The Genius of TENET (2020) Explained

[Music] after a career filled with movies that dance around the exploration of time nolan tackles the subject head-on from both sides in a cerebral visual puzzle and later century into the nolan expanded universe tenet the movie follows former cia agent john david washington simply known as protagonist as he delves into the murky twilight world of international espionage in a search for missing plutonium on his quest he encounters a mysterious organization called tenet who enlist him in their efforts to prevent the film's antagonist andrei sator played with menace by kenneth branagh from starting world war iii you don't negotiate with a tiger you admire a tiger until he turns on you so far so bond but the film really starts to get interesting when washington's protagonist lands the art of time inversion the ability to travel backwards in time by reversing one's entropy [Music] much like the palindromic nature of the organization that recruits the fresh-faced protagonist christopher nolan's narrative employs time in both directions to drive the story forward a similar technique to the one he'd used in his first major feature memento which we covered a few weeks ago in a video i'll be leaving a link to below you mean reverse chronology like 5 minute wheeler's notion of positrons an electron moving backwards in time sure that's exactly what i meant but to understand the themes and ideas tenet proposes we ourselves have to go through the turnstile and invert all the way back to the spring of 1940 when a new way of conceiving the universe came into be all during one innocent phone call between two landmark physicists richard feynman and john wheeler with wheeler saying weidman i know all electrons have the same charge and the same mass why because they're all the same electron this concept later developed into the one electron universe postulate suggested that each and every electron in the universe was the same simply moving forward and backwards in time over the following years the theory slowly expanded and culminated with the suggestion that positrons essentially an electron with a positive charge instead of a negative one could simply be electrons moving backwards in time further still research suggested that if these two particles would ever collide they would annihilate and cease to exist this one electron universe postulate lies at the very foundation of christopher nolan's tenet which sees the protagonists and southern myriad of characters weave throughout the past present and future to create a stable reality while avoiding these other versions of themselves which if contacted are warned to cause annihilation but we're getting ahead of ourselves let's wind back hey guys what's happening niat here with film comics explained and today tomorrow or yesterday depending on the train of time you subscribe to we're going to be diving into the meaning and philosophy of tenet exploring the provocative interconnected web of science belief and time travel the overalling off-screen plot finds its origins after the events of the film a few generations from now a brilliant scientist considered her times oppenheimer comes up with an algorithm which can reverse the flow of entropy entropy is essentially a term in thermodynamics used to describe the measure of disorder within a system the more disordered something is the higher its entropy will be hence why solids have a lower entropy than liquids and liquids have a lower entropy than gases the second law of thermodynamics also states that the entropy of a system will always increase over time never decrease everything decays and falls apart which is why physicist arthur eddington poetically called entropy the arrow of time think of a glass being dropped from a height entropy dictates that over time it will become more disordered while other laws of physics are symmetrical meaning anything that can happen forwards can also happen backwards the flow of entropy is the only thing preventing the glass from ever reforming itself and becoming less disordered it's because of the symmetry that there's a non-zero possibility that the glass could repair itself after all the movement of all the air and table molecules through which the heat and sound energy of the glass were carried when it shattered would only need to move in reverse direction but even if this were to occur there are so many billions upon billions of variables involved with the movement of each molecule that the probability weighs heavily in favor of the glass remaining shattered so while the glass can't repair itself due to entropy it's also impossible to rule out that it can never repair itself it's a paradox it's your head out here yes we'll dive into this in more detail in part three when we cover the philosophy of tenet but nolan essentially takes this paradoxical non-zero possibility approach to entropy and runs with it like a madman realizing the algorithm's potential to destroy everything that exists and everything that has existed before her time the unnamed scientists intended to hide it in nine radioactive sites around the world in the past and takes her own life to keep their locations a secret however even further into the future around 200 years after the events of the film the world is on the brink of collapse due to environmental disaster this leads to the people living then seeking out the algorithm to turn back the clocks and survive but of course turning back the clocks means destroying their past meaning the world our characters know would essentially cease to exist the moment the algorithm is used it's basically the grandfather paradox on steroids with our ancestors if they destroy us won't that destroy them it's bringing us to the grandfather paradox after discovering a capsule containing gold and instructions from the future on how to build a turnstile using future technology a young andre sator begins amassing an empire to locate each piece of the algorithm on behalf of our vengeful descendants once his mission is complete satoru has to hide the algorithm in an abandoned russian city called staus 12 so that his employers can dig it up in the future and destroy their ancestors while saitor lives like a tiger king in the present but it turns out satan isn't simply doing this selflessly for prosperity he has his own motivations after being diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer seito takes this opportunity to play god he goes back on his commitment to those in the future and instead decides to end the world by triggering the algorithm whilst killing himself dooming the past present and future in one fell swoop if i can't have you no one else can but thankfully for us tenet exists will exist existed it gets complicated but don't worry we're gonna track each of the converging narratives as we see it saw it we'll see it [Music] we begin with the protagonist extracting an agent from the opera house in kiev who'd recovered an artifact later revealed to be a piece of the algorithm finding bombs placed at the feet of audience members the protagonist decides to split the team in two sending half of them to extract the artifact along with the agent while he and the other half save the incapacitated audience members from certain death the mission goes a little haywire but the protagonists are saved by an inverted bullet fired from a mysterious soldier with an orange keychain dangling from his pack unfortunately the guys with the algorithm are taken out by sata's men the protagonist is also kidnapped and tortured for information by the same guys that have dropped him and his team off at the opera house after enduring hours of pain and not spilling a secret he takes a cyanide pill which slips him into an induced coma instead of killing him when he awakes he's informed that the fake cyanide was a test carried out by tenet to determine whether he was loyal to the point of death an absolute necessity when your enemy is time the protagonist is then given only a word and a gestures his entry point which represent the collision between two directions of time foreshadowing the organization's key tenet that ignorance is ammunition he takes us to mumbai where he meets neil an agent who seems to know a real lot about the protagonist and directly references feynman's one electron universe postulate which we discussed earlier neil also helps him get in touch with priya who essentially outlined sata's plan starting off the key have been narrative by the future and say it is helping we have to find out how traveling to london the protagonist meets michael kane who gives him his in blackmailing sata's wife an art dealer who told her husband a forgery evaluated by her former lover and now deceased a repo he's also informed of an explosion that occurred in status 12 the same time he was in action at the opera house in kiev after meeting with kat he learns that satan had already beaten him to the punch and used the forgery which he kept securely locked away at a freeport fault in oslo protected by the rotor security company the blackmail cat and the subservience to get cat out of this bind the protagonist and neil break into the oslo vault while they almost succeed here they find something more perplexing a huge object known as the turnstile which ejects two men on either side one of which attacks our protagonists with their entropy reversed and one which darts past neil travelling forwards in time the protagonist meets with priya again who explains that the turnstile was used to reverse entropy by creating a closed system where a person's body continues to experience normal entropy but they're able to move backwards through time within the bubble of their closed system like a miniature universe where time flows backwards parallel to the larger universe this is why those that use the tone style have to use an inverted oxygen tank containing inverted air for them to breathe because it would be impossible to breathe air that is experiencing an opposite flow of time when inverted you feel the wind at your back when you run and if you get burnt fire that's on you turns to ice with the transfer of heat now reversed but what if instead of creating a closed system within the universe you inverted the entire universe's flow of time and entropy that's where the algorithm comes into play this is the proving window as you approach the turnstile if you don't see yourself in the proving window do not enter the machine why not if you don't see yourself reverse exit the machine then you ain't getting now under normal circumstances cause is followed by effect but for inverted objects it's reversed effect occurs before the cause this may appear to create issues with the notion of free will but as the protagonist is told at the very start a reverse bullet is only caught or fired in reverse if the person handling the gun wills themselves to catch or fire it thus everything that happens was decided by a protagonist acting out his own free will even if he didn't fully understand it just yet why does it feel so strange you're not shooting the bullet catching it the protagonist then meets with sata who tasks him with retrieving missing plutonium but after the heist and talon he and neil discover it's actually another artifact before being confronted by an inverted version of sata captured and taken to sata's warehouse which house a turnstile the protagonist is forced to watch his cat is shot with an inverted bullet creating an inversely irradiated wound luckily the protagonist is saved by neil and the other operatives led by a special op named ives they all reveal themselves to be members of the tenant organization putting the protagonists somewhat at ease ives explains that the highway heist in talon was a temporal pincer maneuver whereby sata's team went through the event twice once forwards to obtain the information about what happened and then with their entropy reversed to get the desired outcome as a result the protagonist neil ives and cat jump in the turnstile to stabilize her inverted wound whilst also heading back through the talon event to try and change the outcome by securing the piece of the algorithm but of course sata had already experienced these events during the temporal pincer meaning he still got a hold of the algorithm after failing to get the piece of the algorithm the protagonist and neil continued travelling back to the oslo vault with cat to finish healing her gunshot wound which now required them to return her entropy back to normal the protagonist now dressed in black rushes in and experiences the conflict we saw earlier with his past self adding new meaning to the phrase why are you hitting yourself before entering the turnstile and confronting neil on his way out after saving cats the protagonist travels forwards and time again and meets with prio who fills him in on saturday's plot to recover the algorithm on behalf of the future bury all the pieces in one location before sending a signal to the future indicating where it can be found but cat reveals that satan is more selfish than they realize positing that he actually intends to use the algorithm at stals 12 rather than bury it the problem is the event in fact happened in their past so it's straight back into the turnstile for them cat is sent to distract satan in vietnam and buy them more time while tenet commandos split into two teams to enact another temporal pincer red team move forward in time over 10 minutes to make sure the explosion still happens as a splinter group comprised of the protagonists of knives steal the algorithm so that onlookers will be none the wiser that it was taken while the inverted blue team moves backwards in time to clear the area and gain information for the red team over 10 minutes tying into the film's title tenet which refers to 10 minutes forwards and 10 minutes backwards to keep it simple cat gets her revenge by killing the tiger king just as tenet pinched the algorithm thanks to a mysterious inverted soldier with an orange keychain that takes a bullet for the protagonist neil ives and the protagonist then convene calling the mission a success and agree to split the algorithm and hide it once more but neil throws a bunch of spanners in the works first he pulls out of hiding the algorithm as he has one final part of the mission to complete to go back in time and take the bullet for our protagonist by inverting himself pairing this with the orange keychain on his pack it's clear that neil was also the mysterious soldier that saved the protagonist all the way back in the opera house second he reveals that he has known the protagonist for far longer than the protagonist has known him elucidating the fact that he's a tentative from the future who came back in time to complete his mission and third he reveals that the protagonist is was and will be the one to establish tennis in the future while this timeline outlines the protagonist's journey leading forwards from the beginning of the film back from talon forward from oslo then back to stals 12 before continuing ahead it begs some questions about neil most pressingly who is he would you take a child hostage a woman neil is actually katson maximilian the two bear a striking resemblance they have the same accent and neil spells out the last four letters of maximilian in reverse an appropriate naming convention for a man who spends most of his life going back in time nolan has also teased that neil is not the character's real name okay tony no diet coke what you never drink on the job you're well on fire so let's chart out neil's timeline next to the protagonists at the very end we in fact see a young neil known at this point as maximilian as he's picked up from school by cat his timeline begins at school from which he grows up and is mentored by the protagonist within the newfound tenet organization after getting his masters in physics he then is inverted to go back and save the protagonist at the opera house before reverting and joining the timeline of the protagonist in mumbai and assisting him with the heist and talon he's inverted once again and helps the injured cat his mum through the turnstile in oslo before joining the protagonists all the way up to the moment they decide to lay siege to stars 12 where he inverts and joins the blue team during this reversion he spots a tripwire being planted forcing him to revert back to normal entropy to try and warn ives and the protagonist as he does so he sees an inverted kneel across from him the very same one that unlocks the door for the protagonist and takes the bullet for him though unable to reach them neil manages to pull ives and the protagonist out just in time and progresses to the end of the event before reverting himself once more to take that bullet for the protagonist you see neil's death the effect came before the cause and just as it was for the protagonist everything that happens was decided by neil acting out of his own free will even if he didn't fully understand it just yet not only did christopher nolan flex his mastery over storytelling through time to deliver a symmetrically complementary paradox theory but the major events in the film also revolve around the words found in the satyr square an ancient two-dimensional word square containing a word latin palantro with the word sata a rapper tenet opera and rotus now that the timeline events and motivations make a little more sense i'm sure you have a few burning questions namely if cat saw her future self after killing sata how was he still alive to unfold the plan if neil had to save the protagonist to ensure that tenet was ever founded how was it founded in the first place and of course the fact that neil had to repair cat's gunshot wound to grow up with a mother well it sounds like we're onto the philosophy of tenets [Music] the answer to these immediate questions pertaining to the grandfather and predestination paradoxes i've covered these concepts in full detail in my video on predestination which i'll also be leaving a link to below but the most important notice that these things don't make complete sense is their paradoxes they like the film tenet are thought experiments meant to encourage us to see the world in a different way that said neil also alludes to the paradox by explaining what happens happened implying that the tenant organization is indeed stuck in a complex time loop that results in the paradox of them needing to live their lives in a certain way in the past present and future in order to ensure that the events of the film unfold as they have done within this if we look slightly behind the paradox itself we find the phrase ignorance is our ammunition this phrase is key to the entire film and interacts directly with the concepts of free will and determinism which are fundamental to time travel paradoxes here the argument posed asks if the protagonist knew about the tenet organization from the start would they have done the same thing to give a more concrete example if the protagonist knew that it was his future self fighting him in the oslo vault would events have transpired in the same way allowing the same future to exist you know it was me coming out of that vault why don't you say a lot of explaining when someone's about to put a bullet in your own brain if i told him he acted differently who knows of course such a question is pretty unanswerable and unfathomable but that's the joy of paradoxes but this full grounding of information takes us into a conversation of information as a foundational element in events this draws to mind a fascinating thought experiment which was crafted in the mid-19th century by james clerk maxwell as an attempt to question the second law of thermodynamics the second law of thermodynamics which introduces the scientific concept of entropy suggests that systems will always arrive at a state of thermodynamic equilibrium where entropy is the highest but don't worry if you don't fully get this it's not the key part of the experiment maxwell's thought experiment suggested that this law could theoretically be avoided by use of information alone his experiment took a gas in a two-chambered box which for simplicity's sake had particles of high energy and low energy between the two chambers sat a small door controlled by a demon which could open and close the door the demon would then open the door to let high energy particles pass from the left side of the chamber to the right while also opening it to allow the low energy particles to pass from the right to the left this would mean that instead of a state of equilibrium between all the particles the demon's use of information would shift the entropy of the system creating two different states through information alone although this experiment was and remains highly controversial it goes to suggest a different way of controlling systems through information instead of just natural phenomena this takes us back to tenet and its idea of entropy which shifts people forwards and backwards in time in such a way one could imagine the omnipresent tenet organization helmed by the future protagonist as a demon masterminding what goes forwards and backwards to reach their desired outcome of saving the present world policies to suppress whose policy i was my friend with the people saving the world from what might have been but if we take this use of information a little more naturally it cuts to the heart of tennis themes pairing the phrase ignorance is our ammunition with the group's name tenet literally defined as a doctrine or belief of a group we come to realize that information is not necessarily power but belief itself is the path of the protagonist was not a path driven by knowing it was one driven by the lack of knowledge with the protagonist forever questioning those around him who knew more about tenet sator and the algorithm than he did lying is standard operating procedure this idea takes us to the phrase don't try to understand it [Music] feel it which is uttered by a number of characters and holds power both within the film's narrative and for us as audience members watching this confusing film this theme also ties into nolan's greater filmography be it the emotional connections triumphing of interdimensional science and interstellar human bonds overcoming the ravages of war and dunkirk or emotions outlasting convoluted time and memento nolan's films deal with humanity existing within a cold emotionless universe the protagonist's inability to fully comprehend the grand plan of the tenant organization at any one moment within the film can easily reflect our individual inability to truly comprehend the vast complexities of the world around us and that's without even directly mentioning the science mathematics and the inner workings of the universe which elude both the protagonist and the audience thus instead of saying that understanding is a fundamental starting point tenet asks us to believe in the world around us and to engage with it in meaningful emotional and human ways while this conclusion may seem very individualistic it in fact doesn't support that line of thinking as elucidated by the conversation between priya and the protagonist where he exclaims i'm the protagonist of this operation and is rebutted by the sobering and humbling fact that he is only you are a protagonist solidifying the ideology that although we may appear to be the protagonist of our story there are most definitely larger powers at play thus although maxwell's demon suggests that almost any issue and law could potentially be overwritten by information alone nolan suggests that the greater good for the world sits somewhere between the poles of knowledge and feeling for prosperity which more or less make up the tenets of the film and nolan's filmography as a whole who gets the message posterity [Music] [Music] you

Channel: FilmComicsExplained

Views: 683,153

Keywords: Tenet, Christopher Nolan, John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh, wandavision, time travel, monster hunter

Id: WAkGP6X3aO4

Length: 22min 12sec (1332 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021