Go Behind-the-Scenes of Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” in Thrilling New Video
If you don’t want to know anything about Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, then this is not the video for you. If you are inclined to find out a bit more about his latest, Warner Bros. has just done you a major solid. Stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Kenneth Branagh and, of course, Nolan himself take us behind-the-scenes of the auteur’s time-inverting epic. You’ll also hear from Nolan’s equally stellar crew, including cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema and producer Emma Thomas. Every film takes a village; a Nolan film takes a metropolis.
For all of the intrigue around the use of “time-inversion” in the film, Nolan calls it a “classic spy story” in the new video. Yeah, right. It’s classic in the Nolan-sense, in that he takes a genre and uses it as a launching pad for flights of technically mind-blowing fancy. “I grew up loving spy movies, but to make it sing to today’s audiences, I sort of felt like I wanted it to have bigger possibilities,” he says. Nolan is now famous for always striving for those “bigger possibilities,” whether it’s in raising the bar for superhero films with his beloved Dark Knight trilogy, or his insanely ambitious 2010 film Inception, which took the heist film genre into uncharted, literally dreamy territory.
About that “time inversion” thing, though. In the video, Nolan opens up (a bit) about what it actually means, which is the idea that “the entropy of an object or a person could be reversed. It’s very much cinematic, it’s something you have to see on the screen to fully engage with.”
“I really dug into my athletic experience more than ever,” John David Washington says. Washington was a former college football star at Morehouse College who eventually signed as an undrafted free agent with the St. Louis Rams. Nolan has never had a performer better prepared to take on the physical demands of a role, and yet even Washington was floored. “The training was paramount, nobody’s every thrown an inverted punch before. How do you make that real life?”
If you’re a Nolan fan—or simply just a fan of big, ambitious filmmaking (which would probably make you a Nolan fan)—this video will only strengthen your conviction that Tenet should be seen on a big screen. A really big screen. Alas, the world is not cooperating, as we are all aware. So what the video makes plain is that seeing Tenet, in whatever medium available, should be on any film lover’s wishlist.
For more on Tenet, check out these stories:
The Final “Tenet” Trailer is a Big, Beautiful Puzzle
Warner Bros. Announces New Plans to Distribute “Tenet” Non-Traditionally
Expect the Unexpected in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) Director/writer/producer CHRISTOPHER NOLAN and JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ action epic “TENET,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Melinda Sue Gordon