Tenet is truly a ‘Nolan baby’ inside-out, more so than his other reality-bending films such as Memento, The Prestige, and Inception. But time wound up for the film’s release, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Having been released in the United States and the United Kingdom in September, the IMAX-shot film is now running in theatres across India.
The film stars Aussie actor Elizabeth Debicki (The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2) as Kat, an expert in art curation and restoration who becomes integral to the Protagonist (John David Washington) and Neil’s (Robert Pattinson) mission to save the world from an apocalyptic temporal war, enforced by Russian oligarch Sator (Kenneth Branagh).
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Theatrical value
Elizabeth’s scenes were shot in various parts of the world including Estonia, Vietnam and London, but she missed out on shooting in Mumbai. She still says, over a call from her home in Australia, that “Tenet having a release in India warmed my heart because I’m so proud of this film. When Chris [Nolan] and Warner Brothers said they would release it this year, I remember thinking this is exactly what people need right now because Tenet is wonderful cinema and escapism, in a meta way. It has made me more aware of what cinema can do for people, in a time of ‘drought’ and how cinema can be a pocket of its own time, funnily enough.”
ELIZABETH DEBICKI and KENNETH BRANAGH in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic "TENET," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. | Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon / 2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
The announcement of Tenet having a theatrical release surprised the entertainment world, but those close to Nolan know of his tenacity. The 30-year-old, aware of the pandemic-induced restrictions experienced by the theatre and entertainment industries, sees it both ways. “[The theatrical release decision] reinforced something I know about Chris,” she elaborates, “in that he is a remarkable, auteur filmmaker who exists, in my opinion, in his own space.”
She also commends Nolan’s and Emma Thomas’ (Tenet’s producer and Nolan’s wife) dedication to and love for the art form as being “so pure and real,” adding, “They will be the ones who constantly go to the cinema and understand that Tenet is to be watched on a big screen and communally, with the sound and the colour. He understood that, even though we are in difficult times en global masse, if there was a way for people to go safely and still have cinema feed their souls, he would encourage that. I respected that approach, because the need for people to go into these spaces and experience theatre and film, is vital to us as a species. It’s bolstering that we have that need ingrained in us in the arts.”
ELIZABETH DEBICKI in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic "TENET," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. | Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon / 2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
A particularly jarring scene where time, entropy and quantum physics are tested sees actor Elizabeth with her hands tied behind her back and fear glinting in her eyes, confined to the back seat of a speeding SUV. It gets worse: the vehicle has no driver, and it’s hurtling down a busy highway backwards, owing to the inversion of time. So, everything she battles within the confined space fights back. Playing Kat, the six-foot-plus Elizabeth stretches herself along the inside of the car to unlock the door so she can escape. Talk about making the most of ‘actor real estate’, it is a scene she recalls with utmost pride and exhilaration. Clearly, the theatre-trained actor is drawn to roles with equal measures of allure and grit, and Tenet’s Kat is no exception.
When Tenet entered pre-production in 2018, the world got to know, headline by headline, how collaborative the film was going to be; alongside a diverse cast, were cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Interstellar, Dunkirk), composer Ludwig Göransson (Black Panther, Creed I and II), production designer Nathan Crowley (Dunkirk, The Prestige), and sound designer Richard King (Inception, The Dark Knight), to name a few. These combined efforts channelled into Nolan’s mind-bending vision for the film culminated in memorable action sequences and deeply disconcerting dialogue scenes.
- The mystery behind Tenet over the past two years is remarkable, like something out of a covert operations file. The story had long been on director Christopher Nolan’s mind — 20 years to be precise — and the script began to take physical shape back in 2014. To perfect the interpretations of the time and science within the film, Nolan brought on theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who worked with Nolan on Interstellar to consult.
- In past interviews, Elizabeth Debicki recalls her casting experience, which saw her being flown to Los Angeles to read the script in a locked room with no phones allowed.
Elizabeth agrees, laughing, “Words are my thing! The way Chris runs his set and directs, is whatever the scale of a given scene, each frame has the same blueprint. It’s all ‘fundamentally Chris’ as a masterful storyteller, and even with Hoyte, it’s all about singular focus, whether it’s someone’s hand reaching for something or a plane flying into a building. Each iota that is being captured on film, is as important as the next. I’ve never experienced that before, and even speaking to you now, I grapple with how he does that! It’s important to Chris that you understand. As an actor, this is very freeing, because you feel held by the atmosphere, and by the way, Chris and Hoyte know that everything you give to the camera is being captured, held and kneaded, and everything is as finely-tuned as a machine. Nothing is dropped to the wayside, everything is very specific.”
‘Very harrowing’
For Elizabeth, Tenet didn’t just entail physically demanding work, but also that of the emotional variety too; Kat’s relationship with Sator comprises a great deal of fear but she insists her character is far from a damsel in distress. “The grounds that [Kenneth Branagh] and I covered emotionally with those two roles were very dark. It was, at times, very harrowing,” she comments, “With that kind of material, once you understand what you need to say with the scene and what the scene creates for your character to become this psychological portrait on screen, you surrender to it. Playing Kat, I understood the harrowing scenes are important to show the audience the threats to her existence — physical and psychological — she faced. We had to push those in the direction we did because when we watched her crawl out of that very dark place and begin to free herself, we had to understand how profound the psychological prison was at the start.”
ELIZABETH DEBICKI and KENNETH BRANAGH in Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic "TENET," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. | Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon / 2020 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
She starts laughing as she adds, “It sounds like such a basic thing, but it was important that Ken and I really liked each other as people, and we both have a quirky sense of humour, so we were able to give each other a lot of life and support, and add levity to the shooting experience. Finding time to laugh helped a lot.”
Regarding future projects ahead, the 30-year-old is looking at a diverse range of moods, not just laughs. Her two biggest upcoming roles include the late Lady Diana, Princess of Wales in Netflix’s The Crown’s seasons five and six, and Ayesha, leader of the Sovereign gold-dipped alien people in Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3.