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?”

