A return to the movies: What theaters look like as they reopen during COVID-19 and a review of 'Tenet'
I saw a movie in an actual theater for the first time since February and have some thoughts to share!
This year has been brutal for a lot of reasons, but for many of us, the loss of a trip to the movie theater has been among the biggest bummers of them all. Cinema is a form of escapism and experiencing a movie for the first time in a living room instead of an actual auditorium just does not cut it for me under normal circumstances.
COVID-19 has had a massive impact on the film industry and shuttered theaters across the country for at least three months. If you’re someone who lives in Michigan like me, we are still waiting for them to open back up officially. Though, it appears that could change in the coming days.
When the opportunity arose to make the 50-minute drive down I-75 and cross the state line into Ohio (that’s right, this was a recon mission) to catch an early screening of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, it was too good to pass up.
What’s different about theaters as they reopen?
Before we get into the review of the movie itself, I wanted to talk about the experience at the theater and how it appears they will be doing business as they reopen across the country.
The theater that I journeyed to was the Cinemark at the Franklin Park Mall in Toledo. It’s a chain I’m comfortable with, as I frequent the Michigan locations in Taylor and Ypsilanti.
Like Michigan, Ohio has a mandatory mask order in effect which is enforced in the theater. A mask is to be worn at all times while inside and seated in the auditorium except when drinking and eating. If you don’t want a mask on for the entirety of the movie, I would suggest snacking and drinking frequently, which of course comes with the risk of needing to take a bathroom break.
The box office was not open, as they encourage people to use the mobile app to buy tickets. When you arrive, you’ll scan your phone at a kiosk or enter the confirmation number from your order for your tickets to be printed. Once you approach the theater entrance, an employee will scan your ticket and point you in the right direction.
Concession stand-wise, the menu appeared to be super limited. Outside of popcorn, candy, and a few items off the grill, it did not seem like there was a heck of a lot to offer. I’m not advocating for bootlegging your food into the building, but I’m also not *not* doing that either.
As far as auditorium seating goes, you can sit directly next to however many people are in your party. For example, if three of you came to see a movie together, you can be seated next to each other as long as you bought your tickets at the same time. There is a buffer zone of two seats between you and the next seat they leave available for another party. Every other row is also roped and unavailable, leaving plenty of room for appropriate social distancing. There were also maybe 10 people total in the theater, so it never felt restrictive or tight. I like to catch matinee showings of films and this felt pretty similar to that from an attendance standpoint.
Cinemark had disposable moist towels available for you to wipe down your area if you chose to and hand sanitizer stations throughout the lobby. They encourage everyone to remove their trash from the theater to cut down on cleaning times, which gives the employees more time to check the theater and sanitize it before the next scheduled showtime. From the looks of things, they do this by spraying down any surfaces that people make contact with via a device that resembles a proton pack from the Ghostbusters franchise. Bathrooms are supposedly cleaned every 30 minutes and the theater has a dedicated sanitation and cleaning supervisor on staff.
Overall, I felt safe and did not mind the experience. In a lot of ways, it was the most “normal” that things have felt in months by just being able to be at the movies. There’s an inherent risk of exposure to COVID whenever you leave the house, but I don’t get the sense that cinemas are going to be hot spots for superspreader events. It’s different for sure, but they should be able to operate under these guidelines fairly stress-free. I was impressed.
Like any other business operating with limited capacity right now, I would suggest that if you want it to stay open, support them. There are not a ton of movies out right now, but they are filling slots with older films at cheaper ticket prices just to get you in the door. I know you’ve probably watched something like Back To The Future a million times on TV, but it might be a fun and inexpensive night out to see it on a big screen for those of you looking to break free of your cabin fever.
Note: Among the classics being screened during my trip to the Franklin Park Cinemark was Rocky V. Someone is going to have to explain why the cobwebs were cleaned off of that as opposed to *waves hands at the rest of the Rocky or Creed franchises*.
Reviewing ‘Tenet’
Tenet is directed by Christopher Nolan, who many people know from his work on The Dark Knight trilogy and films like The Prestige, Inception, and Interstellar. Nolan is one of my favorite filmmakers because of his way to weave some pretty complicated and nuanced concepts into a package that still checks all the boxes of blockbuster and tentpole entertainment. In an industry that is gone increasingly digital, Nolan is old school in that everything you see in a frame is something that was created using practical effects captured on film. His action setpieces will blow you away and some of the themes and plots will rack your brain. I would stop short of calling it art-house cinema, but he is unique in his own right.
Nolan’s filmography is filled with movies that deal with the concept of time in different ways and Tenet takes this and twists and inverts it in ways we have not seen him — or really anyone else — tackle before. To say anything more than that would be to wander into spoiler territory, which we will not be doing here.
John David Washington (son of Denzel Washington) stars at The Protagonist, a CIA agent who is tasked with stopping “something worse” than a nuclear holocaust by manipulating the passage of time. Washington starred in one of my favorite movies of the last few years in BlacKkKlansman and turns in a pretty good performance here, though the script does not add much depth to him or any of the characters in this film. Robert Pattison and Elizabeth Debicki are also great and Debicki actually winds up being the character with the most fleshed-out arc and arguably the heart and soul of the movie. Kenneth Branagh plays a Russian oligarch in a villainous role and does fine.
"Don't try to understand it, just feel it,” a scientist tells The Protagonist early on in the film when explaining the time-inversion concept that is being introduced. In several ways, this is great advice for how to take in this movie as an audience member. This is something to be experienced and seen. This is a plot and setpiece-heavy film that skims over a lot of dialogue and character development in favor of keeping the story moving forward.
And boy, does it ever move.
At 150 minutes, there is a lot of movie to take in and will definitely reward people who give it multiple viewings. There are a few moments to catch your breath, but Nolan does not hold your hand and take things slowly. There were a lot of times in the first half of the movie where I felt stupid and like I was not totally grasping what was going on, but Nolan knows that and rewards it by a lot of dangling threads and questions being answered once the movie hits the halfway point. The moment this movie truly turns is pretty awesome, but will still remain confusing in a lot of ways until the credits roll.
From a cinematography and special effects standpoint, the argument can be made that this is Nolan’s best work from front-to-back. There are a lot of shots that see objects and people moving forward while others move backward in realtime. It is a visual marvel and is just so damn cool to look at that even if you do not understand what the hell is going on, you are going to be captivated for 2.5 hours.
My biggest gripe with the film is rushed and hushed dialogue, as well as the sound mixing. Ludwig Göransson’s score is amazing, which is to be expected from one of the industry’s rising composers. With that said, Nolan often has it cranked up so high that it drowns out characters talking on screen. There are also moments where characters are speaking with masks on where the speech is muffled and hard to understand. It is extremely baffling, but perhaps that is his way of telling us that what they are saying is not all that important anyway. Given I had to look up the Wikipedia plot summary to fill in a few blanks, I do not completely buy that.
Inception, The Dark Knight, The Prestige, and Dunkirk were the Nolan movies that comprised my Mount Rushmore of his filmography coming into this experience and I left the theater feeling unchanged by that. However, I would probably place this fifth before any more viewings of it. I can see this being a movie I like more every time that I watch it, but I also can see it being incredibly polarizing. Potentially Nolan’s *most* polarizing film.
Tenet is a hell of a way to welcome American audiences back to the theaters and if you are someone who liked Inception and Interstellar, I can see you liking this as well. It does not feel like anything Nolan has done before, but those are the movies I would most compare it to when looking at the rest of his filmography. This isn’t not the best Christopher Nolan movie, but it certainly feels like the *most* Christopher Nolan movie. I’ve got zero reservations calling this the most ambitious movie he’s ever made and I wouldn’t be surprised if it remained that way before his career is all said and done. He keeps finding new ways to wow us, so I won’t put anything past him.
I am a firm believer in preserving the in-theater cinematic experience and Nolan’s movies reward people who feel the same way. This is meant to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Regardless of how people wind up reacting to the movie, it is nice to have something new out in the world that we can leave our houses for.
Score: 85/100
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