BY GEORGE ALBON

to be reminded

of the failing

mainspring

not sudden silence

after the extreme figure

but the relative

a grimace told

him to push the

articulation farther

the yet green used

marks a tongues

-width to tally

a different sound

preceded every word

then took to term

to feel hips

as if new tangents

It’s just bad writing. The dialogue is very much, at times, exactly like Tenet—written as a series of conversations styled as interrogatory, rapid-fire question-and-answer segments between two characters that feel forced, clunky, and unnecessarily pseudo-philosophical and psycho-analytical, supposed to elicit some sort of strong emotional response but fall flat every time

He rewrites all the women as victims of circumstance in a way the men don't really have to answer to (they're more caught in a bind); Circe is reduced to being afraid of what men can do and their inherit “monstrosity,” Helen exists as the surviving proof of what men can do, her sister Clytemnestra is the example of what a bad woman can do, Athena only serves as an idea of a conscious (imaginary friend-like, hallucination, and victim of men’s wrath, greed, misunderstanding despite being a goddess), Penelope wishes her son were her husband, almost resenting his status as a man, and seems only to be as crafty as Nolan will allow her, and Calypso is just having an “I can fix him” moment. Meanwhile, Odysseus is a tortured genius.

For a director whose entire body of work is so thematically linked to time and memory, Nolan can’t or chooses not to do anything interesting with either concept and instead just makes Odysseus forget. He becomes the lotus eater, a man who lost years to disassociation. He wars with himself over his motivations and decides he must not have wanted to return because forgetting is easier than living with himself. But then he changes his mind just in time to do! Barely anything lasting! He doesn’t share his story with anyone except Calypso. He is apathetic about and at times disbelieving of the gods, but then conveniently lets go of control and gives it to them when there’s nothing else to do. He peripherally acknowledges their presence (to his apparent horror) in a moment of clarity, but after he gets to restore the kingdom of Ithaca to his bloodline, conveniently gets to escape the consequences of his actions anyway knowing they are doomed. We are supposed to take the fall of Troy and “bronze age” as a warning sign mirrored in today, but I guess only as a warning? With no resolve or call to action.