Alright back at it again. It’s been so long since I did this but the beginning of this month has been a wild one and my habit of overthinking has been put on overdrive. Things have being up and down but I choose to be grateful. My phone was stolen, I spent the past 3 weeks working on a story project with a friend of mind and I couldn’t come here on hive but like I said everything is fine and I will persevere and overcome. It is only the season, this too shall pass
There's the trailer for those who may not have seen it
Alright back to why we are here enough whining and complaining. The last time I posted on this community I was talking about the best film I saw in 2020 that is Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. I examined two key aspects that made the film such a stand out and they were the premise of the plot and the first scene. Today I am going to be examining the Katherine Barton subplot, the dialogue and story progression of the plot so sit back relax and let’s right to it.
The Katherine Barton Sub plot
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The film has a very complex story that is quite difficult to follow especially when you see it for the first time. This means that there is a high likelihood that you can get confused about the direction of the story making you bored and unappreciative of the story all the while missing out on the whole point. Nolan understands this and so to keep our attention he introduces the Katherine Barton story/subplot the meeting point of our two primary characters arcs. Nolan realized the need to have someone of relevance at stake so as to keep us interested in the film and not just our interest but also our suspense in the story. Her story arc is our anchor serving as a mini story that helps us stay interested in all the time bending events in the whole plot. The Katherine Barton subplot serves as both the heart and soul of this story as well as the embodiment of everything that is at stake if Andrei Sator our antagonist wins which is all the more exemplified when he says.
‘If I can’t have you, no one else can’
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She and her son represent the world both the future and the present are fighting for.
All this is made more beautiful by the fact that the resolution of her story keeps the main plot grounded and makes it more relatable. While this world ending time bending final battle is happening at Stalsk 12 Katherine is finally confronting her cruel husband in order to fight for her and her son’s freedom in this sublime but intense confrontation. As the audience it’s made all the more intense to us when we know that the outcome of this finale with her husband will directly affect the battle at Stalsk 12. The reason why Nolan makes it this way is because like I said earlier her story connects all the major characters together. From her pseudo love interest the protagonist, to her abusive marriage to her husband Andrei Sator the antagonist even to her son whom is suspected to be a younger version of Neil [this theory is given more credence when we see how the protagonist arrives in time to save both she and her son from Priya Singh the last lines he says to her adding to our suspicion ‘tying up loose ends’]..
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When we are introduced to her through Sir Michael Crosby’s exposition, we see her as just a means to an end and the protagonist relationship with her does seem to be that way in the beginning but eventually after the events in the first act and the second act he has to re-evaluate her value and eventually take her seriously. When he meets her he tries to blackmail her with the picture of Goya into arranging a meeting with her husband only for her to inform him that her husband is already ahead of him. Their meeting is however interrupted by Sator’s men who burst into the scene to seize Katherine, take her home and try to beat up the protagonist; they failed horribly on that last part. What this scene in particular highlights is Sator’s possessive nature and how he goes to the point of beating up anyone whom he sees around his wife but not in a barbaric way kind of like in a suave espionage way. It also gives us the viewer our first impression of Sator the scene being an indirect confrontation between Sator and Protag, this meeting only made possible by Katherine Barton. It is also through her that we get information about the Oslo Freeport which directly ties to our goal and also hers. It is through her that we get a firm grip of who Sator is and what his end goal is all while being the person who carries the whole stakes if the story. When she is shot by Sator we pray for her safety as we inadvertently join in the promise to keep her safe. When she eventually recovers and decides to join in the final battle acting as the inside man we cheer on because we finally witness her character complete her character arc right before our eyes. Finally when both she and her son are unknowingly saved in the final scene by protag we realize how she might just be the mother to Neil, the little boy she and Sator share.
The Dialogue and Story Progression
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Two other key things that stand out in this Nolan film are the dialogue and the story progression. I originally wrote them both as one but then again I realized how in actuality they were two separate things that are mutually exclusive. The first thing that caught was how cohesive the story progression was. Each scene followed the next symmetrically like a tightly knitted patterned scarf each part coming together to form this whole masterpiece. There is also the pacing of the film. The scenes seemed to alternate between a fast and a slow pace. They were set up in such a way that two or three fast paced scenes would come first to give us information that would then lead to the main scene that contained the events being set up. Examples of this are the school scene the protagonist had with and Katherine which lead to the Oslo airport crash scene and the planning scene the protagonist had with Neil in which they plan the Tallin highway heist which leads directly to the Tallin highway heist. Quick cut scenes that give us information are placed specifically before more drawn out suspenseful scenes so that they are more meaningful to us. It’s not something you see regularly in many films but it works really well here because scenes that happen quickly serve as parts of the film that inform us about the story’s progression, be it the scene where Protag tells Neil he is going to go back to Mumbai for answers or the scene where he gets the Tallin highway heist mission from Priya in Mumbai or even the meeting scene in London with Sir Michael Crosby. They all serve the purpose of being the set up scenes that lead into more elaborate tensed up scenes that are slowly built up into climatic action. Like I said we see this style of story progression spread across the first, second and third act.
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There is also the style of dialogue that is used for this film. The dialogue in this film is used to push the plot forward. In the first two acts we see how the conversations the protagonist has with each character pushes his narrative into the next scene. This is a similar style of story-telling we see in the Matrix where characters who know more than our protagonist give him bits of information to guide his narrative, I emphasized this in my matrix post. It is dialogue that gives us a direction, telling us where we are heading towards not where we are coming from, dialogue that informs the future and not describe the past. These two qualities I believe are what make this film an interesting film to watch even though it’s a high concept film and it’s one that would be extremely difficult to pull off. The way each scene is built to fit each other like a lego set and the way the dialogue is used to fuse each scene to the next meant that we had a cohesive story that works despite how complex it is. We can follow it since we already have an idea of where it is heading and we know and trust that the story will not break off into something else or fall apart completely. An example of a film that makes the mistake of an incoherent story progression is The Tomorrow war. It started off having one concept in mind, the idea of normal people fighting in a futuristic war for their survival without any prior combat training. However by the beginning of the third act this concept is abandon for a father and daughter reunion most likely because the writers couldn’t figure out a way to end the story. Nolan understands that because of the nature of this film, he has to find a way of tying everyone’s story into the central plot while still making them unique t. In the end they all come together in the final act in a way that all of their conflict.
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Alright I think I’ll stop at this point. I wish I could write more but I don’t think I can push myself any further and maybe perhaps I’m not just in the right frame of mind but I think a thousand five hundred words is enough. So until I see you guys again
Ciao.
