Christopher Nolan’s new film Tenet falls into the espionage genre but apparently the director chose not to watch any spy films in preparation.
It’s been a long wait but finally, Tenet is in cinemas with fans getting their chance to see the latest effort from Christopher Nolan.
Normally, Nolan screens films that are related to his latest project for cast and crew so everyone gets a bit of inspiration and into the same headspace. However, on this occasion, the director chose not to.
Speaking to Total Film Magazine (via Games Radar), Nolan revealed the reason why: “Interestingly, this is one of the first films I’ve ever made where we didn’t do any screenings and the reason was, I think we all have the spy genre so in our bones and in our fingertips. I actually wanted to work from a memory and a feeling of that genre, rather than the specifics.”
Nolan does say, however, that in a way, the classic western Once Upon a Time in the West was a helpful movie to watch:
“I have no idea whether this is true, but I sort of have this idea that if you look at Sergio Leone when he made Once Upon A Time In The West, there’s a slight feeling of… I’m not sure he watched any westerns while he was making it. It expresses his love for the genre that’s grown over years and years and years. And there’s something so fabulously heightened about the way he then engages with that genre. It’s the distillation of all these things in his past, and his impressions of the genre. I wanted the crew to dive into this film, in a very unique way, and to not really be influenced by things in a conscious sense, but to just let our love for the genre, and our love for the movies in general, feed into the ways in which we express things.”
SEE ALSO: Read our review of Tenet here
Time will only tell how Tenet is thought of in terms of great spy movies but Nolan’s passion for films and filmmaking always makes itself clear when watching the large scale blockbusters he loves to make.
Armed with only one word – Tenet – and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real-time. Not time travel. Inversion.
Tenet sees Christopher Nolan directing a cast that includes John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh.
