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Quentin Tarantino was confused by Christopher Nolan’s ‘Tenet’

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Updated on August 2, 2021

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Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Tenet, has left Quentin Tarantino perplexed.

Director Tarantino has recently made news by appearing on a number of talk shows and new media channels. The filmmaker has been pushing his latest novel, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is based on the film of the same name that he recently directed. Tarantino recently spoke with Reelblend about fellow filmmaker Christopher Nolan and his reaction to Tenet.

In a new interview, Tarantino acknowledged that he may need to watch 2020’s Tenet again to have a better understanding.

Quentin Tarantino told ReelBlend, “I think I need to see it again.”

Many people didn’t understand what happened in the movie until they saw it again, and even then, they looked up explanations of “time inversion” and “temporal pincer movements” on the internet.

The director also admitted that he enjoyed Dunkirk even more after repeated viewings, stating: “I had an interesting experience with it the first couple of times,” he said in 2020, “The first time I saw it, I don’t know what I was thinking the first time. I just dealt with the spectacle of it all. I couldn’t deal with anything else but the spectacle of it all”.

“I liked the movie, but the spectacle almost numbed me to the experience. I don’t think I felt anything emotional. I was awed by it. But I didn’t know what I was awed by…it wasn’t until the third time that I could see past the spectacle and into the people the story is about. I finally could see through the trees a little bit”.

While many dismissed Tenet owing to its perplexing nature, Nolan should be commended for providing a unique vision in an era rife with sequels and remakes. Furthermore, it is impossible to deny that Tenet grows more gratifying with each viewing.

He also discussed how Dunkirk toyed with time in a non-linear manner, frequently bouncing back and forth between different periods in the narrative’s timeline.

He added: “Nolan’s Dunkirk screenplay cuts together three narratives that are each happening over different periods of time. Oftentimes, you see a film where the style is about the adrenaline of it.

“The style is an immersive experience, but by the third or fourth viewing you get past the style and you realise the magician’s tricks. In the case of Dunkirk, it rewards Nolan’s efforts to see it more. There’s a point, by mid movie, he can’t do it wrong…it’s a symphony. Nothing doesn’t work.”

Nolan has a habit of making movies that leave spectators with unanswered questions. Complex storylines have been synonymous with films such as Inception, Interstellar, and The Prestige. Tarantino has directed films that hop about between different points in the narrative’s timeline, such as Pulp Fiction. However, Tenet may be Nolan’s most complicated film to date, and even Tarantino believes he has to watch it several more times to properly comprehend what transpired.

Tenet is available on NOW, while Once Upon a Time in Hollywood has recently been added to Netflix.