Christopher Nolan's Tenet hands its hero a single word and a mission that refuses to move in a straight line. Released in 2020, this action, science-fiction and espionage thriller runs two and a half hours and stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki.
What is Tenet about?
An operative known only as the Protagonist is recruited into a shadowy assignment with almost no briefing. All he is given is one word, Tenet, and the warning that the survival of the whole world depends on what he does with it. His search pulls him through a murky network of spies, arms dealers and go-betweens spread across several countries. The deeper he goes, the clearer it becomes that the threat he is chasing does not obey ordinary cause and effect: the operation plays out in something other than normal, forward-running time. To head off a catastrophe on the scale of a third world war, he has to learn the rules of that strange terrain while already in the middle of the fight.
About the cast
John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki are the first three names on the bill, followed by Kenneth Branagh, Dimple Kapadia, Michael Caine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Himesh Patel. It is a large ensemble for a story that hops between countries.
Context & significance
Tenet combines three genres, action, science fiction and thriller, and wraps them in the conventions of the spy film: secret organisations, coded passwords, infiltration and globe-crossing pursuit. What sets it apart is the way time itself becomes part of the set pieces, so that chases and fights have to be read in more than one direction. The title is a palindrome, spelled the same forwards and backwards, which mirrors the central idea. Production is credited to five countries: Canada, Estonia, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States. At 150 minutes it is a long sitting. It suits audiences who like their blockbusters to double as puzzles and who enjoy piecing together a plot after the credits.
Watching Tenet on Ktime
Tenet is on K-Time with a Persian dub and Persian subtitles; the dub helps with the fast, dense dialogue, while the subtitled original keeps the actors' own voices. Anyone can read this page. To press play, log in to a K-Time account. K-Time is a Persian-language streaming home for Iranians abroad, with a fully Farsi interface.