but for me that when you watch the film there's a sense in which we're addressing
the idea that we're all sort of imprisoned in a way in our own views of the passage of time
of what's going on in the world all the rest and so there is this kind of leap of faith to the idea
of an objective reality um so there's there's the idea of belief or faith involved with what
these characters choosing to invest in in terms of what's really going on uh in the story and
that was always an intriguing idea to me and i wanted to be right you know up front on screen
so christopher nolan's tenet has posed many questions since its release surrounding filmmaking
concepts and of course the notion of time personally one that has stuck on
my mind over many re-watches is what nolan points to in that interview which i uploaded
a while back this concerns the idea of free will and how the film through all of its aspects tries
to get the audience to think about this a little deeper in this video i'm going to
be discussing the question of free will that christopher nolan poses in his latest project
and why it's so integral to the film this video will contain brief spoilers so if you do happen
to be someone who hasn't seen tenets then i would recommend watching this video after you've
watched it if you want to see more on the film including my series on the nolan variations book
which i will be doing more uploads on soon then don't forget to subscribe to the channel
and turn on your notifications also if you enjoy this video remember to give it a like rating but
without further ado let's dive into the idea of free will in christopher nolan's tenet
one of the core concepts in tenet is the idea of reversed entropy saying it's a time travel movie
largely overshoots the actual concept of the science fiction in christopher nolan's project
the general idea of time travel was always that someone would be teleported into the past
and experience time forward once they moved into the past much like it is iconically represented
in back to the future this form of time travel postulates the idea of time continuing to move
forward in the past thereby any action concurred in this timeline will then influence the future so
how is this related to free will well the idea of free will in time manipulation is often the idea
of the choices we make when we are in a different space time the idea of marty mcfly nearly ruining
his parents relationship was all about exercising free will in order to change the outcome
of an event tenor takes things in a different way exploring the idea that you aren't moving forward
in time but rather the reversal of entropy allows you to travel backwards in time our characters may
view themselves as moving forwards but in our eyes they are moving backwards this essentially
means that you are spending your actual time left in this world to go back to the past physically
you are moving forwards but in terms of time you are moving backwards hence the explanation
of oxygen particles not really entering your lungs because only the physical body has been inverted
in tenet each character has a certain cycle of their roles in the movie while we initially
experience time in forwards motion we come to realize that every fight or moment that involves
inversion in the movie has been tied into what the character does in the future their actions clash
with their past actions it's hard to say whether or not they have free will in the movie as on one
hand you can argue that they have no free will because they assume their roles and act them out
there's essentially no way to deviate from it but you could also argue that this is in fact based
on free will because it is the deciding factor for events to occur in the first place from the
perspective of there being no free will in tenets there are a couple of examples which demonstrate
this when the protagonist goes through the turnstill for the first time it's in a desperate
attempt to find and recover a part of a weapon that was stolen by the film's antagonist sator
in an earlier car chase the protagonist fought to keep the weapons safe with nil ultimately passing
it to sator in order to save kat when he inverts himself he drives a car to chase him down hoping
to get the equation back but his car gets wrecked throwing himself onto the road without the weapon
his car wreck was the same exact car wreck that nearly killed him when he first chased
sator summarized the protagonist's free will to chase down sator was not free will because he was
simply acting out the same things that he saw when he first chased sator down what he saw in the past
pushed him to make a move in an attempt to change the past but his actions and subsequent car crash
is also an influencing point for why he even had to drive the car in the first place he is
essentially stuck in a cycle at this given moment then comes the perspective that there is free will
in christopher nolan's tenor in the final battle neil and the protagonist are part of a large-scale
pincer movement attack to fight against sator's forces in an attempt to save the protagonist neil
inverts himself in order to save the others most importantly he inverts himself to take a bullet
for the protagonist taking a shot to the head in order to save john david washington's character
as well as to unlock the door to prevent the detonation of the weapon neil was originally
set to follow a plan but he made the move to invert himself in order to create a better outcome
at the beginning there is no telling whether the absence of his actions may have resulted in a loss
by choosing to invert himself in the heat of the battle neil turns the tide of the events
unlike the car chase his actions aren't directly caused by what he would create
it is still a cycle but it's not as dead set as the protagonist's car chase scene also it's key
to note that clement's posier's character named laura literally has an entire conversation with
the protagonist towards the beginning of the movie literally telling him about cause and effect while
showing on a recording that the protagonist is behind his actions in forwards and backwards
motion demonstrating so with an inverted bullet it makes us think about this concept a little deeper
and to me it was the main example that led me to make this video about free will in the
movie stephen hawking theorized that in a time curve retro cautionarity could occur put simply
cause may not always precede effect it is a mind-bending concept that challenges our
typical chronological point of view in christopher nolan's film tenet the character neil argues that
in spite of reverse time irradiation allowing for a type of closed loop time travel free will still
exists and what one chooses to do has meaning in both regular and reverse chronology neil goes on
to explain that in order to believe that one's actions have meaning in the past requires a leap
of faith on your part that a particular course of action is worth taking even when you know the
immediate consequences of that action before you take the action tenet poses the question
if you know what the consequences of your actions will be in the future does that mean you do not
have a choice in the presence and your free will is robbed from you the film does come up with an
answer to this question and it's definitely one that will make us continue to re-watch tenets
and have questions over this very concept the answer that the film gives is the faith that doing
the thing you are about to do is for the best in the act of accepting or thwarting your future
you can in fact maintain free will because no one is forcing you to do what you are about to do
so you can in fact know what will happen as a result of your actions yet you maintain free will
because it was your choice whether to accept this channel or not you have power to fight
against destiny and make something new happen as stated in tenets the humans in the future think
they can change the world of the past without destroying themselves in the future so it is
theoretically possible to break a closed time loop and make something different happen in spite of
the grandfather paradox which is discussed in the film the concept of free will is typically
only analyzed in regular chronology travelling in one direction from past to present to future from
cause to decision to affect and from situation to free will and to consequence but tenet poses
a world in which you have free will traveling forward in time and you can still have free will
while traveling backwards but you have to choose if it is worth changing things given that you know
how things will work out if you avoid changing them it is mind-bending but an intriguing question
to wrestle with after seeing what nolan brought to the table with his latest film so in conclusion
with each character in their own state and cycle it's hard to fully answer if they have free will
on the one hand it can be simply argued that they do not have free will and that each character
is simply fulfilling their own cycle creating reasons for themselves to act on the same things
on the other one can also argue that there are certain instances within the movie that show the
possibility of free will even if they are still situated within their own cycles neil's inversion
during the tide of the battle was a decision made at the last minute many of the decisions made
throughout the movie seem to be free will but also have underlying tones that they may not be really
it's up to the individual viewer to interpret the movie and decide whether or not it has free will
to me this is one of the genius aspects of how christopher nolan has tackled time in tenet
but that was my video exploring the question of free will in christopher nolan's latest film as
nolan was pointing to in his interview last year this is a key question he wanted to tackle with
his approach to time in the film and after many re-watches it is definitely something that has
grew on my mind it will be interesting to see how he tackles this concept in different films like he
has approached it briefly in previous ones and it definitely gets us talking about some of the most
important questions there are but let me know down below what your thoughts are towards the notion
of free will in tenets and how well do you think the film was able to question it for more videos
on tenets and other upcoming films and tv shows then don't forget to subscribe to the channel
and turn on your notifications also if you enjoyed this video remember to leave a like rating i will
be doing my next video on the nolan variations book very soon so make sure to check out my first
video on nolan becoming a director and also keep a lookout for whenever i post future content in this
series but anyway i hope you guys enjoyed it i've been called texts and as always make some noise