The Big Picture

  • Christopher Nolan's films often feature poorly written and sidelined female characters, a recurring issue in his filmography.
  • In "Tenet," the female character Kat Barton is primarily portrayed as a victim of abuse, serving as a motivator for the male protagonist.
  • Despite his technical and conceptual prowess, Nolan has yet to write more compelling and well-developed female characters in his films.

Writer-director Christopher Nolan’s films are known for many things: high concept, massive budgets, impressive cinematography, a roster of talented actors, and Hans Zimmer’s scores. One thing he's definitely not known for is his female characters, who (let's just jump right into it) are lazily written, sidelined, and often killed. In perhaps his most convoluted film thus far, Tenet again fails its central female character, a recurring issue in Nolan's filmography.

Tenet follows the nameless Protagonist (John David Washington), an ex CIA agent who is recruited by Tenet, a secret organization working to ensure the survival of the human race and prevent World War III. They attempt to thwart Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) who has harnessed a certain kind of time travel that allows people and weapons to move backwards through time, and is using it to create a weapon that can be sent back in time from the future to destroy the past, ending the world.

'Tenet' Is Another Example of Nolan Relying on Outdated Tropes

Elizabeth Debicki as Kat in 'Tenet'
Image via Warner Bros.

An easily identifiable trope in Nolan's films is the "woman in the refrigerator." Coined by writer Gale Simone, the trope refers to a female character who is killed off or otherwise hurt for the purpose of motivating the male protagonist and moving the story forward. It has been prevalent in media for decades, particularly in comic books and their subsequent adaptations, but can be found across genres and frequently in Nolan's filmography. As far as women in refrigerators go, Nolan has a proclivity for the dead wife. Memento, The Prestige, Inception, and The Dark Knight all feature a male protagonist whose wife (or love interest in the case of The Dark Knight) is already dead or is killed at some point in the film. In Memento and Inception, the protagonist’s wife is already dead when the movie begins, and only seen in flashbacks and/or dreams, and in The Prestige, protagonist Angier (Hugh Jackman) is haunted by the death of his wife in a magic trick gone wrong at the start of the film.

The death of a wife or love interest is an easy way to get the audience to sympathize with the male protagonist while revealing little to nothing about the woman whose death has been galvanized. Nolan is not particularly interested in romance and only uses the figure of the dead wife as a motivator for the potentially questionable and unethical actions of the widower. In Tenet, Nolan shies away from the dead wife trope, but still keeps his principal female character in a metaphorical refrigerator for much of the film.

How 'Tenet' Victimizes Kat Barton

Elizabeth Debicki as Kat pointing a gun in 'Tenet'
Image via Warner Bros.

Tenet's Kat Barton (Elizabeth Debicki), art appraiser and estranged wife of the ruthless Sator, serves as a motivator for the film's Protagonist. Notably Kat and the Protagonist have no romantic relationship, but the viewer is meant to feel sympathy for her because she is a mother suffering from abuse at the hands of her cruel husband Sator. The only humanizing bit of information we learn about her is that when Sator offered to let her go only if she never saw her son again, she considered it, in an attempt at giving her a semblance of depth. Kat is smart, elegant, and physically towers over her male counterparts (Debicki is 6'3), but the express purpose of her character is to be a victim, used as a hostage as Sator and the Protagonist vie for a sample of plutonium-241. She does have a moment of retribution at the end, killing Sator and regaining full custody of her son, but this somewhat happy ending isn't particularly gratifying after watching her be abused or in pain for the majority of her time on screen.

Despite having no prior relationship to Kat, the Protagonist's dedication to keeping her alive is used as a testament to his moral compass. Simply saving the world from imminent destruction isn't enough — his purpose must also be to rescue a woman in distress, specifically a mother and victim of domestic violence. Sator beats, kicks, and spits on her, not to mention the verbal and emotional abuse he inflicts upon her throughout Tenet. He threatens to (and ultimately does) shoot her in an attempt to extract information from the Protagonist, and she is subsequently lugged around unconscious on a stretcher from place to place while Neil (Robert Pattinson) and the Protagonist do the dirty work. In the end, she is only called upon to go back into the hands of her abuser in order to keep him alive while Neil and the Protagonist complete the mission. Although she delivers the final blow, Kat's main role in Tenet is to be on the receiving end of continuous abuse. There are two other supporting female characters, arms dealer Priya Singh (Dimple Kapadia) and Tenet scientist Laura (Clémence Poésy), but both get limited screen time and essentially function to explain the plot as Tenet progresses.

Will We Ever See a Woman Lead a Christopher Nolan Film?

oppenheimer-cillian-murphy-emily-blunt
Image via Universal Pictures

Films like George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road and Steve McQueen's Widows (also starring Debicki) are both critically acclaimed action/crime thrillers with ensemble casts that also manage to include well-developed female characters. Nolan clearly likes to explore the psyches of men, but despite how he has experimented throughout his career conceptually and technically, he for some reason hasn't ventured to write better female characters.

Nolan's Oppenheimer is a biopic of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). Emily Blunt stars as biologist and wife of Robert, Kitty Oppenheimer, and Florence Pugh as psychiatrist Jean Tatlock, who also had a romantic relationship with Oppenheimer. While both characters get moments, they're both in service of Oppenheimer's story, but maybe someday we'll even see a woman lead a Christopher Nolan movie. Until then, the time and money spent crashing a real airplane or recreating a nuclear explosion without CGI could be more effectively used to write a female character whose death/anguish isn’t solely used to motivate the male protagonist.