Tenet (Part II)
TENET (Part II) Theme, Plot. The Theory of Worldbuiling
Having said that, the characters are well drawn, but grim and dark and darkgrim grimdark. This is to be expected in the genre: spies and assassins and gunrunners are not a swashbuckling, cheery, upbeat gang, generally speaking. Even a spoof of such a genre is a spoof of what is a grim business, after all.
Despite all this, the theme of this film, while ambiguous (as are all Nolan themes) was not grim and dark, but a paean to the right and duty of every man to make his own fate. Since the background was, of necessity, fatalistic, this is something of a daring choice, and Nolan handles it well.
In less masterful hands, the same theme would have seemed absurd or trite. More on this later.
And, again, as is unusual in time travel films, the victory came at a cost.
Unfortunately, as is usual in time travel films, if not endemic, there was no reason given as to why the cost could not and would not be cheated by more time travelling: simply go back one more time into the sacrificial scene, armed with foreknowledge, and prevent the unhappy outcome.
All the other non-paradoxical elements were well done, indeed, brilliantly done, particularly the plot and the pacing. The tense scenes were tense. The clock was ticking. The break-in had to be done with crackerjack timing. The plot twists were well set up and well executed.
The plot twists were so well done, it was like watching an Olympic ice-skater perform ladyback toe-loop twizzle leading to a triple axel camel spin.
Unfortunately, I saw them all coming from a mile away, all but one. As an old hand in the science fiction field, I have read my share of time travel stories, and even written a few. So I am like a magician sitting in the audience, who, when the magician on stage does his clever card trick, I know in which sleeve the real card is cleverly concealed. The pleasure of being fooled by the trick is denied to me, but the pleasure of seeing the trick executed artfully is one gained to compensate.
My compliments go to the car chase scene, which we see twice, once forward and once backward, and only the second time knowing who is in the car seen leaping from a tumbled wreck up into a whole car, and driving rear-first down the highway at way over the speed limit.
My highest compliments were to the climax of the heist scene in the first third of the film. This was tense, it was clever, and all the clues as to what is really going on are right there, on-screen, for any viewer sharp enough to see and note. It was great.
Best of all is the moment where the protagonist is assaulted in hand-to-hand combat by a masked assailant, and one man is time-reversed, so each man seems to be moving backward to the other.
In that regard, it is perhaps the best fight scene I have ever seen, at least in terms of the visual cleverness of the camera trick of having one man filmed backward to the either, and splicing them both together, and still having their moves and countermoves make sense.
By way of sharpest contrast, on the other hand, I have a stern complaint about the final battle sequence. It consisted of four armies, two friendly and two enemy, one traveling forward in time and the other backward, shooting and unshooting at each other. It was all filmed in a gray light, on a gray background, with gray uniforms.
For some reason, the director decided that friend and foe, fore and back, would be dressed in the same drab uniforms, with no identifying marks aside from an unseen armband, so there was no way to tell who was shooting at whom, or unshooting, as the case may be.
In that regard, it was perhaps the worst fight scene I have ever seen on film, mere confusion and explosion without point, with the occasional unexplosion.
Unlike the hand-to-hand scene filmed by the selfsame director in the selfsame movie, where everything made sense, nothing here made sense, and it was not due to the forward-backward trick, but due to poor blocking, bad lighting, and indistinguishable costumes and gear.
And at the end of the fight, instead of having the veterans surviving the current run-through, reverse themselves for a third time, and run through it backward again, and forward for the fourth time, and then backward for a fifth, until there were either an infinite number of soldiers on the field, or one of the armies destroyed the other with a bomb in the barracks the night before the battle started, so they never showed up to the fight to begin with, the good guys just dust off, apparently leaving the bad guys in place and intact, so that their reverse-time squad can flip backward through time to fight the scene we just saw, for them, a second time through.
According to the rules of the make-believe world the film establishes, that would have been the reasonable thing to do. If a soldier has to die so that the bomb does not ignite, it would be reasonable to replay the scene as many times as needed until the desired outcome is found. Take a week off between each mission replay to train, years, if need be, to acquire the exact skills needed to sharpshoot, or lockpick, or give first aid, or walk a tightrope, or whatever.
Or give the viewer the make-believe reason why this cannot be done. When the worldbuilding is done correctly the rules and the limits of the make-believe, whether it is magic or time travel, are known to the audience, even if not stated explicitly.
I pray the reader will forgive a digression into the theory and practice of worldbuilding in general, before returning to the discussion of the theory and practice of worldbuilding in time travel stories, and finally to what Nolan did well in his handling of time travel in TENET.
Some may argue that Science Fiction is not unique in worldbuilding, that is, not unique in needing descriptions of the world in which it takes place — historical novels have the same requirement, or anything set in an exotic location — and therefore the worldbuilding element is part of the setting, no more, no less.
To the contrary, the background details of the invented alien world or future time, the coherence and the aesthetic effect of the alien technology or alien laws of nature, form a story-telling element an author should rightly expect to be praised or dispraised by a science fiction audience independent of the other elements.
The reason why such worldbuilding is not merely a part of setting is that a time travel story (for example) like TENET takes place entirely in the modern day. That is the setting. We all know it.
But the rules of how the time travel works are invented by the writer and known only to him. He must contrive to pass such knowledge to the audience in a proper storytelling fashion, to allow the reader to get a reliable sense of what is and is not possible.
To have drama, the plot needs rules, that is, limits that cannot be broken, but which, perhaps, can be bent, if done so consistently and with foreshadowing. In a time travel story, as in any story with magic or miracles in it, the reader needs to know what the hero can do, and, more to the point, what he cannot do.
In ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ by W. W. Jacobs, this effect is neatly done by having the paw grant three wishes and only three. There is a parallel limit, established immediately when the magic comes on stage, in Disney’s DARBY O’GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE, (“Three wishes I’ll grant ye, great wishes an’ small! But you wish a fourth and you’ll lose them all!”) as well as in Disney’s ALADDIN (No killing, no resurrection, no love charms — “And ixnay on wishing for more wishes!”).
The rules need not be expressly stated, as they are in Disney’s ALADDIN, but they must be understood: the conceit that the Monkey’s Paw will grant wishes according to the wording, not the spirit of the wish, regardless of consequences, is a limit that forms the drama of the story, but this horrific limit is shown, rather than described, to the reader. In all theses cases, even though the power to make wishes forms the core drama of the tale, the character’s problems are not solved merely by wishing them away. This would be the very definition of undramatic.
The worldbuilding element is not merely the setting or scenery, because it is concerned how well or poorly the writer establishes and follows the rules of his world which are not the rules of ours, and how well he has drawn out the ramifications of his rules.
To a science fiction reader, a story can be set in a fascinating, imaginative, well-crafted and intricately designed world, complete with maps and timelines, philology and pantheons and all the panoply of anthropology, but lack every other element of characterization and plotting and so on, and still be praised: MAN OF GOLD by M.A.R. Barker springs to mind.
Contrariwise, a novel can display unparalleled genius in all its storytelling elements, but the worldbuilding is safe, dull, and flat: ANOTHER KINGDOM by Andrew Klavan is a perfect example, as he is skilled writer but not a fantasy writer, and he wisely keeps his unimaginative imaginary background as far in the background as he may.
All other stories, superhero tales, even fantasy of the traditional pre-Tolkien type, take place in a known background whose rules needs no explanation nor introduction. The writer need not describe Metropolis or Gotham City, no more than he need describe New York, and the audience is expected to know what a dragon is, or a wicked witch, or to know the magic power of true love’s first kiss, all without further ado, but a three-legged Martian war machine armed with heat-ray needs a word of explanation.
Note the exception of Tolkien: he is, if not the first, surely the most celebrated author to treat the matter of fantasy with the rigor of science fiction, by inventing a whole new world that has the mood and flavor of fairytale and Norse epic together with medieval romances, but which is not set in the undescribed landscape of “once upon a time.”
The Hyborian Age or the Atlantis of Robert E Howard, or the flagrantly Elizabethan Mercury of E.R. Eddison, while nowise as rigorous, likewise form modern fantasy tales set firmly in a secondary world invented by the author, and not in the shared cultural memory occupied by Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and the works of William Morris.
By this definition, ironically, STAR WARS is not counted as science fiction. It is mostly fantasy: because from the opening word crawl, as if from a buried but shared cultural memory, even those to young ever to have seen a Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers serial, all in the audience knew the world and what could be found in it: space princesses, spaceships, mystic powers, knights & wizards, evil emperors, samurai laser-swords. No one had to be told what a blaster was, or a stormtrooper, or a rocketship. We all knew why the villain wore a big black cape. Mostly fantasy, not all fantasy: Any element unique to the background which had to be explained were worldbuilding elements: how the Force works, what a Lightsaber is, and how Wookies win chess games.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
