Screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce

The News

By Ray Pride

September 7, 2020

Screenwriter Frank Cottrell-Boyce: “Tenet is a PERFECT film if your idea of perfection is a radio play with stunts. It plays with notions of time and cause and effect by for instance making it clear at the end of each action sequence that the action has no consequences and that therefore you are wasting your time. Over and over again. I love the way he got the crew to play with this notion too. For instance, scenes in which three or four characters do exposition for a month or so while the camera circles round them in a way that suggests the cameraman was thinking, maybe I could just sneak off here. Or another sequence in which characters do more exposition on a pair of yachts in a way that suggests that the actors said, ‘This is boring can we go on yachts.’ The very best thing about it is the way it plays with the Dan Brown approach to dialogue wherein one character says to another ‘What do you know about entropy / the collapse of the Soviet Union?’ so that the other character can reply with a huge chunk of Wikipedia. My own favourite was ‘What do you know about freeports?’ And I do have to say this is a film that will marvellously enrich your knowledge of freeports. The fight sequences are technically brilliant in the sense that lengthy drum solos on prog rock albums are technically brilliant but… skippable. So it was a bold decision to have the longest and drummiest of these in twice. A drum solo encore.”

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