: “And where did you go to school?”

Or is it because Nolan stole a character wholesale from the TV adaptation of John Le Carré’s The Night Manager? The wife of Hugh Laurie’s arms dealer, Dicky Roper — called Jed in the better production — was even played by the same actor, Elizabeth Debicki, in Nolan’s film, as Kat. She’d grown longer hair and got a better actor for a husband this time around. Although Kenneth Branagh seemed to be phoning it in. And I do think Hugh Laurie was better in the other film. I couldn’t believe the audacity.

And there’s the rub. That’s what bothers me so much. It’s that the success of this film shows me we’ve lost our cultural respect for good writing. Say what you want about Star Wars, and it’s overrated, but at least the writing was there to underpin it. A hero with daddy issues. The myth. The tragedy. These days, our attention spans are so corroded, it’s almost as if directors chance sneaking this kind of dross past us. It’s done on the off-chance we’ll think: “I must have been too busy checking my phone to pay attention, there.” And: “Ooh, that’s a nice bit of atmosphere. That’s transporting.”

Le Carré died recently and his spy fiction probed its characters’ shortcomings. Doing so undermined knee-jerk British nationalism in favor of subtlety and humanity. Le Carré’s own father was a conman. His spy books explored the facades we all construct to navigate a cruel world. Sean Connery was a former milkman from Edinburgh they had to teach how to talk to be in Doctor No. His charisma posed difficult questions for Britain about getting away with it.What does Christopher Nolan think he’s getting away with, though?

Well, I’m telling you. Whatever he thinks: I’m not buying it. And neither should you. Seriously, save yourself $20. Or at the very least, don’t say you weren’t warned.