Christopher Nolan was developing his spy movie
Tenet for decades before its release in 2020. In 2014 Nolan already was fully in the writing process on the script. While the general public didn't know much about the project, other filmmakers, including the French director
Luc Besson probably could know something about it. And so trying to beat Nolan at his own game, Besson quickly wrote and directed his own spy movie with a palindrome title:
Anna.
Trying to beat Nolan, Besson wrote the movie in a non-chronological way. We get scenes that play out a certain way. And then later we get the same scene, but with a different angle that reveals a yet another layer to the puzzle. Constantly bringing out new twists to the story. Besson thematically ties the movie structure to a Russian Matryoshka doll. It looks like one thing, and then you dig deeper and there is another thing. And so on and so forth. And for a spy movie, this kind of structure works very well.
Again, trying to beat Nolan, and probably trying to communicate the fact that he is trying to be Nolan, Besson cast a frequent Nolan collaborator
Cillian Murphy who ended up winning an academy award on the next Nolan's picture
Oppenheimer. The funny thing is, Nolan ( maybe because he understood what Besson did here ) didn't cast Murphy in
Tenet. This is some really cool behind the scenes friendly rivalry there between Nolan and Besson.
Here is a yet another theory I have about this rivalry, that I took from even deeper pockets of my theorizing ass. In the film, as a part of the fashion montage ( Anna's cover in the movie is that she is a fashion model ) we get a short reference to the controversial French political figure
Marie Antoinette. In the story of Marie Antoinette another controversial figure appears
Jeanne Bécu or
Jeanne du Barry about whom
Maïwenn Le Besco directed a movie in 2023. As we all know Maïwenn was once married to Luc Besson. And at age 16 she even got him his first child. But then, the motherfucker Besson did the worst possible move the motherfucker could do. He dumped her for
Milla Jovovich after working with both on
The Fifth Element.
Being pissed... and I absolutely understand her, Maïwenn decided to fuck Besson up a bit without ruining him too much ( they have a daughter together, she kind of needs him to be there as the second parent ). First, in 2011 she directs a movie called
Polisse, specifically about a child-protection unit tasked with chasing pedophiles. Then after
Anna shows a reference to Marie Antoinette, Maïwenn directs a movie about a sort of kind of illegal relationship between characters in the background of Marie Antoinette, herself playing the lady that is in the illegal relationship
Jeanne du Barry.
But now think about it. Why it all happened? Because of Milla Jovovich. An actress that can speak Russian and that was cast in Besson's sci-fi movie as a sexy alien character. Then in 2017 Besson makes
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, a yet another sci-fi movie, where he casts another actress that speaks Russian
Sasha Luss as a sexy alien character. And to make the matters worse, in this film, she plays a blue skinned sexy alien. Which also happened on
The Fifth Element. The blue skinned sexy alien
The Fifth Element was played by Maïwenn Le Besco.
The next movie Besson does with Milla Jovovich is 1999 film
The Messenger about the legend of a yet another controversial historical French character
Jeanne d'Arc. Who ultimately has a similar fate as Marie Antoinette. And then the second movie Besson does with Sasha Luss is
Anna which has a reference to Marie Antoinette. Maïwenn was probably very pissed! And her film was her telling Luc:
Hey, motherfucker, keep your dick in your pants, you asshole. You have a family now, and I don't want you fucking destroy another one, because of some Russian speaking hot babe, you asshole.
But think about all this again. Marie Antoinette, Jeanne d'Arc... all of this happens at the time of either great tensions of outright war between France and England. Luc Besson is a French director, born in the capitol of France, Paris. Christopher Nolan is an English director, born in the capitol of England, London.
Happy Hacking!!!
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