r/ChristopherNolan

Before Tenet, Inception was beyond comparison to me... and Interstellar as well. The cast, visual effects, meticulously elaborated sci-fi concepts - everything. But the concepts behind Inception and Interstellar can be explained in "linear terms". Apart from the theory of dreaming, Inception requires personal experience with dreams or imagination, but it’s incomparably less than what you need for Tenet. But Tenet raised the bar so high that it simply pushes away everyone who doesn't even want to attempt conquering it.

It's no surprise that in this sci-fi trilogy, Tenet is the latest. Inception and Interstellar brought him to peak form and prepared for Tenet. As Emma Thomas said in the Tenet documentary, the film wasn't possible in ~2010, even though it required less impressive visual effects than Inception or Interstellar. I think that’s totally correct. Developing the idea for many years wasn't just about the script; he needed a top level of experience and collaboration with his closest professionals, like Hoyte van Hoytema.

Tenet is something so boundless and unexplainable that it hardly seems possible to put on screen at all. But that makes it the holy grail of Nolan's entire filmography - the bar he could have achieved only after making his other masterpieces. In Tenet, knowledge is actually nothing without perception, imagination, and mind training.

Honestly my favourite film from Nolan, genuinely the only film in a long time where i’ve reacted the way I did, I didn’t fully understand the ending but to but the confusion ( in a good way) is what I personally get with Nolan. The foreshadowing throughout the film was great, i love the time period also,everything feels like an absolute masterclass in cinema, genuinely excellent. Bale was particularly great as Borden, to the point where I almost disagreed at the ending painting him as the victim in a sense, for me he was that good that he completely overshadowed Angier as an awful human. But then again Jackman is always great and was easy to root for.

Rambling aside, genuinely one of the best things i’ve watched in a long time

I’d always taken the film at face value: Cobb is hired to perform corporate espionage, he succeeds (after much tribulation), and is rewarded with being able to return to his children.

I have known there are other readings, particularly that Cobb himself is the subject of inception, but I’d never given them much scrutiny or credence.

But then I watched last night… and I started to wonder…

I’d boil my hunch down to two points early in the film, in case this is well trodden ground (and that is partly my question: Is it?).

1. Everything about Ken Watanabe’s character. The film begins with him and begins with him posing a coded question *to* Cobb — starting his renewed self-realization. As we later learn, this is the climax of the heist. His scouting Cobb could easily be seen as planting the seeds for inception; we see Cobb do the same kind of role play later in the film. He is the one to introduce the idea of inception. And he is very intent on working with Cobb and insists on going on the mission. In my new theory (I think), he is playing the Cobb role in Cobb’s inception.

2. This is more supplementary, but Michael Caine’s interaction with Cobb struck me as a bit “off” this time. He doesn’t act as if this is his fugitive son in law; once I had this idea planted in my own mind, he came off more like “you need to get past this and go home.” And he connects Cobb to Ariadne, his “guide” if I remember the meaning of her name correctly.

Perhaps more than anything, this helps me make sense of why we start the film where we do, which has always puzzled me a bit. And I like that.

Anyway, sound off with your own thoughts or theories.