News culture “No time travel”: Christopher Nolan finally explains what happens in his most controversial film

Culture news “No Time Travel”: Christopher Nolan Finally Explains What Happens in His Most Controversial Film

A misunderstood film? It’s almost normal

Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker who likes twisted scenarios, it’s no secret: we think for example of Inception with its dreams within dreams, of Interstellar and its distortion of time… but especially in Tenet, perhaps its greatest feat in terms of complexity.

Released in 2020, the film presents itself as the cinematographic adaptation of a palindrome (its title is one, it can be read in both directions) and if it must have been particularly complicated to write and direct scene, it is perhaps just as difficult to interpret.

In fact, Nolan had already admitted that we were not supposed to understand everything in the film (we are reassured), but here he is back through an interview by “Guy with a movie camera” on TikTok in which he goes back to the very principle of Tenet: no, it’s not really about time travel.

Tenet is not a film about time travel in the conventional sense, it is a film about the direction of time.

It is a notion which is defined by what we call entropy. All laws of physics are symmetrical, they are all the same regardless of the direction of time, except entropy. And there is a debate in the world of physics about whether entropy defines the direction of time or whether it only shows the direction of time. To know if it is a cause or a result.

A timely speech

So entropy seems to be one of the main themes of Tenet and according to Nolan, this therefore addresses two theories: it can define the direction of time, but there is also the possibility that it only shows it. In the film, the director decided and entropy would therefore be the cause, not the result.

In the film, rather than simply going back or forward in time, there are machines capable of changing the direction of time for an object or for a person. So we mix the two directions of time in one and the same scene, in one and the same shot. You do not have to consider that the cause necessarily comes before the effect.

There is nothing in the laws of physics that suggests we couldn’t look at time in a different direction. So in the scene where the character extends his hand over the inverted ball and it rises, he is the one who causes this. Whether you let go of the ball or not, whether it goes back into your hand or not, it is your hand and your will that causes this.

It is for this reason that many things in Tenet are constructed – just like the title of the film – like palindromes. The same thing can be read both ways.

Do you have a smoking brain? Maybe after this explanatory speech, rewatching Tenet will open your eyes. Maybe. In the meantime, we remind you that the director released the acclaimed Oppenheimer in 2023which won the BAFTA for Best Film and the Golden Globes for Best Drama Film (among others), but also received thirteen nominations for the next Oscars… just that.

Buy Tenet on 4K Blu-Ray on Amazon