Reverse coding Tenet

“Credit cards, email, text – anything that goes into the record speaks directly to the future. The question is – can the future speak back? And, if so, what are they saying?” At some point in our lives, we would’ve wanted to do something differently. Maybe remember the answer to a question that cost you the centum. But what if your existence depends on how you change your past? Tenet is a piece of reality woven with time instead of fabric. The plot is simple. But it is not a movie that waits for you to check your Instagram and catch up.

I’ve tried my best to make this post spoiler free, so forgive me if I’ve spilled the beans anywhere. 

As one goes forward in time, the second law of thermodynamics says that the entropy of an isolated system can increase, but not decrease. So, entropy is sometimes referred to as the arrow of time, since it distinguishes past from the future. But, in an open system like the living system, local entropy can decrease with time due to increase in the entropy of the environment. So if you consider the system to consist of the living and the environment, there is an overall increase in the entropy. Refrigerator works with a similar principle too. If this is true, then the initial conditions of the universe while its formation will have a low entropy, thus the increase in entropy has resulted in time moving forward. But if one can recreate the initial conditions, and alter it to make time move backward, there is a possibility that time has been reversed.

So this is the reason behind the “time-reversing” part of the plot – people from the future wanted to make changes to their past to make their future habitable.

So if time indeed has been reversed, there are chances of you experiencing grandfather’s paradox. Let’s say you wanted to kill your grandfather, and you kill him by travelling through time. But if you kill him before he meets your grandmother, you won’t exist in the present. This is where the theory of multiverses come in. According to this theory, every version of our past and future exists, in an alternate universe. At quantum level, for every choice you make, you have multiple possibilities for its outcome. And each possibility will occur in an alternate universe. For an example, you play the deal or not deal game at fun city. Out of those 24 suitcases, one will have the jackpot. And the probability of your personal case being that is 1/24. So here, according to multiverse theory, there are 24 other situations occurring in the multiverses where at least in one you'll own the jackpot case. (There are more than 24 cases possible, I wanted to keep it simple here) 

And that's the skeletal reverse code of the plot. Even if you don't understand these stuff here, you will understand while watching the movie. (I got more clarification that way) 

There's one more thing. If you had closely noticed, throughout the movie, the time forward was depicted in red, while the time backward was in blue. (This is the reason both Neil's and the protagonist's watches were shown frequently in the last few scenes.) This is in reference to the Doppler effect. In simple words, the wavelength of the  radiation emitted by a moving body will change with reference to the viewer. If it is moving away from you, the wavelength will increase, and if it comes towards you, the wavelength will decrease. (I don't really remember anything about Doppler effect. I've read this somewhere; feel free to let me know if this observation is wrong.)

Now to the conventional review: the movie is a treat to both bibliophiles and cinephiles. A perfect blend of background score and visuals makes it a visual treat. If you haven't watched it, I recommend you to add it to your holiday watching list. 

And if you have watched it, let me know in the comments what you think! After all,  we do live in a twilight world.