Christopher Nolan on home release of ‘Tenet’
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Christopher Nolan movies almost demand another look and “Tenet” is no exception. On Tuesday, audiences were finally able to watch, re-watch and dissect the palindromic spy thriller starring John David Washington and Elizabeth Debicki from at home.
“Tenet” is now available on 4K, DVD, Blu-ray and digital with behind-the-scenes extras that give a peek into the mind-bogglingly complex process of shooting a large-scale action film backward and forward.
Nolan spoke about the release this week, days after the announcement that all Warner Bros films in 2021 would be available on HBO Max on their day of release.
“It’s not right. And it’s not a good business decision,” Nolan said. “It’s all a bit of a mess.”
Nolan said he remains proud of “Tenet” and the complex work done not only to shoot it, but roll it out in theaters in places where it was safe to do so.
Q: It’s interesting to learn how the backward and forward action in “Tenet” is not just one gimmick or trick.
A: It’s a lot of different techniques. A lot of different thought went into it from a large team of people. The audience’s eye for trickery is ruthless. If you want to try and stay ahead of the audience, you’ve got to have a lot of tricks up your sleeve and you’ve got to deploy them with blinding frequency.
Q: Your first assistant director said the first week on set was like being in pre-school. Did it feel like that to you?
A: Totally. The first week we scheduled the vault fight with John David Washington, which is filmed in four different ways. It’s about techniques but it’s also about scheduling.
Nobody on that set, myself included, had any grounding in any previous film that would help us intuit what was going on. And so we had to learn it from the ground up so that when we got to, for example, Tallinn in Estonia and shut down their busiest freeway for three weeks, we knew how to do it. The film just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger
Q: How did you know that a scene in reverse was working?
A: Hoyte Van Hoytema, the director of photography, had a company produce a monitor for us that we could strap on the side of the camera where at the end of a reverse take, we could immediately hit a button and watch the tape backward. And that was a life saver.
Q: This was your first time working with editor Jennifer Lame. Why choose?
A: When I realized that Lee Smith wasn’t going to be available, it made me really think about when I started with Lee. He was the big movie guy and I was the small movie guy. And by the time we’d finished working on all the movies we’ve worked on we were both very firmly big movie guys. And so the big movie guy thing was taken care of. What I was looking for was somebody who would bring a different point of view. I got very excited about working with someone like Jen who hasn’t done these things before. It’s new and it’s fresh to her. She has tremendous skill and also great confidence.
Q: This release was unlike any in the history of film. How are you feeling about it now?
A: I’m really, proud my team was able to finish the film under very difficult circumstances so that we were ready for exhibition wherever they were able to safely open in the world. And we had great audiences all over the world — US$300 million of people coming to see the film in other countries.
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