Three Baftas, two Emmys, five Oscar nominations and a knighthood; you’d be tempted to suggest that Kenneth Branagh has done it all. It’s safe to say, though, that he’s never been quite as terrifying as he is playing Andrei Sator, the villain of the blockbuster TENET, which is available to rent from January 4th on Virgin Movies from €5.99.
“He is vicious, he’s aggressive, and he’s quick-witted, so he’s really about as formidable an adversary you can have,” Kenneth says. “He’s a character that Chris insisted, from the moment we spoke about it, should be someone that I thought about in the darkest possible terms.”
Chris is, of course, Christopher Nolan – the genre-bending director who’s brought screen spectacles to new heights during a glittering career. Kenneth had worked with him before on Dunkirk (available to rent now on Virgin Movies from €2.99) – and didn’t hesitate to partner up once again.
“He is vicious, he’s aggressive, and he’s quick-witted, so he’s really about as formidable an adversary you can have”.
“In both cases, the first time I received the script, it was hand-delivered by Chris,” he reports. “It’s a very bespoke thing.”
As, indeed, is the movie itself – a visually arresting, utterly mind-blowing piece of filmmaking that could only have come from one man.
“Christopher Nolan is always going to look at even familiar places with a new eye, and he’ll bring you to some places you’ve never seen before. And it’s on a massive scale – one that graphically supports the idea that the stakes in the story are high. The worldwide nature of the settings emphasizes that, and it does so with Chris’s original and curious eye. He travels the world because the story needs to, and each piece, like every element of a puzzle, fits together necessarily. You have to make that journey.”
That journey involved travelling thousands of miles, with shoots in Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Norway, the UK, and the US. Ironic, then, that it’s the closest of close-up experiences that prove most memorable.
“It was immensely powerful to be in shots where a stunt was happening and be so very close to it,” Kenneth agrees. “There’s an undoubted vibration on the set! When the real thing is there, it makes a difference.”
Equally impactful is the inventive, time-travelling plot. It’s something of a Christopher Nolan staple – and one that definitely gets Kenneth’s stamp of approval.
“He always makes it playful, and always intriguing – from the time repetitions in Memento, at the beginning of his career, all the way through the narrative structure jumps in terms of time in Dunkirk. And following on the heels of Inception, TENET is probably the most dazzling and ambitious example of him playing with the potential glories and nightmares of an entirely different way of understanding time.”
There’s one thing you can be sure of, though; watching TENET is time well spent!
TENET has been hailed as a film that only director Christopher Nolan could make – and is the latest in a long line of highlights for the superstar director! Check out three more of his most iconic efforts, all available to rent now on Virgin Movies!
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Nolan’s take on the superhero genre turned it on its head; stylish, smart and dripping with suspense, it marked a new generation of caped crusades!
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A sci-fi epic that blurs the line between dreams and reality in a whole host of ways, its status as one of the decade’s most discussed films is well and truly deserved!
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Incredibly beautiful and conceptually captivating, it brought Nolan’s work to a whole new level – and delivered results that are truly out of this world!
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