Once there was a filmmaker who built labyrinths of time and memory. While his peers reached for enchanted mirrors that could conjure any world with whispered commands, he insisted on grinding his own glass.
“Why paint with light,” he said, “when you can capture it?”
They laughed. “Look how fast we work! Our magic boxes dream entire universes while we sleep.”
He only smiled and loaded another reel of film—70 millimeters wide, each frame a universe of silver halide crystals waiting to ensnare photons into art.
“Your boxes dream their dreams. Mine are vision, sweat, and providence.”
He blew up real buildings. Crashed real planes. Spun real corridors on real gimbals while real actors tumbled through real space. He calculated trajectories with pencil and paper, cut film with razor blades, shunned algorithmic grasp for human hands.
The enchanted mirrors grew more powerful, more seductive. They could do anything now—resurrect the dead, paint impossible physics, smooth every wrinkle reality dared to show.
When his characters fell, you felt the gravity. When his film burned, you saw real flames consuming real celluloid, frame by frame.
But I still don’t understand Tenet.