Tenet Is at Its Best as a Buddy Movie

Even before its release in 2020, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet had already been established as one of the most controversial films of the new decade. The first big debate surrounding the film regarded the method of its release, with some celebrating Nolan’s insistence that Tenet be screened in theaters before being made available for streaming, while others criticized this decision for ignoring the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, which at the time was at the height of its intensity. Once Tenet came out, opinions split even further over the film’s actual content and artistic merit. Supporters praised Nolan for continuing to make massive action blockbusters not based on established intellectual property and relying more on practical stunt and visual effects work rather than CGI. Detractors critiqued the film’s unique time travel plot, labeling it convoluted, with many also noting that the decision to include expository dialogue during scenes where the actors’ voices were obscured by breathing apparatuses worn by the characters and other audio distractions made the story even more difficult to follow. But whether one’s opinion of Tenet is generally negative or positive, it’s likely most would agree that the relationship between the film’s lead characters, John David Washington’s Protagonist and Robert Pattinson’s Neil, is one of its strongest elements.

Tenet

Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

Release Date

August 22, 2020

Runtime

195

Studio

Warner Bros. Pictures

What Is ‘Tenet’ About?

Tenet begins when the Protagonist, an elite CIA agent, is captured while on a mission. Rather than betray his teammates to his captors, he swallows a cyanide capsule, only to wake up and discover that it was not real. The whole scenario was an elaborate test which he passed, after which he is inducted into Tenet, a covert organization that protects the world from threats created by inversion. Inversion is a scientific discovery from the future that allows the entropy of objects or people to be reversed, causing them to move backwards in time. The Protagonist is charged with stopping an apocalyptic terror plot led by Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) that involves the use of inversion technology. A CIA contact sends Neil to assist the Protagonist when his mission takes him to Mumbai.

‘Tenet’ Gives Us a Different Kind of Buddy Cop Dynamic

In most movies with a buddy cop dynamic, or at least the ones where the buddy cops are male, the central relationship is initially defined by opposition, with the characters clashing over their differing personalities and or ideals. Only when they are forced to work closely together do they begin developing tolerance and/or affection for each other, but even this is usually disguised, even if only thinly, by continuing clashes of ego and mutual mockery. This isn’t the case with Neil and the Protagonist in Tenet. They immediately begin working as an effective team and quickly hit it off on a personal level, often sharing brief laughs at the absurd difficulty and danger of their situation. Even after Neil witnesses inversion, leading him to believe Tenet will want the Protagonist to kill him, he holds no grudges. The Protagonist states that he hopes it does not come to that or that if it does that it is his decision, with Neil stating that he does as well, showing the trust and affection that has already developed between them.

Some necessary tension is added to the partnership when the Protagonist learns that Neil has actually been an experienced Tenet agent all along, but even this strain doesn’t last long. This can be partially attributed to the Protagonist being professional enough not to let any hurt personal feelings he has interfere with his efforts to save the world, but it also seems like he’s simply grown to like and trust Neil enough to understand his situation and forgive the lies. This is another move away from conventional buddy cop storytelling, in which the partnership usually collapses for a time following some sort of disagreement, and is only gradually reconciled when the stakes of the partners’ mission increase, forcing them back together.

‘Tenet’ Shows Friends Across Time

The reveal of Neil as a Tenet agent actually winds up deepening the friendship between him and the Protagonist. At the end of the film, Tenet launches a two-pronged operation to stop Sator and his allies from inverting the world’s entropy, using a doomsday device called the Algorithm. During the mission, a masked soldier helps the Protagonist steal the Algorithm but sacrifices themselves in the process. While dividing up the Algorithm for safekeeping, Neil explains that he was recruited into Tenet by and served with an older version of the Protagonist, who actually starts the organization in the future. The Protagonist realizes that the masked soldier was an inverted Neil and tries to warn the current version of the danger, but Neil has already realized the truth and remains committed to sacrificing himself to keep the timeline intact. He bids farewell to the Protagonist, saying that “For me, this is the end of a beautiful friendship,” in a perfect homage to the ending of Casablanca.

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The Protagonist and Neil’s relationship both defies traditional archetypes for male heroes in film and gives Tenet a tremendous amount of heart. The time loop at Tenet‘s center makes it so that the Protagonist and Neil each learn what they need to stop Sator from different versions of each other. Effectively, this means that their friendship saves the world. This is a surprisingly warm, loving message for an edgy action film and makes Tenet a perfect example of why the popular notion that Nolan is a “cold” filmmaker is inaccurate.

Tenet is available to rent or buy on Prime Video in the U.S.

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