Previously Robert Pattinson, who’s one of the supporting characters in Christopher Nolan’s not-time travelling film, Tenet, talked about how complex the screenplay is and how he still can’t quite tell what the film is about. Now, Kenneth Branagh has come out and shared similar sentiments. In an interview with Total Film (via SyFy), Branagh talked about the ambiguity of his character and how you may think he’s a good guy or you may not, depending on which part of the story you’re at.
“Given the nature of it, as Chris to some extent sort of reinvents the wheel here, a lot of people start engaging with John David Washington’s character in both expected ways … so you might expect me to be an antagonist … but then [the story] doesn’t quite follow what you might expect as the story plays out.
In the playing of it, and in the scenes, he keeps upturning, or playing forward and backward, our expectations of what the character should be. So my conversations with [Nolan] about my character were constant, because the character’s evolution was not set. It was a series of constant surprises.”
Branagh also notes that Tenet has so many moving parts, the script was like doing a crossword puzzle.
“I kid you not, I read this screenplay more times than I have ever read any other thing I have ever worked on. It was like doing the Times crossword puzzle every day, I would imagine. Except the film and the screenplay didn’t expect you, or need you, to be an expert.”
