Keywords

Introduction

What’s happened, happened. Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world, not an excuse to do nothing.

—Neil

Christopher Nolan’s 2020 film Tenet is more than just a visually stunning and time-bending masterpiece, or a movie that wonderfully assaults our senses with its immersive sound design and its dynamic bombastic musical score by Ludwig Göransson – a driving force in the film which demands our attention, adds intensity, and enhances the beauty of the impressive action sequences. It’s also more than just a globetrotting glamorous action thriller set in a twilight world of international espionage, or a mind-blowing sci-fi film centered around the paradoxical concept of time inversion where we see characters flowing backwards through time. Indeed, what really stands out about Tenet is that, like Inception, it’s another Nolan film that makes philosophical arguments. At the end of the film, Neil delivers the quote that begins this section – a memorable quote that expresses the two arguments of Tenet: (1) everything is fated, but (2) it still matters what we do.

To examine Tenet’s arguments, it will first be necessary to comprehend Tenet, not just to viscerally feel it, but understand it – which, in fact, is the opposite of what the film instructs the audience to do: “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.” Indeed, even those who have seen Tenet multiple times could still be confused by its complex narrative. Once it is explained, however, this chapter turns to examining its arguments.

Summarizing Tenet

Tenet is set in a world where a secret organization called “Tenet” is founded in the future to ensure everyone’s survival. It’s a story about the founder of that organization, a man only referred to as the Protagonist, who is trying to save the world from the antagonists of the future – a group intent on wiping out the people of the past responsible for the environmental collapse of the future.

The film tracks the six-week journey of four primary characters: the Protagonist, Neil, Kat, and Sator. For the first half of the film, these characters traverse three weeks forward in time. Then, at the halfway point, through the usage of time inversion technology, they temporally invert – they begin traveling backwards in time – and traverse three weeks back to the beginning of the movie.

The film begins with a siege at the Kiev opera house where the Protagonist witnesses an inverted bullet whiz by him – a bullet that apparently jumps out of a hole, kills the SWAT team member behind him, and then travels back into a gun held by a mysterious figure. It’s revealed that the Protagonist is part of a CIA team where their objective is to obtain a metal block of weapons-grade plutonium-241. The Protagonist is then recruited into an organization named Tenet where he is introduced to various operatives and learns about inverted ammunition and time inversion. This leads him to Mumbai where he’s paired up with a mysterious agent named Neil. They meet a Tenet operative named Priya who lets them know about the man behind the inverted ammunition who communicates with the future – Andrei Sator.

To find Sator, Priya puts the Protagonist in contact with an agent named Crosby who subtly reveals that two weeks prior, the same day as the Kiev opera house siege on the 14th, there was a bomb detonation at Stalsk-12. He also reveals that Sator’s hold over his wife Kat is a fake Goya drawing created by an artist named Tomas Arepo. Cleverly, Crosby gives the Protagonist a second fake Goya which allows him to arrange an art appraisal meet with Kat where he makes a proposal: to meet with Sator in exchange for destroying the drawing. Kat agrees and explains that Sator keeps the drawing in his Rotas vault at the center of the Oslo Freeport. The Protagonist and Neil surmise that Sator is hiding something in the vault. To reach it, they dramatically crash a 747 plane into the back wall of the Freeport which causes the distraction necessary to trigger the lockdown they need to find Sator’s secret.

In the vault, they find a revolving time inversion turnstile machine that Sator has built which allows people and objects to invert and revert the direction they travel in time. The Protagonist ends up fighting an inverted figure (in SWAT gear and a mask) that leaps backwards out of the machine. Afterwards, the Protagonist travels back to Mumbai to meet up with Priya who explains that Ukrainian security services are moving the plutonium-241 through Tallinn in a week. She tells him to team up with Sator and steal the plutonium-241.

The scene shifts to the Amalfi Coast in Italy where the Protagonist lies to Kat, telling her the fake Arepo drawing was destroyed. Consequently, Kat invites the Protagonist to dinner where Sator immediately threatens to kill him. But when the Protagonist asks Sator if he likes opera, Sator invites him to go sailing on his catamaran where the Protagonist proposes they become partners. When Kat unexpectedly yanks Sator’s quick-release and he flies off the boat, the Protagonist spins the boat and rescues Sator. In return for saving Sator’s life, the Protagonist gets a shot at stealing the plutonium-241 when it crosses through Tallinn.

The film’s three-week journey forward culminates in Tallinn during a spectacular highway heist where the Protagonist steals the plutonium-241 case from an armored vehicle, and it’s revealed that Sator owns another time inversion turnstile at the Tallinn Freeport. After an epic highway chase, Sator shoots Kat with an inverted bullet so the Protagonist reveals where he hid the plutonium-241 during the chase. The audience learns that Sator has duped the Protagonist by performing a temporal pincer movement, allowing him to obtain the block of plutonium-241 and flee into the past. During the chase, the Protagonist comes to realize that the metal block of plutonium-241 is not plutonium after all as it doesn’t have the encapsulation of any weapons class. Neil explains that it’s worse than plutonium.

After learning how inverting a wounded person can stabilize inverse radiation, the Protagonist takes Kat through the turnstile and inverts her so she can heal over the next week. He then decides they will travel back a week to the Oslo Freeport 747 jet crash event and revert Kat and themselves at the Rotas turnstile. Before going, however, the Protagonist thinks he can change what’s happened. He wants to invert himself and prevent Sator from obtaining the metal block that he hid. But Neil fatalistically says to him: “What’s happened, happened. We have to save her here and now. And if you go back out there you might hand him exactly what he’s after.” And, indeed, that’s exactly what happens.

The second half of the movie follows an inverted Tenet team in pursuit of Sator as they traverse backwards in time for three weeks back to the 14th. Neil gets himself, Kat, and the Protagonist into a cosy shipping container, and they head to the Oslo Freeport while inverted. When the Protagonist tells Neil that he couldn’t stop Sator from getting the metal block material, Neil says: “I warned you,” to which the Protagonist says: “What’s happened, happened. I get it now.” The Protagonist begins to realize that everything is fated.

When the Protagonist had inverted himself and returned to the highway chase, he managed to plant his Bluetooth earpiece into the 241 case he gave to Sator so he could record any conversations. On their way back to Oslo, the Protagonist listens to a recording on his phone where Sator cryptically mentions to his men: “Bring the final section directly to the hypocenter along with the other parts of the algorithm.” The Protagonist then asks Neil about the algorithm. Neil explains that the algorithm is a formula that’s been rendered into physical form so it can’t be copied, that it’s composed of nine sections (the 241 block is one section of it), and that it’s a giant inversion black box device with one function: to invert the entropy of the entire world and instantly obliterate everyone and everything. The Protagonist responds: “We’re their ancestors. If they destroy us, won’t that destroy them?” Neil then mentions he’s hit upon the grandfather paradox – something the future generation clearly thinks they can get around without consequence.

They arrive at the crash scene near the breach and enter where the inverted Protagonist (wearing SWAT gear and a mask) finds himself fighting the earlier Protagonist. The original fight between the two plays out in reverse from the inverted Protagonist’s perspective who then leaps into the turnstile, reverts, and runs into earlier Neil. Meanwhile, inverted Neil gets himself and Kat through the turnstile, and they revert. Afterwards, the Protagonist asks Neil why he didn’t tell him earlier that the masked guy coming out of the vault was him – a future version of the Protagonist. Neil again asserts his fatalist belief: “What’s happened, happened. If I’d told you and you acted differently…who knows?...We’re the people saving the world from what might have been.”

The Protagonist tells Neil to get Priya to Oslo so he can stop her from telling the earlier Protagonist to steal the 241 in Tallinn. Neil fatalistically says: “Nothing can change that.” But the Protagonist still thinks he can change the past and stop Sator from obtaining the section. He finds he can’t change Priya’s mind as her mission was to use him so Sator would bring together all nine sections of the algorithm. Priya tells the Protagonist to board an icebreaker ship in Trondheim that contains a turnstile where Ives (a Tenet sergeant) has a team ready to invert.

The team works their way back to the 14th and they travel inverted to Stalsk-12 in Siberia. The Protagonist briefs Ives on Crosby’s intel about the Stalsk-12 hypocenter detonation that takes place on the 14th. Along the way, the team learns that Sator intends to end his life as he’s dying from inoperable cancer. Sator has devised a plan: the fitness tracker he wears has been programmed to send a signal when his heart stops – a signal that would activate the algorithm (buried at the Stalsk-12 hypocenter) by detonating an explosive. The team figures out that Sator intends to carry out his plan by returning to a day on his yacht where he felt loved by Kat. Magically, Neil knows the day: “The 14th. Ten days ago.” The Protagonist tells Kat to make her way to the yacht in Vietnam on the 14th to stop future Sator from killing himself until they lift the algorithm out of the hypocenter. He then hands her a phone and tells her to call and state her location if she ever feels threatened in the future.

The three inverted weeks back to the 14th end as they arrive at Stalsk-12. Ives divides his soldiers into two teams: a red team (that moves forward in time) and an inverted blue team in the future (that moves backward). The movie culminates in a ten-minute temporal pincer movement where the two teams battle Sator’s army. This allows the Protagonist and Ives to enter the hypocenter cavern where they reach a locked gate door. On the other side, they see a body lying on the ground and Sator’s henchman, Volkov, who places the assembled algorithm bar into a capsule. Meanwhile, future Kat makes her way onto the yacht in Vietnam. When future Sator arrives, she decides to kill him in a state of revenge, pulling up her shirt to reveal the scar he gave her. Sator is shocked and realizes he’s been conned. Kat shoots him.

With the help of Neil, the Protagonist and Ives end up lifting the algorithm out of the hypocenter right before the explosive goes off. How? Neil reverted half-way (via the Stalsk-12 turnstile machine) and pulled them out using a rope tied to a truck. Later, Neil inverted (back to before this time), picked, and opened the locked gate door and then took a bullet meant for the Protagonist. When the Protagonist realizes that Neil sacrificed his life to save him, he asks: “But can we change things? If we do it differently?” Neil fatalistically replies with the previously mentioned quote that captures the arguments of Tenet. The Protagonist says: “Fate?” Neil says: “Call it what you want…Reality.” Neil then reveals he was recruited by the Protagonist, that the entire operation has been one giant temporal pincer constructed by the Protagonist who is only halfway there.

The film ends with a thought-provoking voiceover from Neil about how they saved the world from what might have been. Meanwhile Kat is shown picking up Max at school where she sees a tinted car which prompts her to make a call. Priya’s in the tinted car and her driver has a pistol. The Protagonist then opens the back door, gets in, shoots the driver, and then reveals to Priya that she’s been working for him all along. He then ties up loose ends by shooting her.

Interpreting Tenet

The key to understanding the plot of Tenet is realizing that the film is one giant closed loop that already happened. It starts on the 14th at the Kiev opera house in Ukraine, and it ends on exactly the same day (the 14th) in the Soviet city of Stalsk-12 and on the coast of Vietnam. While earlier versions of both the Protagonist and Neil are at the opera house on the 14th, future versions of them (that have inverted backwards through time) simultaneously battle Sator’s army at Stalsk-12 and save the world. The bomb detonation at Stalsk-12 that took place on the 14th, which Crosby mentions early in the film, is the one that we see at the end of the film. And at the beginning of the film, future Kat and future Sator have already traversed backwards in time to the yacht in Vietnam on the 14th. As the film unfolds chronologically, the audience comes to realize that events that happen later in the film have paradoxically already taken place in the past (at the beginning of the film) where there are multiple versions of characters existing at the same time. For example, there are two versions of Kat near one another when future Kat kills future Sator. (Recall that, early in the film, younger Kat sees a future version of herself dive off the yacht.) And at different points in the film, there are also multiple versions of Neil and the Protagonist existing at the same time.

At the end of the film, through Neil’s revelation that the entire operation has been a pincer setup by the Protagonist in the future, the audience recognizes that the beginning of the story actually starts, off screen, in the distant future where the future Protagonist founds the Tenet organization, recruits Neil, and then sends him back in time (to the Kiev opera house) to save his former (past) self and then the world. The audience is left to ponder the central sci-fi concept of time inversion which raises a variety of philosophical issues such as the nature of time, reverse causation, causal loops, the grandfather paradox, personal identity, and the ethics of using this technology to achieve one’s ends and desires.

Besides the amazing action sequences involving heists and time inversion, what really stands out is the film’s central argument. Primarily through the characters of Neil and the Protagonist, Tenet argues for the philosophical doctrine of fatalism – the belief that every event that happens was fated to happen; nothing other than what does happen, could happen. And there is nothing one can do to undo this, or to prevent the happening of any event. Everything that happens in the loop of events in the film was fated to happen. However, fatalism being true might make one think that a person’s actions don’t matter; that, no matter what one does, or how one acts, the fated events will occur. But Neil (and by proxy Christopher Nolan) expresses to the audience that a person’s actions still do matter, even if fatalism is true. And to begin to understand how this argument is made, it’s necessary to explore the film’s hidden messages. In fact, the argument for fatalism is bolstered by the hidden messages contained in Tenet.

The Fatalism in Tenet’s Hidden Messages

Nolan’s Cinematic Sator Square

Christopher Nolan used a word puzzle from the real world, known as “The Sator Square,” to construct the people, places, and objects in the fictional world of his film. It’s an ancient five-word Latin palindrome that can be read in any direction, consisting of the words SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA, and ROTAS arranged as such:

S A T O R

A R E P O

T E N E T

O P E R A

R O T A S

It’s not exactly clear what the Sator Square means or how it’s to be interpreted, but the word “SATOR” translates as sower or seeder. “AREPO” is a proper name, and as a verb “TENET” means “to hold” or possess. The word “OPERA” usually refers to work or efforts – as in to operate – and as a noun, “ROTAS” translates as “wheels.” (As a verb it indicates rotation. Notice how ROTAS rotates “around” the square.) So the square may form the following ordinary sentence:

The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort.

Correspondingly, some believe the Sator Square was inscribed onto objects throughout history in an effort to protect them from evil happenings. Perhaps it calls for Arepo to hold back the wheels of misfortune.

Regardless of whether this is its true meaning, it seems to track nicely onto Tenet as this describes the plot of the film: The nameless Protagonist (Arepo?) needs to stop Sator and the antagonists of the future from destroying the world (evil happenings). What’s more, the square’s words appear throughout the film. “OPERA” refers to the opening opera house siege in Kiev. “SATOR” refers to the subject that the Protagonist is after: Andrei Sator. “TENET” obviously refers to the title of the film and the name of the organization that the Protagonist creates in the future. “ROTAS” is the name of Sator’s construction company that built the Oslo Freeport and also refers to the rotating inversion turnstile machines. And finally, “AREPO” refers to Tomas Arepo, the Spanish artist that created the two fake Goya paintings in the film. (Could Arepo, who Kat suggests is crippled and deaf, simply be an elderly version of the Protagonist?)

The oldest version of the Sator Square was found in the ruins of Pompeii in 79 A.D. It can’t be a coincidence that the Tenet scenes in Italy were filmed at the Amalfi Coast which is 20 miles from the Pompeii ruins. The stone inscription was found in the house of a baker which was covered in volcanic ash from the Mount Vesuvius eruption on August 24th in 79 A.D. The eruption killed thousands in the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Incredibly, in Tenet, “Pompeii” is mentioned twice, and “Herculaneum” once. When Kat talks to her son Max at the school gates, Max says: “Anna says we’re going to Pompeii and see lava.” And in Italy, when Kat asks where Max is, Sator replies: “He’s visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum.” There is no way this could be a coincidence. Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the European mainland. Nolan gives a nod to this fact when Max says he’s going to Pompeii to see lava – the lava from Mount Vesuvius. Even though it hasn’t erupted since 1944, it’s still expected to in the future. And Nolan took the opportunity to fictionalize that next eruption in the closed time loop presented in the film. Indeed, some fans of the film theorize that Neil is Max. And if so, Nolan could be suggesting that young Neil stumbles across the Sator Square stone inscription in Pompeii. After all, in 1936 the Sator Square was also found inscribed in one of the stone columns at the Pompeii Gymnasium which has been preserved at the Antiquarium of Pompeii museum.

Alternatively, might it turn out that Nolan is alluding to the possibility that the different objects in history containing the Sator Square word puzzle (such as church pillars, bells, crypts, and mosaics) were inscribed onto these relics in the future and then streamed back (like the inverted bullets in Tenet) to different points in history? This could be Nolan’s way of saying that the people of the future in the real world have figured out how to reverse the entropy of objects, and thus, the flow of time. Nolan could be suggesting that the things most people assume are impossible might just be things that the current generation hasn’t discovered yet.

Clearly, Tenet is Nolan’s twenty-first century Sator Square on the big screen. And as the historical Sator Square points to mysteries, Tenet also provides audiences with a set of mysteries to contemplate, such as the nature of time and the concept of inversion. Perhaps this was part of Nolan’s intent all along: to raise mysteries. What’s unquestionable, however, is that Nolan drew inspiration from the Sator Square to form the plot structure and concepts in Tenet. Where the words in the ancient square can be read backward and forward, so too, things happen backward and forward in Tenet.

But how does the Sator Square relate to the argument for fatalism in Tenet? Could it be that Nolan is giving audiences more than just a nod to this centuries-old word puzzle that fits nicely with the time inversion plot and palindromic nature of the movie? One could imagine that while Max is in Pompeii, he encounters and learns about the Sator Square inscribed on the Pompeii Gymnasium column. Assuming Neil is Max, it’s possible the Sator Square inscription was placed onto this ancient stone relic in the future by the Tenet organization and then temporally inverted and sent back through time to give young Neil an idea of his future role in the fate of mankind. If so, the word square is a sign that young Neil was always fated to be inspired to act and save the world – which, incredibly, is something that older Neil is simultaneously doing (along with the Protagonist) while young Neil is visiting Pompeii.

Furthermore, no matter which direction the Sator Square is read (from left or right, up or down) by following either rows or columns, one ends up with the same set of words. And this seems to indicate that the square was fated to say the same thing from any direction. It’s brilliant and fitting that Nolan used these fated Sator Square words to substantiate his argument for fatalism within the film; it was all fated to happen the way it does. Being inverted and traversing backward through time can’t change the course of events that were destined to play out. Likewise, one cannot ever hope to find a new result from reading the Sator Square from a new direction.

“All I Have for You Is a Word: Tenet”

The word “tenet” is a direct reference to key aspects in the film. Just like the palindromic word can be read forward and backward, the actions seen in the film involve different characters that can move forward and backward in time to prior moments using temporal inversion. Moreover, the plot structure itself is a palindrome as the film begins on the 14th where the audience experiences everything moving forward for three weeks, and then reverses at the half-way point during the Tallinn sequences and moves backward through time for three weeks until it arrives where it started – the 14th. (This is very reminiscent of Inception’s narrative journey as that film ends where it began: Cobb and Saito stuck in a house on a cliff in Limbo.)

In fact, the entire film is like a giant temporal pincer movement where the audience viscerally experiences a closed loop containing palindromic effects. Moreover, the word “ten” (that can be read in the word Tenet from both directions) refers to the final battle sequence at Stalsk-12 where the blue and red teams need to work in conjunction for ten minutes. Both have ten minutes (forward or backward in time) to allow the Protagonist and Ives to slip into the hypocenter cavern and prevent the algorithm from being activated. Furthermore, the “ten” in Tenet is accentuated throughout the film. The staff member at the Oslo Freeport lets Neil know that in the case of a lockdown or fire, the facility is flooded with halide gas which gives the staff a ten second warning to get into the corridor. In the Tallinn Freeport, Volkov says to Sator in Russian: “The convoy’s due downtown in ten.” Also, when Kat tries to remember the day she went ashore with Max on her Vietnam holiday, Neil says: “The 14th, ten days ago.”

Even the traditional definition of “tenet” and how it’s used in normal discourse (defined as a main principle or belief) is used for the purpose of relating it to the fatalism message in the film. During Priya’s introduction, her first line to the Protagonist is: “To say anything about a client would violate the tenets he lives by,” to which the Protagonist replies: “If tenets are important to you, then you can tell me. Everything.” And this usage of tenet as a belief relates to the argument for fatalism in Tenet. When Neil repeatedly expresses to the Protagonist that everything that’s happened was fated to happen, Neil is expressing one of his core tenets – his belief or faith in how every event was fated to happen. Nolan cleverly uses the word “tenet” to signify many things in the film, but the one that stands out, which is directly related to this chapter, is his core tenet (belief) that fatalism is true.

Tenet’s Nameless and Emotionless Protagonist

Nolan has emphasized that Tenet was designed to be a visceral cinematic experience for film audiences. And it certainly is. He likely felt the actions, events, and the complex physics concept of time inversion in the film were relatable enough to make people care about what’s happening in the story. Tenet lets the action and concepts drive the narrative which, in turn, draws audiences in, and gets them invested in the survival theme flowing through the film.

Because he felt that the complex concepts and nonstop action in the film would be enough to engage audiences and immerse them in this adventure, Nolan decided to make the lead character, the Protagonist, nameless, and emotionless. It stands in contrast to Inception where, in addition to the dream concepts introduced, there’s an emotional story at its core between Cobb and Mal, and Cobb trying to get back to his children. With Tenet, the narrative and complex concepts sufficiently capture the audience’s attention. An emotional backstory for the main hero would have detracted from the concepts and high stakes in the film.

Given that Tenet is an audience-driven experience, the Protagonist serves as the means to achieving this experience. Indeed, the Protagonist represents the audience. Within the chronological events of the closed loop presented, he starts as a blank canvas who then adapts to these extreme and outrageous situations. He’s hurled into a temporal cold war – a world with strange physics along with complicated concepts and paradoxes – and into crazy espionage action moments (like bungee jumps, fights, heists, and car chases). But he goes along with everything just as the audience does through the film’s breathtaking imagery and action.

Consider the amazing moment in the opening opera house siege when the Protagonist is introduced to the concept of time inversion. A bullet emerges from a bullet hole (that itself disappears) and then streams backwards past him and through his assailant. The concept is visualized on the screen, and the audience feels what the Protagonist is experiencing in the moment. It’s as if the audience members are in the shoes of the Protagonist for the duration of the film, witnessing the time inversion sequences first-hand from his perspective, reacting and trying to comprehend things like he does. Further, just as the Protagonist questions Neil on things, the audience also questions the film on many levels. And while the audience doesn’t fully relate to the nameless hero, they relate enough to connect and follow Tenet’s complex narrative.

Most importantly, having the main hero function as a blank canvas allows audiences to discover, concentrate, and experience the fatalism theme that’s central to the film. In virtue of having a protagonist (who lacks a backstory and emotional depth) that is learning (along with the audience) about the metaphysics of Tenet’s world, Nolan is able to shift the film’s focal point to the philosophical fatalism message flowing through Tenet – that every event is fated, where all that can happen is what has already happened. Throughout the film, the audience, like the Protagonist, is able to concentrate and reflect on this philosophical message. For instance, the audience is able to deduce that the Protagonist is bound to make all the temporally inverted and noninverted decisions he does, that whatever he chooses to do, he was always going to choose to do those things (in fact, by the end of the movie, the Protagonist himself comes to realize this truth too). The Protagonist will always end up protecting the future generations (posterity) while guarding the ancestors of the past generations by having Neil temporally invert backward through time. The audience comes to recognize that there’s no timeline where the Protagonist does not do this. Additionally, through the discourse between the Protagonist and Neil, the audience is able to discern the film’s philosophical arguments.

Tenet’s Argument for Fatalism

Recall the previously mentioned quote by Neil at the end of the film that captures the two philosophical arguments of Tenet: (1) everything is fated, but (2) even though everything is fated, that isn’t an excuse to do nothing. It still matters what we do.

To understand (1), it’s important to clarify what kind of fatalism the film subscribes to. It suggests all events and actions are fated – where what has happened in the past, what is happening in the present, and what will happen in the future, was destined to happen, and nothing can undo it. All events are inevitable. In Tenet, the Protagonist often thinks he can change the past and keep future events from happening, only to later realize that he can’t. His inverted and noninverted actions were destined to happen the way they did within the closed temporal loop seen in the film. Again, this is something that the Protagonist recognizes in the final scene when he takes care of the loose ends by killing Priya to save Kat and Max. He knows that everything that happened was fated to happen the way it did. He was fated to stop Sator, to save the world with the help of Neil, to be a guardian angel over Kat and her son Max, and become the founder and leader of Tenet in the future.

In this way, the film subscribes to a temporal ontology (a view about the nature of time) called the block universe view, which is also known as omni-temporalism or eternalism. The idea behind this view is that the universe is a giant four-dimensional block that consists of all things and events that have ever existed or happened at any place and time – it is the collection of every moment in time, past, present, and future, that ever has or will happen. But it must be emphasized that, on this view, each such moment is equally real. It’s not like past moments used to exist, the present moment does exist, and the future will exist. The entire block exists as a whole. Thus, the future exists, and is just as unchangeable as the present and past. To put it in terms of the film, the moments when the young Protagonist is at the opera house siege, and the moments in the distant future when the older Protagonist founds the Tenet organization, all exist in the block.

Now, whether or not time passes in the block is debatable. One could adopt what philosophers might call an A-theoretic understanding of the block and insist that, while it is true that the past, present, and future all coexist on the block, present events still have a privileged status that the others do not; it is occurring. (Past events have occurred, future events will occur.) Think of it like a film strip. The entire film already exists on the reel – but only one frame (at a time) can have the privileged status of being shown. The frame being shown would be analogous to the present; all moments exist, but only one is occurring. But given that the block universe is entailed by relativity, and that according to relativity simultaneity (and thus what would be included in the present moment) is relative to a reference frame – and there is no privileged reference frame that defines what is truly present – the more consistent (and popular) understanding of the block universe aligns with a B-theoretic understanding. On the B-theory, there are only facts about the order of events; there is no fact about what moment is occurring – all moments simply exist, statically, on the block. So, on this theory, despite the way that things appear to us, there is no actual passage of time. As Einstein put it, “People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion” (Einstein 1955).

The film accentuates this point through its sci-fi concept of manipulating time through inversion with characters traversing backwards through time and returning to moments in time through which their earlier selves already lived. Consider when the inverted Protagonist returns to battle his noninverted self at the Rotas vault in the Oslo Freeport. During this fight, the present moments for the noninverted Protagonist in the business suit are interacting with the future moments of himself dressed in SWAT gear and a gas mask. Through this visual encounter of these past and future moments colliding, the film is claiming that the difference between the present moments and the future moments is only relative. The temporal relations between the earlier and later versions of the Protagonist all exist in time – and in this scene, Nolan emphasizes this point by having the temporal relations literally collide. That is, they all exist in the block universe, and there is no fact about which one is occurring.

Priya also underscores the block universe view of time when she tells the Protagonist: “Tenet wasn’t founded in the past…it will be founded in the future.” Since the Tenet organization exists in the present, but it can’t exist without being founded, the future event of its founding must exist. Indeed, the film’s characters speak about the people of the future and what they’ve already done. The audience comes to recognize that the future scientist who created the algorithm has already existed, took her life, and hid the algorithm sections in the past by temporally inverting them. Priya even says that the people in the future need the algorithm’s journey into the past to continue. Those people in the future exist when she’s talking to the Protagonist in the present. Likewise, from the perspective of those people in the future, the moments in the past (and all prior generations) also exist.

The film is therefore claiming that the future is just as real as the past. And this claim is reinforced by the repeated utterance of “What’s happened, happened” (which is uttered 4 times in the film). When Neil first says this in the Tallinn turnstile room, he’s warning the Protagonist that he can’t change what Sator’s done (or what he’s about to do, or what he’ll be doing when he inverts and moves into the past). In effect, he’s telling him he can’t stop Sator from getting the ninth section of the algorithm. Neil urges him to focus on saving Kat “here and now,” and not think of what will happen if Sator kills her in the past. The point that the Protagonist fails to realize at this point is that what’s happened already happened and it can’t be undone. It’s only after he fails to stop Sator from getting the ninth section that he starts to understand Neil’s earlier warning. “I get it now.” When he asks Neil at the end of the film if they can change things if they do it differently, Neil asserts the line again. Essentially, he’s saying that his future self already inverted and opened the door which resulted in them lifting the algorithm and saving the world. He’s expressing that it has happened, it was fated to happen, and there’s no undoing it. The forward-moving Neil recognizes the action he was fated to take – to get on the chopper, go and invert, and weave another pass in the fabric of their mission.

Interestingly, this block universe view of time resembles the view of time developed by philosopher David Lewis, one that Nolan himself embraced and argued for in his film “Interstellar.” Lewis describes his view by discussing time travel and his solution to the grandfather paradox (Lewis 1976). Lewis argues that, even though time travel is possible, it would not give one the ability to go back in time and kill their grandfather (and thus negate their own existence) because doing so would be impossible. Why? Because it’s already predestined not to be the case. What follows is that the future is just as written as the past, and that the universe (the past, present, and future) is a block and exists as a whole. Thus, before the traveler even departs, the universe already contains the events that the time traveler causes in the past. Those events already occurred and exist. When the traveler arrives in the past, the traveler would not be able to kill their grandfather because the past already contains their birth (and their grandfather’s survival). The traveler wouldn’t be able to negate their own existence; it’s logically impossible.

Recall when the Protagonist says to Neil: “I’ve been thinking…we’re their ancestors. If they destroy us, won’t that destroy them?” In response, Neil discusses the grandfather paradox and says these people in the future clearly think they can kill grandpa and survive. Nolan’s embrace of Lewis’s view of time is evident as it turns out that the people existing in the future can’t destroy the people of the past because them trying to do so and failing is already part of the block. The people in the future fail to get Sator to activate the algorithm in the past at Stalsk-12 because the Protagonist and the Tenet team have already succeeded in stopping Sator in the past using their inverted methods. The Tenet team has always won the battle at Stalsk-12. Indeed, that event is happening off screen, at the beginning of the film. Kat has always killed Sator on his yacht in Vietnam. Neil has always saved the Protagonist three times in the past. All of this already exists on the timeline before the people of the future send Sator the capsule containing the instructions for gathering and activating the algorithm. The people of the future were born and still exist and nothing can undo this from having happened (their existence and entire timeline can’t be negated or contradicted). Nolan’s solution to the grandfather paradox lines up with Lewis’s solution: it’s logically impossible to kill one’s grandfather, or in the case of Tenet, one’s ancestors.

One upshot on the block universe view of time is that causal loops are not paradoxical. What’s a causal loop? Consider how an older Protagonist founds the Tenet organization in the future and then has Neil invert into the past back to the opera house to ensure his earlier self (a younger Protagonist) is recruited into the Tenet organization so that he then founds it in the future. In this case, a future event causes an event in the past which is the cause of the future event. That’s a causal loop. And since it’s natural to think of causes preceding effects, it would seem causal loops are logically impossible. A causing B, but then B causing A would seem to imply both that A came before B, and that B came before A. But that only follows if causes must precede their effects. In the world of Tenet, where time inversion technology is real, this of course is not true. Since it involves reversing the entropy of objects so that the arrow of time reverses, reverse causation is possible. When Barbara (the scientist that trains the Protagonist in how inversion works) says that inverted material has been manufactured in the future and is streaming back to them in the past, the Protagonist insists that cause has to come before effect. But she corrects him. “No. That’s just how we see time.”

But even with reverse causation, it might seem that causal loops are impossible because, although each part of such a loop has a cause, the loop itself seems to lack a causal origin. But on the block universe view of time, since the world is a giant block that contains every moment in time, there is a causal origin for causal loops: the existence of the (block) universe itself. The causal loop we see in the film featuring the Protagonist, for example, came into existence with the universe itself; whatever explains it, explains the loop.

But can the causal arrow really be reversed? Can objects move backwards in time? The early work in quantum mechanics by physicists John Wheeler and Richard Feynman suggested that particles like positrons are just electrons that can exist in multiple states at the same time, and that they can even travel backwards in time (Feynman 1965). The particles can move from the past to the future, or from the future to the past. And this theory seems to be what Nolan had in mind. When the Protagonist explains there is technology that can invert an object’s entropy, Neil replies: “You mean reverse chronology. Like Feynman and Wheeler’s notion that a positron is an electron moving backwards in time.” So, while the existence of causal loops might initially sound absurd, they are neither logically inconsistent nor physically impossible. Indeed, Richard Hanley (2004) defends the possibility of their existence extensively in “No End in Sight: Causal Loops in Philosophy, Physics and Fiction.”

But is this fatalist block universe view of time correct? As was mentioned above, Einstein’s scientific theory of relativity certainly bolsters the view. According to it, facts about whether two events are simultaneous are relative to a reference frame – how an observer could be moving through space and time. In one they will be simultaneous, and in another they won’t. And there is no fact of the matter regarding which reference frame is right. There is no privileged reference frame that defines one moment as the present moment. This means that A can be simultaneous with some event B in one frame, and then B can be simultaneous with some other event C in another – even though C happens after A in all frames (i.e., even though C is in A’s future). The only way this is possible is if all events coexist in one giant block. And if there is no privileged reference frame, there is no fact about which event is occurring now. So, on relativity, the passage of time is illusory.

Some might suggest that quantum mechanics stands contrary to the block world view as it has proven that certain events on the quantum level (the scale smaller than atoms) happen at random and without cause and are thus fundamentally unpredictable. But while such events are not determined – predicable from previous states or causes – it is not true that they cannot be fated. On the block world view, every event, even quantum ones, exists on the timeline when the block itself comes into existence. Although we cannot predict which quantum events are fated to occur, on the block world view, each one is fated to do so. Even if a particle is in an undetermined state (also known as superposition), the fact that it is in that state (and how long it will be) is fated to occur just as it does.

Philosophical arguments can also be presented for the block universe view. A fundamental rule of logic is that all propositions, including those about the past and future, have a truth value. And the most commonly accepted theory of truth, the correspondence theory, says that true propositions require truthmakers: something that makes them true. If that’s right, it would seem that both the past and the future must now exist, for what else could serve as the truthmaker for true propositions about the past and future? This view which seems impossible to escape unless one is willing to abandon certain basic assumptions of logic, or reject the highly intuitive correspondence theory of truth, is known as logical fatalism.

But that brings us to another philosophical takeaway of Tenet, that follows from its fatalistic view, and that is its argument that humans lack free will. If the outcome of all things is already fixed and thus is fated to happen, it seems to follow that people don’t have the capacity to freely make choices. That’s not to say that choices can’t still be made; indeed, what choices people will make is already written on the block. And we might even say that, since it’s the persons who are making choices, they are the ones that are writing their choices onto the block. If people are fated to make the choices they do, however, it doesn’t seem that their choices are free. But is this right? Or might it be possible that humans can still make free choices even if fatalism is true?

Tenet’s Fatalism Entails There Is No Free Will

The traditional libertarian notion of free will asserts that freedom over decisions and actions requires alternative possibilities. In order for a person to freely choose to do some act, that person not choosing to do that act must be possible. Now, it’s widely held that libertarian free will is not compatible with determinism, the view that everything in the world is caused by previous events and natural laws. If one could predict every future event, including human actions and choices, by simply looking at the current state of the universe, and using the laws of nature to derive everything that will happen next, then there are no alternate possibilities. But while determinism would entail that there are no alternate possibilities, and thus that fatalism is true, determinism and fatalism are not the same thing. Indeed, fatalism could be true even if determinism is not.

For example: Tenet suggests that we live in a fatalist block universe, not that the present is a causal result of the past, or that people’s future actions are causally linked or determined by their present ones. No such language ever appears in the film. So Tenet’s universe is not deterministic. And yet the universe of Tenet is still fatalistic. Indeed, people could act randomly within it, and this would still be true. As was discussed above, a random uncaused quantum event, say a positron moving in random directions, would still be fated to happen if that event was written in the block when the block came into existence. And this would be true, even though there is no way to determine or derive that event was going to happen from past events. In the same way, a person’s action could be random, undetermined, and even unpredictable, yet still be fated to happen because it already existed on the block. A universe containing uncaused events is not a deterministic universe, but that very same universe could be fated to contain the uncaused events that it does. Thus, a block universe would still be one in which fatalism was true, even if it was not deterministic.

Tenet makes it clear that people are not free in the libertarian sense given its recurring expression that “what’s happened, happened” – this fatalistic view of people living in a block universe. Every event that ever happens is already contained in the block and has been for all time. This seems to imply that the characters in the film don’t have the ability to freely choose between the different alternative actions available to them; they don’t have the ability to not choose as they do. Consequently, they are not free.

For instance, when future Kat takes her revenge and kills future Sator on his yacht, she could not have done otherwise. She doesn’t have the ability to take more than one possible course of action. She was always fated to kill Sator on his yacht on their holiday trip and then jump off the side to safety. Recall, again, that she sees herself doing so at the beginning of the film. The events and actions in her life were fixed in advance and she didn’t have the power to alter them. She therefore, on the libertarian understanding, cannot act freely. Similarly, it seems that Neil didn’t have the ability to not decide to save the Protagonist’s life in the hypocenter cavern. Perhaps he mentally considered alternatives, but there is only one thing he could have done. He was fated to save the Protagonist’s life in the past, to help the Protagonist found Tenet in the future, and to save the world “from what might have been.” These events have always been written in Neil’s timeline contained in the block universe. Thus, he cannot, on the libertarian understanding, act freely.

But perhaps, even though it is true that there are no alternate possibilities in a fatalistic universe, it’s not true that free will require alternative possibilities. Such a view is embraced by some who call themselves compatibilists, who embrace the view that determinism and free will are compatible. And even though, as we have seen, determinism and fatalism are not the same thing, one might be able to use the compatibilist understanding of free will to argue that free will can still exist even in a fatalistic universe.

One philosopher that subscribes to a compatibilist view of free will is Harry Frankfurt, who articulates an understanding of free will in terms of first-order and second-order desires (desires about desires), and the ability that people have to rank them (Frankfurt 1971). For example, a habitual smoker may have a (first-order) desire to smoke a cigarette, but also a (second-order) desire to not have this desire to smoke a cigarette – particularly because this person wants to be healthier and feel better. What makes the person free, according to Frankfurt, is the person’s ability to rank the desires and act on them. If the person overrides their first-order desire with their second-order desire – by refraining to smoke a cigarette – then that person has produced what Frankfurt calls a “second-order volition.” And because the person conforms their will to their second-order volition, the person has acted freely.

The ranking of first-order and second-order desires, and overriding one with the other through deliberating about the kind of person someone wants to be, is compatible with fatalism. One can even be fated to do such a thing. So, on this definition of free will, one can decide freely, even in a fatalistic universe. But is this definition of free will right? Many argue that it is not because one’s second-order desires could be imposed by outside forces; and if they are, it doesn’t look like a person acting on them is truly free.

For example, suppose I programmed a smoker to have an irresistible second-order desire to not be a smoker anymore. (Maybe I performed an inception on the smoker.) When they act on that desire, and refuse their next cigarette, it might appear to them that they are acting freely, but it doesn’t seem that they actually would be. Their action was determined by me. Yet, on Frankfurt’s definition of free will, they would be choosing freely. So his definition seems deficient. What’s more, given that our second-order desires are a result of our brain structure, and our brain structure is a result of our DNA and environment, it seems that ultimately even our actions based in second-order desires are the result of outside causal forces, and thus not truly free. In order for a choice to be free, it would seem that whether or not I make that choice must be, ultimately, up to me; it can’t be imposed upon me by outside forces. Since Frankfurt’s definition suggests that my actions could be free even if they were imposed upon me by an outside force, again it seems that Frankfurt’s definition of free will is deficient.

There are other compatibilist notions of free will, but they all fall prey to similar objections. They all essentially suggest that an agent’s choice to do something is free as long as it springs from some aspect of the agent – if not a second-order desire, then a rational deliberation, or an act of the will. But what if that aspect of the agent was determined by outside forces? It would seem the choice is not free, and yet the compatibilist would insist that it is. And even if, instead of being caused by outside forces, the aspect of the agent arose randomly, or without a cause, the act still wouldn't seem free. As Peter van Inwagen (2000) showed in “Free Will Remains a Mystery,” indeterminate actions aren’t any more free than determined ones. If I’m not in control, then I am not acting freely.

And so it seems that there cannot be free will, at least as people usually conceive of it, in a fatalistic block world universe. And thus, in as much as it is an argument for the block universe, Tenet is an argument against free will.

Tenet’s Argument for Fatalism Isn’t an Excuse to Do Nothing

The notion that we do not have free will leads some to adopt what we shall call a “fatalist attitude.”

The Fatalist Attitude: It doesn’t matter what a person does because, regardless of what one does, things won’t turn out differently. So one might as well lay back and do nothing.

But thinking this attitude should be adopted as a result of embracing the philosophical lessons of Tenet misunderstands the kind of block universe fatalism that the film is arguing for.

This attitude would make sense given a different type of fatalism where only certain types of events will happen no matter what; on this view, it doesn’t matter if one does X or Y or Z, that particular type of event will happen. For instance, consider the first Final Destination movie. The protagonists avoid being killed by a plane explosion, only to be later killed by other means because they were fated to die. The moral of the movie (if there is one) is that you can’t escape fate. But this is a different understanding of the word “fate” than is suggested by Tenet. In Final Destination, the particular method of their death is not fated; this is obvious, given that they were able to exit the plane. It’s only the fact that they will (soon) die that is fated. So they could die by method X, or Y or Z. It really doesn’t matter. Yes, there are multiple ways to get to their final destination of death, but they will get there, no matter what. So they really might as well lay back and do nothing. Trying to prevent it is useless. Regardless, they will (soon) die.

But this is not the kind of fatalism presented in Tenet. It does not suggest that only certain types of events are fated to occur, and that only those will occur no matter what. Instead, the block universe fatalism view the movie suggests maintains that all events are fated. The entire timeline is already set. Consequently, it entails that there’s only one possible future, and therefore, there is only one possible way to arrive at any fated event. So it does not entail that our actions don’t matter, because it does not entail that the same thing would happen regardless of what we do.

To fully understand why, consider the ill-fated back-tracking counterfactual objection to the freedom and divine foreknowledge problem. The problem suggests that God’s foreknowledge precludes human free will. If God knows what a person will do before they do it, it doesn’t seem that person can act freely; they are not able to act otherwise because they do not have the power to change what God’s past belief was or make God’s past belief false. The back-tracking counterfactual objection tries to answer this argument by observing that the following counterfactual is true:

If the person were to act otherwise, God would have believed something different than he did.

But while such a statement is true, its truth does not entail that the person in question has the power to act otherwise; it thus doesn’t entail the person in question is free.

As Johnson (2009) argues, the fact that God has foreknowledge of a future action entails that the future action already exists. Indeed it must if God has knowledge of it. But if it already exists, it is fated to happen; it can’t not happen. And if it can’t not happen, the agent cannot freely make it happen. In order for one to freely decide to do X, one’s action of doing X and one’s action of not doing X have to be equally possible. But this can’t be the case if one’s action of doing X is already a fixed fact on the timeline. Yes, if one were to act otherwise, God would have believed something different and the timeline would be different than it is. But neither of those things is now possible. Essentially, this is a way of redefining what it means to be able to do otherwise, but it is not robust enough to satisfy the libertarian intuition that choosing to do the action, and not choosing to do the action, has to be genuinely and equally possible if the agent is to act freely. Clearly, if God already believed one would do X, and thus, the future event of the agent doing X is something that already exists on the timeline, then the agent doing otherwise is not possible – even though it’s true that, if they were to do otherwise, God would have believed something different.

All that being said, the truth of the above counterfactual is enough to show that the following claim is false: regardless of what one does tomorrow, God will have believed the same thing yesterday. If one were to act differently, God would have believed differently. It’s not true that God would have believed the same thing, regardless of what you will do. God’s past belief is dependent on one’s future action. So, even though your actions are fated in a block universe, it still matters how you act. If you were to act differently, something else would occur. Of course, you won’t act differently; the act is fated. But it’s still true that if you did, something else would happen. So it is simply not true that, regardless of what one does, things won’t turn out differently. Things won’t turn out differently; that’s true. Indeed one can’t act differently; all events are fated. But it’s still true that, if one were to act differently, something else would occur.

Nolan seems to be aware of such back-tracking counterfactuals as he recognizes the importance of action in a fatalist block universe. Again, at the end of Tenet, Neil says:

What’s happened, happened. Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world, not an excuse to do nothing.

In these lines, the film not only makes the argument for fatalism, but also the argument that fatalism isn’t an excuse to do nothing. Even though the characters in Tenet are fated to act as they do, it’s not the case that it doesn’t matter how they act and thus they should do nothing. The fact that everything that has occurred will occur isn’t a reason for inaction because even though the characters are not free in the libertarian sense, and their actions are fated, it’s still the case that if they didn’t take the actions they did, they wouldn’t have succeeded in the mission.

For instance, the Protagonist can’t just lounge around and take the fatalist attitude where he believes that it doesn’t matter what he does. On the contrary, it matters very much what he does. For everything to transpire the way it does, where he and Neil save the world, the Protagonist must take the actions he does. And even though he’s fated to do what he does, it’s still true that if he didn’t, the future outcome would have been different – the back-tracking counterfactual of action is true. He has to take the actions he does to save the world. And even though the Protagonist’s actions aren’t free actions in the libertarian sense, his actions are the cause of what’s been fated to happen in the timeline of the block universe. Thus, what happens in the block, depends on one’s actions.

Neil’s voiceover during the final sequences of the film augments the importance of their action.

We’re the people saving the world from what might have been…The world will never know what could’ve happened…and even if they did they wouldn’t care…because no one cares about the bomb that didn’t go off…just the one that did…but it’s the bomb that didn’t go off…the danger no one knew was real…that’s the bomb with the real power to change the world.

His choice in expressions is revealing. He says: “from what might have been” and “what could’ve happened” which indicates that, if they had not acted as they did, the universe would have been different. If they didn’t take all the inverted and noninverted actions on their mission, then something different would have occurred – the world’s entropy being reversed would have annihilated the world. Again, that couldn’t have happened because it would have created a grandfather paradox. But the salient point is that different actions would have yielded different consequences. In fact, what Neil (and by proxy Nolan) is saying here is that if everyone believed fatalism were true, then everyone would probably start behaving very differently. People would adopt this fatalist attitude where one believes that it doesn’t matter what one does, and so one might as well do nothing. But as this chapter shows, this isn’t the case. That is not the correct response to the fatalism in Tenet. Fatalism isn’t an excuse to do nothing. The counterfactual of action is enough to ground and inspire action. It’s enough to counteract the fatalist attitude. People shouldn’t behave any differently if fatalism is true because how people act still matters.

Conclusion: The Philosophical Depth of Christopher Nolan’s Films

Unquestionably, Christopher Nolan enjoys challenging people’s preconceptions with his films. He’s proposed worlds where the science and laws of nature that people take for granted – things involving space, gravity, relativity, dimensions, the human mind, and the nature of dreams – are twisted paradoxically and strangely into new shapes. In Tenet, Nolan does this with time where he explores the nature of time and entropy and proposes a fictional world (based on real world physics) where people in the future have figured out how to reverse the flow of time and invert themselves and objects backwards through time. He’s suggesting that even though this may seem highly improbable, it may simply be a technology that the current generation hasn’t discovered yet. But Nolan doesn’t just provide audiences with suggestions. As he does in all his films, he delivers a philosophical lesson. And this makes his films philosophically significant. In Tenet, he argues for fatalism, and how people can’t use fatalism as an excuse to do nothing. And a film that can incorporate and articulate such deep philosophical arguments is truly a cinematic masterpiece.