Note: There are spoilers in this article, but it does not affect the movie appreciation.

Before I went to see Tenet, its "incredible" was famous all over the world. It is suggested that the audience should understand the physical theories and assumptions involved in the film (such as entropy, grandfather paradox, parallel space-time) before watching the movie, which is very helpful for watching the movie. The first time you can understand what the movie is talking about, and the second time you can observe the details in the movie more carefully. After all, it is a big challenge for anyone to fully understand Tenet for the first time.

Purpose poster

But there is no need for too much pressure. Tenet had a smooth and easy-to-understand beginning, and even said that the first 75 minutes were a little tedious until there was a jaw-dropping car chase. Nolan is a master of genre films, and his films are always the fusion of various types of elements, which are very commercialized. For example, Inception, under the sci-fi shell is a traditional Hollywood gangster movie; Tenet, too, science fiction wraps the core of traditional Hollywood spy movies.

In the first 90 minutes, we basically follow the type of spy movies: the protagonist gets a task, then flies around the world to carry out this task, gets a partner in the process of carrying out the task, walks side by side with the partner, solves the mystery, and then some mysteries appear ... until the final task is completed.

John David Washington plays the leading role.

But from the beginning of the film, Tenet buried the introduction of science fiction, and it was not completely detonated until the last hour-the audience discovered that it was a nuclear bomb if it didn't explode, and the information was bursting, so I won't put it here for the time being. From the perspective of science fiction, Tenet is a hard science fiction work. It uses the concept of physics to package the story, and based on the theory of physics, it makes self-consistent assumptions and deductions about the world.

"Entropy" is a core concept to understand Tenet, and its physical meaning is a measure of the chaotic degree of the system. Under the normal natural law, things follow the principle of "entropy increase", that is, particles develop from order to disorder. For example, at room temperature, a loaf of bread will only go from fresh to rotten, not the other way around. However, Tenet assumed the situation of "inverse entropy" on the basis of science. In an "inverse entropy" space-time, the time law here is not from order to disorder, from the past to the future, but from disorder to order, from the future to the past, bread from decay to freshness, and flying bullets return to the magazine according to the original trajectory.

Inverse entropy item symbol

In Tenet's view, a person can enter the "inverse entropy" state through the time machine and go back to the past. Generally speaking, Tenet belongs to a branch of science fiction movies: time travel. Tenet's story is based on an agent's mission through time and space. Some people want to use time travel to destroy the world, and Tenet, to which the hero belongs, shoulders the mission of saving the world.

Only with the setting of inverse entropy, Tenerie's time travel is different from the time travel movies we were familiar with before. Common time travel narratives are mainly these two kinds. One kind is 12 monkeys (1995), the ring messenger (20 12), and the former destination (20 14). The hero enters the river of time, goes back to the past and wants to reverse the future, only to find that "the future is". The other category is Clues to Time and Space (2007), Source Code (20 1 1) and Edge of Tomorrow (20 14), and the time is bifurcated, so the protagonist's return to the past may produce completely different results.

Relatively speaking, these two kinds of time travel are relatively easy to understand, because no matter how many times the protagonist goes back to the past, the operation law of the past time and space is exactly the same as now, and neither the protagonist nor the audience will have anything unacceptable.

Tenet is very different from them. Its time travel is based on inverse entropy and includes at least two different points. On the first level, the operating rules of the anti-entropy world are contrary to the current world. People walk backwards, cars drive backwards, fights go backwards, and time flows backwards. That's why. When the hero enters the inverse entropy state through the time machine, his behavior is still positive, but the whole world is going backwards. This has a strong defamiliarization effect, not only the protagonist in the film is puzzled, but also the audience sees such a spectacle for the first time in the film.

The boat went backwards, and the waves rushed from there to there.

The second level is the logic of time reversal. In the past, time travel movies were mostly vague or simple, and the creators did not study it as a "problem". So you see Tom Cruise as Major Cage in Edge of Tomorrow, and suddenly go back to the past. But in Tenet, there is a very complicated, meticulous and rigorous logic system behind how to go back to the past and where to go.

The time machine in the movie has red and blue sides separated by transparent glass. Red goes in and blue goes out, from entropy to inverse entropy and time countercurrent; Blue goes in, red comes out, from inverse entropy to entropy increase, time flows forward.

A time machine can't take you back anywhere you want to go. Give an easy-to-understand example. At three o'clock this afternoon, you took an exam, which ended at five o'clock in the afternoon, but you failed and only got 60 points. You know the answer afterwards and want to get 100. It's five o'clock in the afternoon, and you want to go back two hours ago, that is, take the exam again at three o'clock in the afternoon. When you enter the inverse entropy state from the time machine, you don't go back two hours ago, but you have to go back two hours honestly with time. At this time, the world you see is the other way around. You have to wear a special mask to breathe. Two hours later, you go back through the red door from the blue door of the time machine and enter the state of increasing entropy. You will return to three o'clock in the afternoon, and the operation of the world will be normalized. You will start the second exam.

Tenet puzzled the audience: when you go back to the future two hours ago, how many of you are in the world at this time?

Two. One is you in the past, who are completing the answer sheet with only 60 points, and the other is you in the future, who are completing the answer sheet with 100 points for the second time. And two hours later, the old you who scored only 60 points will disappear, because the old you are experiencing what you experienced with 100 points: the second exam and everything after that.

So you at 60 and you at 100 may meet. This is why there are two protagonists fighting each other in Tenet, because the protagonist in the past did not know that the protagonist in the future would return to the past.

Tenet's unique manipulation of time constitutes the multiple complexity of his narrative: there are both positive narrative and flashback, and the positive narrative and flashback can also be connected, thus realizing the "time-pincer action". That is, let the past you and the future you arrive at the same time and complete the same task, so as to better achieve your goals. In the movie, both the hero and the villain use the "pincer action". In the final highlight of the film, Eagle Mountain Wars in California, "Time Clamp Action" is applied to the peak, with multiple narrative lines, different people in different time states, and even the same person has multiple time states. I'm afraid it takes three brushes and four brushes to sort out every clue.

Blow up buildings through time tongs.

In the future, if Tenet claims to be second, few movies dare to claim to be first. It's like a video performance of a physics paper. Such brain burning is bound to shut out a large part of the audience, and film critics may not like it. Because Tenet is still quite conceptual, the main energy of the film is to restore the concept itself with stories, so although the film was shot in seven countries on three continents, it all became the background; Some characters are only conceptual props, and their emotional motives are relatively lacking.

One of the three-dimensional characters in Tenet is the villain played by kenneth branagh, who has a relatively complete arc.

The villain played by kenneth branagh.

The other is Neil played by Robert Pattinson. Before the movie 130 minutes, the audience just thought he was handsome. The last-minute "sacrifice" and the revelation of the secret (he is the son of the villain) make this character have a very touching highlight moment. The theme of time travel is more or less fatalistic, but Neil's heroic behavior makes the story sublime. Neil is not only Sisyphus who pushes boulders, but also Prometheus who steals fire.

Neil played by Robert Pattinson is too pink.

Tenet will have a polarized evaluation. But even if the film has some shortcomings, it can't cover up its flaws. This is not an exaggerated and mindless statement of "no boasting". Because Nolan's films broaden the boundaries of film imagination and film performance imagination.

Some action scenes in the trailer

As a line in the movie says, "Don't try to understand it, feel it." You don't have to be afraid of Nolan's film, because it is difficult to understand. Even if you don't quite understand what the movie is about, you can still feel it in the cinema-feel its explosive imagination, feel its dazzling visual wonders, and feel another possibility that the movie brings you.

Editor of this issue Xing Tan