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Tenet · written by Christopher Nolan · 2020
Scene 250 of 275 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act three
An unnamed intelligence operative, recruited into a shadow war fought through time-inverted weapons and objects, teams with an enigmatic ally to stop a dying Russian oligarch from using technology gifted by a dying future to erase the present.
The Protagonist in his zone of comfort — a skilled, anonymous field operative, competent and confident inside the Kiev operation.
Broken by torture and 'killed,' he needs a new purpose; Fay offers one that transcends the nation-state loyalties that just got his team killed.
He enters the wholly unfamiliar situation of Tenet — the wind turbine, the password test, and Barbara's proof that time itself can run backward.
Mumbai, London, Oslo, and Amalfi — he adapts to the world of inverted physics and Sator's inner circle, paying costs (Kat's trust, his own safety) to get close to the target.
The Tallinn ambush succeeds — he gets what the mission wanted, extracting the plutonium '241' from the armored convoy.
He pays a heavy price for it — Kat is shot, the material is lost to Sator anyway, and he is left not knowing whether any of it mattered.
Recovered and re-briefed by Priya, he returns to a now-familiar situation — the Tenet operation — but changed, moving to Stalsk-12 with the full picture of what's at stake.
Sator reflects on the future's dying world as the true cause of the coming apocalypse.
Neil, forward again, commandeers the grey truck to race for the tunnel.
Blue team fights toward extraction as Red team reassembles the enemy's destroyed defenses against them.
This scene
The Protagonist watches Volkov pick up a BLACK, METAL, GEOMETRICALLY COMPLEX BAR... the algorithm.
PROTAGONIST
You don’t believe in God. Or a new
future. Or anything outside your
own experience.
SATOR
(over phone)
That’s all any of us knows. The
rest is belief, and I don’t have
it.
PROTAGONIST
Without it you’re not human. You’re
a madman.
SATOR
(over phone)
Or a god of sorts.
PROTAGONIST
Like I said.
Volkov slowly backs towards the capsule with the algorithm... The Protagonist looks down at Ives – whose hand is MOVING...