Lifehacker's film critic Alexei Khromov watched the "Argument" and made great movie review no spoilers. If you want to know even more about Nolan's new painting, then this material is especially for you. Here we will talk about some rather interesting details, which allow you to assess the entire scale and specifics of the picture.
1. Secrecy
The film has been classified for a long time. Robert Pattison said in an interview with USA Today that he was only allowed to read the script in a locked room at Warner Bros. Studios. And his colleague Michael Kane, who got a cameo role, was not even given the opportunity to read the entire script. He was given only his scenes, by which he did not understand at all what the picture was about. And this despite the fact that he is a close friend of director Christopher Nolan.
2. No green screens
Nolan barely used green screens for special effects - only live footage. This also applies to inversion sequences, for which the director filmed each scene twice: once, moving forward, and the second, when the actors do the opposite.
3. Minimum computer graphics
In "Dovod" there are only about 280 VFX-frames, which is very small, not only by the standards of an action movie, but also by the standards of Nolan himself. For comparison, in his "The Dark Knight" (2008) there are 650 of them, in "Inception" (2010) - about 500, and in "Dunkirk" (2017) - 429.
4. Phrases backwards
The actors had to learn not only to move in the opposite direction, but also to speak their lines backwards. It was especially hard for Kenneth Branagh (Andrei Sator), who had to do it with a Russian accent, although he himself is from Northern Ireland.
5. Chase
To film an elaborate chase over time back and forth without visual effects, a team of top twenty Los Angeles riders, later joined by experienced stuntmen from Estonia, Prague and Great Britain. The team also included Jim Wilkie, who turned the Joker's truck into "The dark knight» (2008).
6. Soundtrack
Argument was Christopher Nolan's first film since Prestige (2006), for which Hans Zimmer was not the musician. The composer refused to work on this painting in favor of Dune (2020). He was replaced by rookie Ludwig Göransson, who recently won an Oscar for his work on Black Panther (2018).
7. Traditions
One of the traditions of director Christopher Nolan is to gather the actors and crew before filming and show the films that served as an inspiration for the project they are working on together. However, for Argument, Nolan deliberately broke the tradition of having the team rely solely on memory and their own feelings of spy films.
8. Budget
The film had a production budget of $ 205 million, making it the most expensive original film by a director and one of the most expensive original films in cinema history. The “argument” is not based on any pre-existing material.
9. Loads
John David Washington, who plays the lead, has a pretty good physical condition: he is a former professional American football player. However, the filming was so exhausting that after its completion he could not run for a month, and sometimes even "could not get out of bed."
10. Scenario
There are images and details in the film that Christopher Nolan pondered for about 20 years before actually shooting. He developed the specifics and script of the picture for about 6 years - everything was written from scratch.
11. Scientific accuracy
Although the film does not claim to be scientifically accurate, it is based on real scientific evidence. Before filming began, Christopher Nolan asked physicist Kip Thorne, with whom he had previously worked on the film “Interstellar”(2014), read the script to help with some concepts.
12. Filming locations
The main filming took place in seven countries: Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, Great Britain and the USA. Work began in May 2019 and lasted almost six months, ending in mid-November. The cultural and sports complex in Tallinn Gorhall was used as a Kiev opera, which had to be renovated especially for filming. In the same place, in Tallinn, they filmed a car chase, for which they blocked 8 km of a six-lane highway in the city center.
13. Real plane
For Dovod, a real decommissioned Boeing was bought, which had to be smashed against the hangar wall. The scene was filmed at Victorville, California airport in the southwest of the Mojave Desert.
14. Final fight
The final battle was filmed in the desolate ghost town of Eagle Mountain, California. There were some structures that could be turned into suitable decorations, but the production team also built a number of full-size buildings. All for the sake of scale.
15. Movie title
The word tenet ("argument") comes from the famous palindrome Sator Square, known since the days of ancient Rome. This is a formula or the so-called magic square of five words: SATOR, AREPO, TENET, OPERA and ROTAS. They are placed in a square so that words are read the same from right to left, left to right, top to bottom, and bottom to top. This palindrome looks like this:
All five words are found in the movie "Argument":
- Kenneth Branagh's character name is Sator.
- The artist who faked the painting was called Arepo.
- Term Tenet ("Argument") was used as a code word.
- The film begins in Kiev opera.
- A Rotas Is the name of the shipping company in which the heroes were hiding.
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