Amen, I Call a Cinema! “Tenet” and “The Palindromists”

For fans of palindromes, this is a unique time: not one but two films with palindromic themes are opening this week. (“Opening” is a tricky concept when so many movie theaters are still closed, of course.) One is a blockbuster that the film industry is counting on to revitalize its flagging fortunes: Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending spy thriller Tenet. The other is a more modest release, a light-hearted indie documentary about competitive wordplay called The Palindromists. Taken together, these two cinematic offerings prove that palindromes are truly having a pop-cultural moment.

Let’s start with The Palindromists before exploring Tenet, since the documentary takes wordplay — and those who obsess over it — as its central subject matter. Director Vince Clemente and producer Adam Cornelius first caught the palindrome bug when they created a short film called A Man, A Plan, A Palindrome in 2013, focusing on the first-ever World Palindrome Champion, Mark Saltveit. That inspired them to pursue a feature-length film that would follow the leading palindromists as they prepared for the second World Palindrome Championship in 2017. The Palindromists is making its long-awaited debut at San Francisco DocFest 2020, which, like pretty much every other film festival, is being held virtually this year. Wherever you are, you can stream the film through Sept. 30 via the SF DocFest website, and then after that it will have its East Coast premiere at the New Jersey Film Festival starting Oct. 2.

If you’re a fan of documentaries like Patrick Creadon’s Wordplay about the world of crosswords, or Word Wars: Tiles and Tribulations on the SCRABBLE Circuit directed by Beyond Wordplay’s own Eric Chaikin with Julian Petrillo, The Palindromists will be right up your alley. Just as Wordplay culminates with an exciting solving competition at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, The Palindromists has its denouement at the palindrome championship that was held in conjunction with the ACPT in Stamford, Conn., overseen by the tournament’s founder, New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz. (Some celebrity palindrome buffs also make appearances in the film, like Weird Al Yankovic and Danica McKellar.)

The Palindromists is a wonderful exploration of how wordplay can be elevated into art, as a beautifully crafted palindrome has all the aesthetic appeal of poetry. (Want proof? Follow Anthony Etherin on Twitter and marvel at his creations, like his brilliant and timely “FACEMASK” poem.) It takes a special mind to construct a palindromic masterpiece, all the more so when contestants are racing against the clock at the World Palindrome Championship. The film is a fun and engaging ride following the master palindromists as they prepare for the championship and compete under pressure. To do it justice, I can only say: So many dynamos! (That happens to be the title of a book of palindromes by one of the stars of the documentary, Jon Agee, who also wrote and illustrated Go Hang a Salami! I’m a Lasagna Hog!, Sit on a Potato Pan, Otis!, and Palindromania.)

Mark Saltveit, one of the key figures in The Palindromists, is also a leading authority on the history of palindromes. So when I heard about how Tenet literally revolves around the famous “SATOR square,” an ancient palindromic word square in Latin, I checked in with him to get the expert’s take on how the square informed Christopher Nolan’s twisty film, where the flow of time runs to and fro.

Mark’s commentary is illuminating. He writes:

If there seem to be a lot of odd names in Tenet, it’s because the plot is built around the ancient, mystical SATOR/ROTAS word square, which reverses in all directions.

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

This symbol appears — without comment or explanation — in graffiti, inscriptions and magical amulets all over ancient Europe, in Syria, England, Ethiopia, Hungary, Portugal, Anatolia, and Rome. The oldest example found so far is in Pompeii, buried by the 79 A.D. eruption.

No one knows what it means, or if it means anything at all. Four of the lines are Latin words, but “AREPO” is not — so it’s usually explained away as a previously unknown name. But it may just be the letters that make the rest of the square reverse.

In Tenet, the villain is Andrei SATOR, and Thomas AREPO is an art forger we never see (perhaps a reference to AREPO being a fake word?) TENET is a password given to the hero early in the film, which begins at an OPERA; it may also be the name of a secret organization. ROTAS seems to be the name of the key technology in the film; a spinning “temporal stile” that reverses the direction that an object (or person) travels through time. And characters keep visiting Pompeii for reasons never explained.

Here in the real world, the SATOR square became a Christian symbol by the 6th or 7th century, with the words representing the wounds or nails of Christ’s crucifixion, or the names of the shepherds or wise men at the Nativity. But it was probably not Christian before then.

One 20th century scholar saw it as an anagram for PATERNOSTER (“Our Father”) with A and O left over: alpha and omega, in Greek. That theory was ruined by the discovery of the square in Pompeii, since the PATERNOSTER prayer and alpha — omega symbolism weren’t created until the 2nd century A.D..

The earliest SATOR squares were found at the edges of the Roman empire, often near army bases. My theory is that it was an intimidating symbol of Roman power; local tribes wouldn’t read Latin anyway, so a precise meaning was unimportant, but it was unmistakably Latin-ish, unique and powerful.

A SATOR square (or technically a ROTAS square) excavated from Corinium, a Roman settlement located in modern-day Cirencester, England. (Photo by Mark Saltveit)

Later, the square became a potent magic spell to protect against dog or snake bites, expel demons and extinguish fires. It would prevent miscarriage or stop bleeding post-partum if carved into butter or cheese and eaten, or force someone to reveal secrets if written on parchment with the blood of a white dove and sprinkled with holy water. In The Witches of Eastwick, John Updike has Sukie Rougemont use it to turn milk into cream. Even in this century, anthropologists found SATOR squares taped above every window in a German-Appalachian house in West Virginia.

The movie Tenet is not a time travel movie, where you can jump into a different era. It’s a time inversion movie; characters can reverse their temporal direction (using the ROTAS machine) and live, at normal pace, backwards through time. The SATOR/ROTAS square serves as a potent metaphor for this conceit, and may well have been director Christopher Nolan’s inspiration for it.

Thanks to Mark for explaining it all, backwards and forwards!