⌛ Altruism in Temporal Space - How Tenet and Undertale Highlight the Fragility of the Human Experience Using Implied External Narratives

Altruism in Temporal Space - How Tenet and Undertale Highlight the Fragility of the Human Experience Using Implied External Narratives

Tenet was a movie which soared under my radar for some time. A strange occurrence when you consider my fascination with Christopher Nolan, but regardless, it took me some time to get around to properly viewing Tenet. Attempt 1 was a complete failure, deciding to watch the film in the midnight hours during my first year of college and realizing quite quickly, alongside my housemates, that no one was in a coherent state to try and comprehend the film. Attempt 2 was slightly more successful, but my consciousness was once again kidnapped and tucked away behind the plane of dreams (I passed out asleep) before the film could even get to the point of the film. For many people, the point of the film is still lost amidst the science fiction jargon which litters the script and set pieces, but it was upon Attempt 3 that I truly got a grasp for what this film was about.

For those of you who haven’t seen Tenet, or those who have and don’t quite get the premise (I do not blame you, Nolan truly embraces the confusion of space and time with this one) I will try and explain. Tenet is a film which may appear stark, devoid of emotion, or just confusing for the sake of it upon a first viewing but I firmly believe there are layers to peel back which reveal a deeper meaning about the existentialism of the human condition, altruism and how the question of being is temporal and not linear. Let me preface, I am not a scientist, in fact I’m barely managing this whole writing charade so do bear with me and my analogies through this one.

The entirety of Tenet’s narrative revolves around the idea of the temporal pincer movement, the intersection of forces seen at the end of the film. Essentially through the narrative we learn of how time travel functions in this world, the ability to invert and travel back through already played out chronology. This in itself, is a difficult notion to wrap ones head around, as it contradicts all basic assumptions we have of linear story progression. What you find out towards the end of the film, is that the linear progression of the film has already taken place within its own fictional chronology, in fact it’s technically always taking place. If you went to the shop, bought milk, returned home and then used the time machine from the film to invert yourself, you would then be able to travel backwards through the sequence of previous/now present you going to the shop and buying milk, that version of you essentially now preprogrammed to run that route. Because it happened once, it can happen an infinite number of times because at any point in time in a single chronology, someone could invert themselves and therefore create another instance of that event taking place. Probably the most complex analogy of buying milk from a shop you’ll see on this blog but hey. This is the crux of Tenet, amalgamating in the final, temporal pincer movement, we see at the end of the film.

The biggest question of being that arises from this conundrum, is why bother? If time can be overwritten at any moment, what is the point in the now if the now can be infinitely altered by the then. This is the paradoxical feeling that Tenet instils upon first viewing, and the final battle revolving around the temporal pincer movement can be jarring upon a first watch. It’s very easy to wonder, if this battle has already played out for Red Team, and Blue Team have inverted to relay this information, then why must the battle play out again if everyone knows what’s going to happen. This is then heightened further when it is revealed at the end that Robert Pattinson’s character has already looped this timeline, and is the temporal pincer to John David Washington’s character as he plays through the events of the film. Talking about this is exhausting so I imagine reading it isn’t too far off, so let’s take a step back to talk about the characterization throughout the film and how this contributes to the overall tone.

John David Washington’s character, the Protagonist, is an unnamed CIA operative who is ushered into the whole time travel fiasco for what appears to be the first time in the narrative context of the film. The fact that he is unnamed holds so much weight in important moments in this movie, as the facelessness of his character comes into play throughout. In tandem with Washington’s brilliant action performance, the audience is entrusted with the idea that this character is resolute and determined, further reinforced through the opening scene where he chooses to take his own life before compromising his team. This characters unquestioning determination throughout the film, helps deliver the themes I touched on earlier as his timeline of events - the one we are exposed to as the viewer - is one that not only has happened before, but is clearly under the influence of multiple other timelines inverting and converging around events that happen during the linear progression of the film. That question of why bother? Becomes so much more fruitful when our protagonist is the antithesis of it, despite his emotional detachment from the events.

This is how Tenet hinges its tension. Action scenes such as the highway heist or the art gallery infiltration are portrayed with immediate agency and intensity surrounding the protagonist, yet time and time again is undercut by future iterations of characters inverting through time. As a viewer this is jarring, but only because of the perspective we are shown it through. While jarring, this way of revealing the mechanics of the story truly highlights how everything matters and doesn’t matter simultaneously because it’s all happening in sequence with respect to one another. The act of going forward in the present timeline appears to be fruitless but the action of doing that in itself enables the possibility of inversion, another series of events, another chance. The narrative challenges linearity, and is ultimately paradoxical in nature, and I truly love it for it. It’s almost like a thought experiment, and while this has irritated many and pushed plenty away from the film, I truly feel it allows this film to exist in such a niche sphere of thought.

If the focus were simply on Washington’s character, I’d argue much of this would remain surface level in terms of discussion. However, Robert Pattinson’s character, Neil, unearths some very interesting modes of thought. The audience discovers, at the very end of the film, that Neil is not from the present timeline, operating parallel to the protagonist, but rather from the future, acting as a pincer to the present narrative (perpendicular to the protagonist? I don’t know I don’t study math). In the final moments of the temporal pincer movement, it is Neil who sacrifices himself to ensure that the protagonist can succeed, another future version of Neil (Is anyone really keeping count at this stage?). In one final Nolan mindfuck, it’s revealed that the protagonist has a much more important position within the Tenet group than he could have imagined, being the founder. This reveals that the narrative chronology the audience has been exposed to is but one layer of what is clearly many looping and inverting timelines coalescing. The character of Neil is the one constant which keeps the narrative emotionally intact, clearly being friends with some future (technically past) version of the protagonist. That stark, devoid of emotion tone I touched on earlier? It comes into play now, as the film uses it to disguise the massive multilayered stakes of an even bigger narratives under the facade of a much more condensed linear one. This is best summed by Neil in the ending scene of the film:

What's happened happened. Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It’s not an excuse to do nothing…call it what you want…reality.

I adore this moment, an acknowledgement of the paradoxical nature of a timeline at constant risk of inverting on itself. Pasts in futures, and futures in pasts, everything that has happened has indeed happened, and while this may make it seem like everything is pointless, it’s anything but, highlighted especially by Neil who bids his farewell to his friendship with the protagonist while said protagonist is only reaching the precipice of said friendship. It’s a beautiful moment, disguised within a stark and detached narrative, only to highlight the simultaneous futility and fruitfulness of a non-linear, linear timeline. I may sound like a mad man, but this is the world Tenet captures, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome, making the fragility of the entire experience ever exposed to the viewer.

All of this explanation to segway onto Undertale, infamous indie game developed by Toby Fox, may be the most outrageous move in my career as a writer but I digress. Undertale too tells a story embedded into a continuity which respects the ideas of multiple, conflicting yet congruent timelines. Upon a first playthrough of Undertale, you are greeted with the idea of completely unique agency. Spare monsters or kill them? It’s a simple choice proposed very early on and the basis of the narrative weighs on this mechanic. Not only is this a brilliant way of diverging from the typical progression of RPGs, but the game utilizes this as a hinge to experiment with an introspective mechanic of game save awareness. What I mean by this, is unlike most other video games, where saving is an external mechanic to allow multiple save files or playthroughs, in Undertale, saving is a canonical feature of the narrative.

This is highlighted the most through the Genocide run, a playthrough of the game which rewards the player with entirely unique story beats and boss fights upon killing all monsters in each given area. The game becomes devoid of the cheerful life it once had, you quickly scale and become a powerful force capable of wiping all life from the fictional underground, and more importantly you get the opportunity to unceremoniously kill off significant main characters. The experience is hauntingly cathartic, and encourages the player through the sheer ridiculous yet entirely real concept alone. In a moment which has become grounded as one of the most defining in gaming (and I cannot believe I’m citing this in an essay), the Genocide run reaches the pinnacle of its narrative relevance during the final boss fight and encounter with comic relief character Sans, as he confronts the player for their actions. It is during this fight where it is revealed that Sans, seemingly has an omnipotent awareness of how timelines work within the games context. He berates the player with accusations and truly highlights the whole, evil for the sake of evil, reality that is the Genocide run. Sans isn’t the only character who shows this awareness, as antagonist Flowey too acknowledges the players multiple save files, going as far as calling them out on subsequent runs of the game for their actions in previous Genocide run save files. Like Tenant, the narrative acknowledges the clearly much larger continuity of temporal and parallel universes within direct respect to the one which the player finds themselves occupying.

Also similarly to Tenet, Undertale proposes the question of why bother? As ultimately if the player can infinitely play through the game, the consequences of one save matters not in the grand scheme, right? Well despite this, Undertale takes the opportunity to force guilt and shame onto the player, and repeatedly does this through future acknowledgement of past runs. It’s subtle, but it’s a nuance which does not go unnoticed within the games continuity and highlights the importance of the present within the expanded multiverse that the continuity proposes. There’s a reason that so many fandoms and theories (Matt Patt you will be missed) have spawned from the narrative of the Genocide run (for better and for worse).

What results from both these narratives, is the attention that’s brought to the fragility of the human experience when we consider the grand question of being. Within our own reality, the question of being is the ultimate question of existentialism, and one that is too deep and elaborate to even touch on in an essay about Tenet and Undertale of all things. What these texts do is propose a temporal continuity that so vastly overshadows our own, yet exposes us to them through very grounded, human experiences. As I mentioned earlier, the performance by Washington and the staging directed by Nolan (not to mention the fabulous score by Ludwig Göranssonresent) paints Tenet as a story which holds so much present weight and agency, but is revealed to be just one echo in a cacophony of shouts that is the entire, combined and suggested storyline. Undertale does the same thing, through the immediacy of its mechanics, and the emotional highs accomplished through its writing, pacing and soundtrack, it simultaneously highlights the importance of partaking in the narrative as an agent of influence, while offering the alternative through the Genocide run as a means of disregarding this immediacy in favor of unconditional, cathartic enjoyment - only to hold the player completely accountable and further highlight the fragility of being itself. That…was a mouthful, I actually need to take a moment to breathe after that.

Ultimately what I’m getting at, is both these texts highlight the importance of the unimportant, as it is all subjective upon our own altruistic motivations. The same can be said for the general task of living and being itself, something I cannot believe I am equating to Tenet and Undertale but here we are. I hope I did a somewhat accomplished job of actually making sense of Tenet, and better yet equating that to Undertale and life itself without sounding like a mad man, but someone had to do, and I’m somewhat glad I did. Maybe this is an extended apology for those times I fell asleep watching Tenet, or it could be seen as atonement for my ever cringe inducing Undertale phase I went through when I was 16, but regardless, I hope you were able to harvest some insights from this. Main takeaways being, enjoy the moment, it’s all there is. We may experience one, linear timeline but it’s the present activity of existing that defines the movement of that timeline and I think there is value in that. Call it fake hope, or faith in the mechanism of the world - whatever floats your Pattinson. With that being said, I’ll wrap up my ramblings there. Hope you all have a damn good one.

Good night and good luck.