Arts
Wednesday, September 16, 2020 — 13
I saw ‘Tenet’ in theaters.
Here’s why you shouldn’t.
Content warning: gun violence.
They say not to yell “fire” in a
crowded movie theater. Why?
Are we so gullible that anyone
who hears the forbidden word will
throw their popcorn and sprint
down the aisles like a re-showing
of “Cats” has just begun?
I don’t buy it. People aren’t
that easy to scare. How many of
us have grown up having class
interrupted by fire, tornado and
lockdown sirens, and barely batted
our eyes as we walked outside, hid
under tables, barricaded doors or
grabbed classroom items to use
against a shooter?
It’s something about the movie
theater, specifically.
We’re used to bullets flying
through classrooms like spitballs,
just like we’re used to sitting
on airplanes, and wondering if
maybe, just maybe, it’ll happen
again. These spaces have been
under attack for decades — from
hijackings in the ’70s to 9/11, from
Columbine to Newtown. However
traumatized, we’ve learned to live
with these threats, and American
culture has warped around them.
But movie theaters were safe.
With a sip of soda, a bite of popcorn
and the hum of a projector, we
could fall into a story and leave
the real world and its real terrors
behind. We could lean back in
those red seats, stretch out our legs
and feel safe opposite the silver
screen.
I’ve been wondering, lately, if
that was what people did in Aurora
before their midnight showing of
“The Dark Knight Rises” on July
20, 2012. It was a sold out show on
opening night, full of kids, tweens,
teens and adults ready to see the
most anticipated movie of the
year. I wonder what the pre-show
bustle sounded like. The shuffling
of seats as someone with an armful
of wrinkling Twizzlers passed fans
debating whether Batman would
survive Bane, or if Hathaway’s
Catwoman would be any good.
The excitement of a blockbuster,
a real tentpole event of a film, is
infectious no matter who you are.
I can feel their excitement as the
movie began, because I’ve felt it
myself, year after year, through
blockbusters
good
and
bad,
memorable and disposable. But,
that night in July 2012, around
the point where an injured Bruce
Wayne finally returns as Batman
for a police chase, a door next to
the screen opened. A man walked
into the theater, and started
shooting.
Movie theaters didn’t feel safe
anymore.
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve
given arbitrary value to some
walls, a giant piece of plastic,
strips of celluloid and a concession
stand. That might be true, because
the movies have always been a
deeply personal comfort. When
I first found out I was gay, or,
more accurately, admitted it to
myself, one of the first things I
did was go and see “The Hobbit:
An Unexpected Journey.” Not a
perfect movie, but a perfect escape.
Immersed in Middle Earth for
those two and a half hours, I didn’t
think about what it would be like
going through life differently
from my friends and family, in a
place where (at the time) I couldn’t
legally marry, and where (in my
state) it was still legal to deny me
service or the adoption of a child
because of my sexual orientation.
For those two and a half hours, I
just thought about a particularly
officious Hobbit, some obnoxious
dwarves and a familiar wizard.
Still, this was mere months after
Aurora. Before the lights went out
and I chowed down on buttery
popcorn, I checked the exits and
made a plan, just in case. I’ve done
that at the movies ever since. The
theater, while still offering escape
beneath the flickering beams of a
projector, had become somewhere
to look over my shoulder every
once in a while. It wasn’t too scary,
because I’d gotten used to it. For
the most part, so did everyone else.
Like with schools and airplanes,
American culture warped around
the threat to movie theaters, and
soldiered on.
Despite the subliminal fear, my
imagination remained wide open.
I accepted whatever appeared on
the screen, even a CGI creature
named Smeagol, as emotional
fact. By doing so, though, wasn’t I
making myself vulnerable? Is that
why someone can’t yell “fire” in a
movie theater, because everyone,
their disbelief suspended, would
believe them?
***
That was my attempt to explain
why I drove almost 100 miles and
donned a face shield, N95 mask,
gloves and plastic poncho to see
“Tenet” in a movie theatre.
The state government has
shuttered cinemas across most
of Michigan since March. For
good reason, too. Yet part of me
thought that, as a movie critic, I
needed to capture what going to
the movies looked and felt like
during the coronavirus pandemic.
More honestly, I was scared. I have
been, constantly, since March.
Throughout my life, whenever
things have scared me, I have seen
a movie. After the past six months,
I desperately craved the escape
that only the cinema gave me.
“Tenet,”
directed
by
Christopher Nolan (“Dunkirk”)
and
starring
John
David
Washington (“BlacKkKlansman”)
and
Robert
Pattinson
(“The
Lighthouse”), has been the most
anticipated film of 2020. The
teasers promised a mind-bending
thriller that would take my mind
off the virus, November’s election
and
the
University’s
terrible
reopening
plans.
It
seemed
perfect.
When I entered the Findley
AMC 12, the lobby was empty.
Caution tape hung limp over arcade
machines that once flashed bright
red and yellow. The concession
stand was barren, blocked off by
towering plastic spit shields on
the counter. Two people in masks
and gloves took my ticket, and
pointed me to my theater. It wasn’t
any better. Large swaths of the
empty, opening night auditorium
were roped off by yellow caution
tape, like something terrible had
already happened.
When I sat down, I looked for
the exits and made a plan, just
in case. The ads dazzled against
my face shield. Smiling M&M’S
appeared, and said something like
“We’re so glad you’re back! Thank
you!”
Just as they said this, two
people entered the theater and
sat on the opposite end of my row.
They promptly removed their
masks, and one of them, I kid you
not, coughed into their popcorn.
My poncho crinkled against the
seat when I shivered.
Then
the
previews
began:
“007: No Time To Die,” “Wonder
Woman 1984,” “Murder on the
Nile” and “Dune.” While these
trailers normally would’ve been
exciting, especially that last one, it
was hard to focus on the screen. It
wasn’t just because my glasses kept
fogging up behind my face shield;
I had already decided that, until a
vaccine was widely distributed, I
was never doing this again.
The magic of the cinema was
choked to death by the yards
of caution tape and the smell
of cleaning fluid that radiated
from the tile beneath my feet.
Its replacement was a constant,
piercing anxiety. My imagination
could withstand the threat of a
mass shooting (I’m American,
after all), but COVID-19 has stolen
everything
that
made
movie
theaters so warm.
The
other
people
in
the
audience, not to mention the
smorgasbord of snacks, are both
invitations to the virus. Even
breathing feels dangerous. Seeing a
movie in September 2020 feels like
watching a film while the theater
burns down around you. It was
nearly impossible to suspend my
disbelief and use my imagination,
because it was already totally
occupied thinking about all the
horrors, microbial, economic and
political, that the starkly different
theaters implied.
Still, as “Tenet” began, I had
hope. This was 2020’s “The
Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.’”
I could leap into one of Christopher
Nolan’s finely-crafted, riveting
dreamscapes. I could, finally,
forget the world for a few hours in
the darkness of a movie theater.
Boy, was I wrong.
***
There’s a great movie buried
deep within “Tenet.” But it would
take a team of skilled special
agents, much like those in the
film, to remove it without being
pulverized by the movie’s sheer
excesses.
“Tenet” begins with a pulse-
pounding scene that rivals even
the bank heist opening of “The
Dark Knight.” One isn’t entirely
sure what is going on, but it doesn’t
matter because the action is so
riveting, propelled by wonderful
cinematography and an intense
score. The viewer assumes that,
however confusing the opening
scene is, answers will come later.
They don’t.
Nolan maintains this high-
speed, chaotic energy for the rest
of the movie, but never bothers
to slow down and explain any
of it, which amplifies the worst
qualities of his previous films. He is
so concerned with his frantic pace,
and showing off his intelligence by
referencing entropy, paradoxes,
inversion, nuclear science and
whatever a “temporal pincer
movement” is, that he forgoes
almost all resolution, character
development
and
cinematic
structure. He yanks his cardboard
cutout characters from hyperbolic
set-piece to hyperbolic set-piece,
spewing out incoherent science
fiction world-building as he goes
along. The first few scenes are
fascinating, because you think
it’s all going somewhere. But, as
the plot becomes increasingly
convoluted, even doubling back on
itself, my brain shut off.
At one point, a character tells
the protagonist “Don’t try and
understand it.” This seemed like
a message to the viewer, meaning
one of two things: This film is
intentionally
inexplicable,
or
you’re too stupid to understand this
complex cinematic masterpiece.
Unfortunately,
though,
beneath
all
the
pretentious
scientific esoterica and (perhaps
intentionally)
confusing
plot,
“Tenet” is just a glorified, multi-
million dollar episode of “Doctor
Who” (so much so, that anyone
who has seen the latter will
probably guess some of the movie’s
biggest twists). Deep down, it’s an
incredibly flat science-fiction spy
story shot with a drab industrial
palette of greys, blacks and whites
that do little to make the onslaught
of plot more appealing.
On top of all this, the characters
are dimensionless. When your
protagonist is literally called “The
Protagonist,” and that’s about the
extent the viewer knows about him,
it’s hard to care. Why struggle to
follow the convoluted story-line
when you don’t empathize with
those who inhabit it?
The characters that are given
a bit of personality are either
enormously
melodramatic,
enormously problematic or both.
Kenneth Branagh (“Dunkirk”), a
gem of British acting, is little more
than a Bond villain parody here,
bad Russian accent and all. His
role would’ve been better in the
experienced hands of Nick Cage.
The film’s only prominent women
are both shot. One is needlessly
terrorized and beaten, to add some
appearance of depth.
Watching
“Tenet”
is
like
watching a Rolls-Royce drive, at
high speed, straight into a brick
wall. If the car is headed nowhere,
who cares how fast it’s going, and
how many times it spins around?
When the credits rolled, no matter
how exciting and visually inventive
“Tenet” occasionally was, how
bopping a soundtrack it had and how
good Washington and Pattinson
were, it felt like a complete waste of
time.
I have no desire to see it
again, even without the threat of
contracting a deadly respiratory
disease. It’s a waste of both talent
and a potentially strong premise. A
dangerous one, too. This isn’t a film
worth suiting up in a plague outfit
for or, God forbid, getting sick.
Yet I can’t help but feel that even
if “Tenet” had been any better, this
was doomed from the start. First
Aurora poked some holes, and now
COVID-19 has ripped the floodgates
from their hinges and made going
to the cinema an exercise in sheer
terror. To find true joyful escape
within a film, you need to at least
feel like there is no direct and
present danger to your life.
ANDREW WARRICK
Daily Arts Writer
COURTESY OF ANDREW WARRICK
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SMTD student Nick Daly
on Playbill contest win
While
the
coronavirus
pandemic
may
have
shut
down Broadway and left the
state of professional theatre
in disarray, Music, Theatre &
Dance
sophomore
Nicholas
Daly is still finding ways
to
continue
pursuing
his
theatrical potential.
Daly,
previously
featured
by The Michigan Daily for
his rise to musical theatre
fame via TikTok, was recently
named the winner of Playbill’s
Search for a Star Contest, a
national
vocal
competition
conducted
entirely
through
virtual audition tapes. After a
panel of judges consisting of
Tony Award-winning casting
directors and choreographers
narrowed
down
the
2,658
submissions to the Top 10
vocalists, it was up to voters
to name the winner. And
Daly proved to be America’s
favorite contender. Following
his victory, the 19-year-old
University
student
earned
himself a professional casting
consultation,
a
headshot
photoshoot and a work session
with
Tony
Award-winning
director-choreographer Susan
Stroman, among several other
professional opportunities.
While Daly was overcome
with gratitude for the support
of his friends, family and
followers, the week of voting
proved to be more tragic
than exciting. As a resident
of Kenosha, Wisconsin — the
town where 29-year-old Jacob
Blake was shot seven times by
a white officer in late August
— Daly took a step back from
plugging the Playbill contest
to post content that would help
his community. The shooting
GRACE TUCKER
Daily Arts Writer
that a well-connected cult
leader and a former Hollywood
star were indicted for sex
trafficking and multiple other
felony charges, a docuseries
was almost guaranteed. With
the recent explosion of the
true-crime genre, it was only a
matter of time before NXIVM
became the country’s next
morbid obsession.
Read more online at
michigandaily.com
of
the
young
Black
father
elicited a considerable amount
of
demonstrations
in
the
lakeside city, and Daly found
the national attention on his
hometown startling.
“The
second
night
[of
protests], there was damage
that was done to the city,
which is a bit shocking,
especially when you see
it on national headlines,”
said Daly. “Me and my
friends definitely joke
about how we live in
‘Ke-nowhere’
and
no
one
knows
anything
about our city. But now
it’s definitely different
introducing myself now,
and saying that I’m from
Kenosha, Wisconsin, and
then watching the people
realize that that’s the
same [town].”
Kenosha
and
its
district-wide
theatre
program
were
enormously
influential
in developing Daly’s love
for musical theatre; it was at
Kenosha’s community theatre
where he made his theatrical
debut as the title character in
“Captain Louie Jr.” During his
sophomore year at Kenosha’s
Bradford High School, under
the mentorship of Educational
Theatre Association Hall of
Fame member Holly Stanfield,
Daly realized storytelling was
his true calling.
Daly credits much of his
development as an artist to
Stainfield and her work at
Bradford
High
School.
In
applying to the School of Music,
Theatre & Dance as a musical
theatre major, Daly said: “She
absolutely encouraged me. She
is an outstanding mentor. She
inspired me to believe that it
is something I could make a
living off of.” The educator was
even at his University audition:
“She was there at my Chicago
unifieds; she was right outside
at my Michigan audition with
my mom.”
Now,
Daly
is
using
his
storytelling
skills
and
his
success at the University to
make the kind of representation
for Black theatre artists that he
never saw as a kid.
“When I was younger, [the
representation] was not there. I
did not see that representation
at least until I got a lot more
serious about musical theatre
during high school,” Daly said,
referencing performers of color
like Leslie Odom Jr and Billy
Porter.
Daly specifically remembers
when musical theatre performer
and director Michael McElroy
came to the University to direct
his original show “Sonnets,
Soliloquies,
and
Soul.”
He
says watching McElroy lead
that company “was such a
learning experience for me.
Watching that representation,
being a Black director ... and
a successful musical theatre
artist … is huge. I have interests
other than just being a musical
theatre performer; I have
a playwriting minor. I
love being behind the
table just as much as I
love being on stage.”
And to young Black
artists aspiring to be in
his shoes one day, Daly
says: “Don’t put yourself
in a box. As a Black
performer
we
always
get those stereotypical,
token
roles.
But,
I’m
fortunate at least in my
high school career that I
was able to play leading
characters:
Quasimodo
in ‘The Hunchback of
Notre-Dame,’... as well
as characters [in shows
like
‘The
Scottsboro
Boys’] that allowed me to
embrace my culture. You can do
just as much as any other actor,
and beyond.”
Amid
the
recent
events
surrounding the shooting of
Jacob Blake in his hometown,
Daly remains optimistic about
the
power
musical
theatre
carries
in
bringing
people
together. “In itself, musical
theatre is like an empathy
machine,” Daly said. “And my
big thing is: What will save the
world? What will make people
understand each other, and take
us to a more egalitarian place in
society? I believe the answer is
empathy.”
Daily
Arts
Writer
Grace
Tucker
can
be
reached
at
tuckergr@umich.edu.
NICK DALY
“In itself, musical
theatre is like an
empathy machine,”
Daly said. “And my
big thing is: What will
save the world?”