Some movies are meant to leave you guessing or wondering what everything meant. Christopher Nolan is no stranger to making these movies, and he says that it’s okay that you don’t understand every aspect of Tenet. You don’t have to be an expert. That’s kind of the point.
Christopher Nolan did a five-part interview with Stephen Colbert for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where they talked about his movies and career as a whole. Colbert asked him about experiencing his movies and enjoying them, which led to the question of whether or not we are supposed to understand everything in Tenet—or better yet, whether or not Christopher Nolan himself understands Tenet.
“You’re not meant to understand everything in Tenet,” Nolan said. “It’s not all comprehensible. It’s a bit like asking if I know what happens to the spinning top at the end of Inception.” Colbert jokingly jumped in to ask him if he knew what happened to the top, and Nolan quickly explained how he has his own concept of what happens.
“I have to have my own idea of it for it to be a valid, productive ambiguity. But the point of it is it’s an ambiguity,” he said. Talking about how the character doesn’t care whether or not it falls (referencing Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb in the film), Nolan focused his answer purely on what the character needs from it and not necessarily what the audience does.
It’s truly what has always made me love Nolan’s work. You’re experiencing this story without a clear answer. It’s something you can interpret for yourself in the end. We get to talk about his movies and figure out what we all think it means on our own, and he doesn’t hand us the answers on a silver platter.
The interview became a bit of a joke when Colbert threw some theories of his own at Nolan, who responded by saying he doesn’t comment on fan theories. But the point that Nolan made is one that we should all focus on: You don’t have to understand every single twist of a movie to get something out of the characters you’re on this journey with.
Luckily we do now know that Nolan loves the Fast & Furious franchise
During the interview, Colbert pivoted to talking with Nolan about his “guilty pleasures.” When he brought up Nolan’s love of the Fast & Furious franchise, Nolan quickly said that he has no guilt about loving those movies. Same, king. Same.
It was supposed to be a joke, but listening to Christopher Nolan say to Stephen Colbert that he’d watch all of the movies with him because he watches them all the time anyway truly has made me so incredibly happy as a Nolan fan—made even better when he forgot for a brief moment that technically Tokyo Drift, which came out after the first two films, is the first film in the timeline.
The reality of this is that Christopher Nolan does not take the minute details of his films as seriously as people think from an audience perspective standpoint. He wants audiences to think and question and not know what it all means because that helps to not only entertain us but keep the conversation going about the movie.
Luckily, I am finally going to see Tenet in theaters during its IMAX rerelease, and I cannot wait to be taken into this world once again, even if I don’t fully understand the Sator square.
(featured image: Rob Kim/Getty Images for Universal Pictures)
