NG5 Sherwood Oct/Nov 2020

TENET
THE HATER
One of the more intriguing films brought to the table
by Netflix this year, The Hater tells the story of Tomasz,
a narcissistic, disgraced law student who joins an
internet troll farm. His love for a girl goes unrequited
and her politically-immersed family that finance him
end up disowning him. This feeds his dedication
to causing turmoil amongst political candidates
using Facebook groups and fake accounts. Young
Tomasz continuously refuses to realise these online
ways of venting his frustrations from isolation and
rejections are bound to have very violent and very real
consequences outside the web.
Maciej Musiałowsk does a fantastic job at portraying
a power-hungry secluded internet genius with his vast
array of suppressed emotions creating a believable
ticking-time-bomb sociopath similar to characters
seen in films like Taxi Driver.
This helps bring the film’s script and Jan Komasa’s
great direction to life. It deals with complex
relationships and entangled scenarios while having
enough breathing space for performances and
cinematography to take effect, making the intense
and even morbid feel of scenes take full effect as
more foreshadowing to the inevitable explosion of
violence accumulates.
This is a suspenseful antihero film with well-layered
characters that delves beyond simple concepts of
‘internet = bad’ and more into the consequences
of an unawareness of power abuse with strong
performances and engaging dialogue
Writer: George Neal
8 / 10
Tenet is the 11th directorial feature from
acclaimed filmmaker, Christopher Nolan.
It’s also one of the most hotly anticipated
films of the entirety of 2020.
This is the kind of film that has many
examples of incredible direction and wellchoreographed,
unique action set pieces
that completely reinvents the wheel for
films of this genre.
With this film, Nolan opted to hire Hoyte
Van Hoytema as the cinematographer. A risk
that absolutely paid off, because beyond
being an astonishingly gorgeous looking
movie, it perfectly captures the action and
helps make it as immersive as it is.
It helps that a lot of the action in this film
is done practically rather than relying
on an overabundance of CGI. However,
where Tenet delivers on spectacle, it
is unfortunately a VERY hard film to
understand. Although it tries to explain its
plot, it comes across as convoluted and I
often found myself completely lost as to
what was going on in the story at certain
points in time which may be the kind of
thing that would require multiple watches
but as for my first time seeing the film, I was
left confused and slightly frustrated by the
end of it.
Writer: Sam Leary
6/ 10