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published on October 23, 2021
Ben Roth

https://doi.org/10.5840/filmphil2021102110
Tenet, Climate Change, and the Misdirection of Interpretation
Or, Does Christopher Nolan Not Know Who the Bad Guys Are?
Christopher Nolan¡¯s Tenet seems a spy thriller in which a government operative saves the world. As others have noted, it is in a larger sense about climate change¡ªeven though it mentions it but once. Where the film has been dismissed as not saying anything substantial, or even read as promoting an activist message, I argue it is most coherently interpreted as a reactionary defense of the status quo. The film is about a war between the present and future, its heroes those who beat back time travelers trying to prevent us from destroying the planet. If audiences are not passive recipients of propaganda, but critical and cognitive, then blockbusters need to distract them from unavowable larger meanings by redirecting interpretive energies into the details; plot holes are not a bug, but a feature. The meticulous, puzzle-box construction of Nolan¡¯s films, which encourages elaborate fan theorizing, distracts both viewers and Nolan himself from their ideological content.