Here’s something for a change: Yesterday’s movie yield was a double feature 😎
(mild spoilers ahead)
Let’s start with Tenet: I finally saw it after noticing that it had landed on HBOMax. I went into it without knowing anything more than it being about a cop and some kind of time travel… I liked it a lot, and that feeling was from the get go, not from analyzing it afterwards, and it makes it probably my favorite Nolan flick after Inception. I liked the twist on time travel and the way it goes about narration, reminded me of Memento in several ways. (Incidentally, it also completely ruins one of my WIPs called Tempus Fugit that had very similar time travel elements with a cop investigating crimes then traveling in time and realizing it was him doing it, leading to interesting confrontations, thank you so much Nolan for showing me I’m not that original…) It’s well thought and runs on other proven time travel tropes that tie everything together neatly, and of course being a Nolan movie the cinematography and SFX are exceptional.
Later that day, I had scheduled a showing of Everything Everywhere All At Once: I also went in blind, only knowing it was a comedy with multiverse stuff and it had Michelle Yeoh in it. This thing is absolutely bonkers, I loved it. It’s fresh, full of inventiveness and so well written, it’s hilarious and it’s emotional, and it’s also so profoundly human at its core, putting its characters first and letting them deal with the increasing absurdities of the premise. It’s a breath of fresh air and what cinema always aspired to be: a mirror, a dream, a glimpse of magic, a window through which we watch reflections of ourselves do what we can’t… Pure joy.
It’s funny that I ended up seeing both of those on the same day because they’re so diametrically opposed, and somewhat complementary, visions of sci-fi. Both deal with EOTWAWKI but one is frantically world-spanning, serious and heavy with big speeches and moral conflicts and secret organizations, while the other remains centered around a single family that doesn’t quite know how it got into this mess but just rolls with it. One deals with humanity as a whole, more a concept that needs to be saved than actual people (Kat and her son excepted, I suppose, giving the Protagonist a moral anchor of sorts), while the other deals with the human, bending genres to play with more intimate themes so universal that anyone can relate: the greener grass just beyond one’s grasp, the roads not taken, regrets, and love. And, for some reason, hot dogs and googly eyes.
Yesterday was a very good day.