Purpose: After aesthetic fatigue

In the movie Tenet, rich people launder money through art trade in Freeport. This story has a realistic prototype. (data map/map)

When you see Nolan's new film Tenet for the first time, you may "not understand" or even doubt your intelligence level and think that you "don't understand". In the past 20 years, Nolan has successfully labeled his films as "brain burning" and enjoyed playing quiz games with the audience.

For example, in Inception on 20 10, Nolan combined the themes of "time" and "dream", and the dreamer entered other people's dreams, stealing other people's subconscious secrets and modifying other people's dreams. This setting is fascinating. Through the four-layer nested structure of "love, love and love", the story is dismantled step by step, and the audience and characters are led to the truth in an "apprentice mode".

Compared with Inception, the scenes in Tenet are more luxurious. This commercial giant, which cost more than 200 million dollars, has many dazzling wonders: with the rumbling music, the car staged a thrilling reverse chase on the expressway, the overturned car reversed, the explosion recoiled, and the bombed building recovered instantly. There is a super luxury yacht sailing at sea, with six decks and a helipad. The film crew also placed a rocket launcher at the back of the luxury yacht to serve the plot. You will also see the shocking scene of the plane crashing into the warehouse, igniting a raging fire and exploding in an instant. It's not a model plane or a computer special effect, but a truly retired Boeing 747 jumbo jet. Before commandeering it, the crew overhauled it, including replacing the brake system. Nolan led the team to shoot in seven countries on three continents, with a large geographical span, even in Hollywood, where large-scale productions are common.

"To be honest, the most amazing thing about Tenet may be the budget of burning money." A senior film critic in The New York Times said sternly.

Indeed, when these fascinating and gorgeous shells were peeled off, Tenet's plot became extremely simple. This is a traditional spy movie-the story of an unknown agent played by John David Washington who successfully saves the world with the help of his partner Neil. Skilled agents, skilled deputies, crazy villains as rich as an enemy, and routines of lying, betraying and saving the world are all "classic menus" of spy movies.

Nolan's outstanding feature lies in adding complex narratives such as "time reversal" and "time clamp tactics" to ordinary spy stories. Agents must go back to the past by reversing the door of time to find a new strategy to finally defeat the villains. This time, it seems that worrying about "burning the brain" is not enough, and Nolan has joined the "grandfather paradox"-whether it is a war or not, winning or losing is already doomed. This setting is very confusing. Since it is a foregone conclusion, it is futile for the agent to "rewind" and try to correct the past.

"Don't try to understand it, just feel it." In Tenet, a female scientist said this sentence while training an unknown agent, which is also like Nolan's movie guide to the audience.

Nolan has been honored as the "God of the Promise" by fans all over the world since the superhero movie Batman series. Later, Inception and Interstellar's Dunkirk consolidated his position in the Jianghu. Nolan knows very well that it is never the labels of art films and author films that make him famous, but the rules of Hollywood film industry that he is familiar with.

Nolan's early works "Follow" and "Memento" were all produced at low cost, because the budget was extremely limited, the art and clothing were very ordinary, and there were no amazing scenes, but they were full of reckless vitality, with edges and corners that had not been smoothed by the studio system. Fans who follow Nolan all the way often miss Nolan's early works. The story structure of "flashback and narrative interweaving" and "fragment editing" in Memento once surprised everyone.

Memento's success gave Nolan the opportunity to cooperate with Hollywood studios. Nolan tried the Hollywood movie Insomnia for the first time. He is still in the exploratory stage. He vacillates between his personal style and Hollywood "routines". Despite the help of George Clooney and the producer in steven soderbergh, the film is still tied behind its back, which can be said to be a failed attempt.

In The Dark Knight, Nolan gradually found a new style that can accommodate the Hollywood Department. He was not satisfied with the young mode of traditional superhero movies, and added more "brain-burning" elements and philosophical speculation. For example, Batman and Nolan's profound analysis of the relationship between Batman and the clown made the superhero movies ahead of the times, so that for a long time, Hollywood superhero movies could only live in Nolan's shadow until the clown directed by Top Phillips appeared.

If martin scorsese used his left hand to customize the big studio and his right hand to create his own directing mode, Nolan completely gave up walking on two legs and actively integrated into and embraced the Hollywood blockbuster mode. His later films, production scale and cost budget are increasing alarmingly.

Until Dunkirk, Nolan's myth continued. 70% of the whole film was shot with IMAX cameras, which made the famous retreat during World War II seem shocking. Here, technology adds points to the story.

After arriving in Tenet, Nolan still made films under the framework of Hollywood blockbusters, still trying to bring the audience the same pleasure as a roller coaster, but this "roller coaster experience" showed fatigue.

Tenet is Nolan's most controversial commercial blockbuster so far, but it is still worth leaving a place in the film history. Since the outbreak of new crown pneumonia, the global film market has been depressed, and many cinemas have been closed. Tenet's release was given more responsibility and was regarded as a lifeline to save the cinema.

Why do movies have to be seen in the cinema to get a rich viewing experience? Great directors are trying to show the unique charm of the cinema to the audience with scientific and technological innovation. Cameron's Avatar, Ang Lee's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk and Gemini Man all do this, although Gemini Man is regarded by critics as lacking in plot.

A typical case is 19 17 in sam mendes. If you watch this movie online, you will feel that the plot is not fluctuating and there are no wonderful events. It is a mediocre work, but once you walk into the cinema, you will find it is a real masterpiece. Under the background of wide format and giant screen, the immersive experience brought by A Mirror to the End will be amplified by the power of science and technology, and the audience will experience the hero's belief and the cruelty of war in a substitute way with the story.

So is tenet. Nolan insisted on not relying on "green screen" but on real shooting, and also let the audience believe what is happening. He also insisted on shooting with IMAX camera, and in Tenet, because there are a lot of scenes that need to be shot in reverse, they cooperated with IMAX team to develop and rebuild the mechanical parts and electronic components in the film box. These elaborate details and dazzling special effects can only be felt on the big screen.

Moreover, Tenet also shows the unprecedented modernity of Nolan's films. In this spy film, Nolan buried a lot of satire on reality. For example, in the movie, the Norwegian Oslo Art Freeport, where the villain and wealthy businessman Sartre kept famous paintings, does exist in reality, but the real location of the Freeport is Geneva, Switzerland. More than 654.38 million pieces of the world famous paintings and artworks are stored in the Geneva Freeport. These works of art are entrusted by rich people all over the world, and their security level is comparable to that of top museums. The Freeport of Geneva also has an alias, which is called "Museum that can't be visited", because in order to protect the privacy of the rich, it never shows in public.

Do rich people like Sartre really love these famous paintings? Not exactly. They are just his money laundering tools. The security level of Geneva Freeport has built a natural protective barrier for the hidden assets of unscrupulous wealthy businessmen. What's more, in Freeport, you don't have to pay taxes on buying and selling artworks, which is killing two birds with one stone for rich money launderers.

The world famous paintings, regarded as a treasure by the audience and artists and rarely seen in line, finally became someone else's money laundering tool; It happens that only such rich people can afford these priceless paintings. The efforts of the hero and heroine are precisely to jump out of the cycle of time (history) and break the hidden rules of power ruling the world.