A spoiler-heavy movie review.

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Happy 100th Cumulative Post!

I have created a monster. I knew that my wife loved movies before we got serious, but all my talk of the Hollywood machine has permanently-ruined the conversations we have about what we watch together. Take, for instance, Christopher Nolan’s latest: “Tenet”. For a director who shies-away from the immediate-aftermath of violence, I was pretty surprised with how much violence against women was in the film: specifically against its leading lady Katherine, played by Elizabeth Debicki (who – ironically – praised the ground Nolan walks on in the theatre pre-show). Her character is married to the Big Baddie of the piece: a Russian arms dealer named Andrei, played by the superlative Kenneth Branagh; and her release from her husband’s abusive bondage plays prominently in the choices our unnamed lead (Denzel Washington’s son John David) makes in the film. I told my wife that the scenes of domestic abuse were unnecessary: I figured Nolan had done enough to show how ruthless and evil Andrei was without giving our otherwise-unfeeling hero the personal attachment in saving the battered wife. My wife, on the other hand, suggested that the extra-violence was because some European (and even Russian) audiences expect that gratuitousness as it fits in with their cinematic culture: she even cited the rape scenes from the Swedish version of “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, and how they were toned-down for the American remake. I said that Nolan probably has Final Cut now (after how much money he’s made Warner in the last 15-years), and the studio would be contractually-obligated to leave him alone and let him put whatever he wants in his movies without interference, even if that meant deliberately changing certain things for a foreign audience.

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