TENET!!

TENET



Ten in either direction! That’s the simplest explanation of Tenet; a complex mixture of science fiction and physics!



As Neil starts to explain in the movie, every body has something called entropy and that moves in one direction or forward! When you have a machine which can invert this flow then theoretically you can reverse time! With me so far? Now, time travel is the most debated and interesting thing for every scientist and movie maker and though you have the fan favourite Back to the future, it has since been proven to be scientifically inaccurate!



The simplest explanation is as told in the movie and in the series Flash, going back in time does not change your past but actually creates a new future and a parallel timelines which may or may not meet! Then you have the famous Grand father paradox where you cannot in fact go back to past to kill your grandfather since that will mean that you will not be born to do that!



One thing is very consistent in that if you do manage to go back in time you must make sure that you do not make major changes because that will cause major errors in the homeostasis of the natural order! Also make sure that you do not encounter yourself in the past because that will cause a major déjà vu error similar to the déjà vu in Matrix and that will be catastrophic!



Then you have Maxwell’s demon which was on the first instances where the second law of thermodynamics where you have the description of the increase of entropy in an irreversible process.



Basically it means that matter and time moves only in the single forward direction and cannot be reversed which essentially means that time travel is not possible since the matter has already been gone to the next process. To change or revert back that time we need to process the matter in the reverse which is a cumbersome process indeed! Not everything can be fixed with a feviquick!



Now you must know about Feynman and Wheeler’s notion of one electron universe which was cleverly mentioned in the movie! This is in reference to the notion that electron may not move in one direction or maybe if has a counter which is the direct opposite or POSITRON which may be moving in reverse or inverted direction!



Finally a common point is when matter and anti matter comes together it causes a total destruction of earth or maybe universe as we know it! That’s a annihilation much like the band which made waves and disappeared just so fast! You can find mention of this even in Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons! Dan Brown is to novels what Nolan is to movies!



Time slowing or reversing paradox which has been the context in even his earlier movies like Inception and Interstellar! In inception dreaming within a dream causes alteration of actual time and it actually slows down in the real time! In Interstellar, the time in earth years goes in a different speed when compared to time in a body close to a black hole! So one year in that planet close to black hole can be ten or more earth years!



So after slowing time in his previous movies, Nolan goes one step forwards by making time go back! But it is not a simple placing date and time and year on a machine and going back as if you are visiting a country!

But in Tenet you need a device which inverts time so that when you reach a place out of the machine you can literally see time going backwards! And everything is inverted!

Here you cannot breath the atmospheric air and you need to wear a mask which can facilitate your inverted lungs to breath! So if it was not COVID, if you see anyone in a mobile mask then probably he is from the future!

The whole thing of course begins when the protagonist finds a invert bullet and then rest as they say is history or future since its TENET!

Two things which you must be aware now is the TURNSTILE and TEMPORAL PINCER MOVEMENT! The former is the time machine device which makes you go back in time in an inverted manner and this was the best revelation when in the end you see the protagonist fighting himself and the latter in a simultaneous amalgamation of inverted and non inverted people!



Finally you come to the same old story of a hero or protagonist or even like Sarah Connor in terminator who has been in touch with someone in the future and you have the actual Bond villain like dude who wants to just end the world! The basic story is the same! It is a race against time to stop our villain Sator from pushing the doomsday switch or annihilation!



Most of the chief names and terminology in the movie is a clever palindrome! Like the movie starts in a OPERA while the leading lady has a an affair with a man called AREPO! Then SATOR is the chief villain and the vault is in a place called ROTAS! Then of course you have TENET which is essentially ten in either direction meeting in the middle! This can be a indication to the theory that time can also move in either direction!



So that movie starts with the Opera and ends with Sator! The protagonist is saved in the beginning of the movie and in the end by Neil which is like a time repeating itself analogy!



In summary you have this, the hero accidentally discovers an inverted bullet from the future and then he is recruited by an agency to stop the super villain Sator before he makes more changes to the entropy of the system and causes an annihilation!



Happy complicated viewing!