All I have for you is a word.
Tenet.
It'll open the right doors...
and some of the wrong ones too.
Congratulations on the film.
It's such a wild ride, I couldn't
quite comprehend what I was seeing.
Do you actually understand this film?
And if you do, at what point did you kind
of did it all fall into place for you?
You know, like all Christopher Nolan films,
I think after the fourth or fifth viewing,
it all starts to really, you know,
with great depth fall into place for me.
But I know on a certain level
I understood it, you know as,
especially when we were working
I definitely understood my character.
You know, I would try to lock in on
what the protagonist is doing
and it's relation to the story.
But far as the overall theme of it
it took some time.
I'm still learning.
Well, I was very exhilarated when I first read it.
What I did think was, gosh, this
is like no spy film, no espionage film I've ever seen.
The film was like opening
a Russian doll, there'd be another smaller one
inside and then another and another.
And I just thought, well, Christopher Nolan films
are about sort of going to these layers.
So when I saw it for the first time a
couple of weeks ago, I felt, as I did when
I first read it that I just went completely
with the ride. It felt like I had 50 cups of coffee.
Having worked in Shakespeare
half my life as such, some of it I said to people
you know it doesn't matter whether
you understand all of it, just, you know,
you can you can feel it all and you can go with it.
So I went with intuiting what I intuited and loved it.
Every day was a check-in.
You know, tracking questions of where the
protagonist is and then where he is emotionally.
Those all those constant
conversations about that, which was it was
helpful and something I never do when I'm
working is look at the monitors after take.
But in this case, I had to just for the
physicality of it, I had to know.
Everything you learnt how to sort of learn
it backwards, you know.
And then what, where you think
you're starting point it is your finish
and your finish is now you're starting point.
And it will get really confusing
when we're shooting in the same location,
but different moments of the film because
the inverted to non-inverted like
that, that would get confused.
It was so constant checking
a lot communication on this film, to say the least.
One of these bullets is like us...
travelling forward through time.
The other one is going backwards.
Can you tell which is which?
How about now?
Tenet is a bit of a puzzle box.
Some of your previous work has been a
bit of a puzzle box.
Now what sort of gives you that
confidence that your audience will come
along and solve this mystery with you?
Well, I've always had had
good luck, really just following my
instincts in terms of I'm a member of the audience.
If I want to see something
different and original and exciting that
maybe challenges me, but whatever.
I just trust there are other people like
that out there in the world looking for
something, you know, a little bit different
that hopefully can still
entertain and excite in all the
ways that we go to the movies to
to be entertained and excited and to have
taken on a thrill ride.
That's that's the most important thing.
But if they can be more layers to that or
things that, you know, spin around in your
mind after you've seen it.
I think that that's a win win.
Given everything that's happened with COVID and
the release of movies that were made for a cinema
are we at a turning point as an industry?
I think the industry is continually
evolving as as every industry is with
technical innovation and changes
in how people want to view things
or do things.
And that that's no different.
I mean, really the only constant in the
film business is change.
But I think it's unwise to make
too many predictions about where you
think these things are going, because none
of us really know. I mean, all we can do as
storytellers is try and
follow our passions and be sincere
in the ways in which we we tell
these stories and try and excite the
audience with them and try and give the
audience an experience they
can't have in everyday life.
Don't try to understand it.
Feel it.