John David Washington, who plays the lead role in Christopher Nolan's new sci-fi espionage thriller Tenet, has described the new movie as "insane".
Washington plays "the Protagonist" in the keenly-awaited film from the Dunkirk and Inception director, and it sees his character team up with Robert Pattinson as a suave English spy in a race against to avert "something worse than World War Three".
Asked to describe the movie in one word, Washington, son of Denzel and break-out star of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, told RTÉ Entertainment that the film is "insane".
Tenet is a challenging watch, and may take repeated viewings to fully understand. Keeping up with the plot was also a struggle for the cast.
"Everyday I had to check in with our script supervisor and obviously Christopher Nolan just to track where we were in the movie and what this means and why and all the emotional tracking," says Washington.
"And that was necessary to keep the scenes as authentic and accurate as possible and that’s ok because that’s the nature of this film.
"But over time, I was able to grasp enough of it to execute but I think with the first viewing it’s not necessarily to be understood all the way. It’s about what you feel about what you saw and did you connect with the characters and did you connect to what was happening. At least that’s what I felt when I saw it."
The watchword with Tenet is very much "don’t try to understand it. Feel it".
"That’s used in the trailer purposefully and beautifully," says Washington. "On the second viewing or third or fourth viewing, take a deep dive if you want but with the first one, just feel it."
Tenet is in Irish cinemas from August 26th
