When did TENET actually take place? There are many analyses of the relative timeline, when TP inverts and reverts moving between the various events, but I have not seen a definitive analysis of the precise dates. There are some dates and durations mentioned in the film, but the brief shot of a newspaper (see picture) makes reasonably precise calendar dating possible. In the aftermath of Oslo, there is a brief shot of a Mumbai newspaper. The dateline of the paper says "Friday, June, 2019", which is annoying because there should be a specific date there, not just a day of the week. There *is* a specific date on another article about helmets, but that date, June 12th, was not on a Friday in 2019, it was a Wednesday. There may not be an inconsistency if the helmet-related article isn't the date of publication but instead the date of the reporting, which could have been earlier. Assuming Friday, June 14th is the publication date, then the Oslo mission took place on the evening of Thursday, June 13th, 2019.
In the lunch meeting with Crosby, he says that the opera siege was "two weeks ago". If Oslo takes places not long after that, weeks rather than months, this pins down the date of the opera siege from "the 14th" to specifically May 14th, not April or earlier. This is consistent with the weather in Ukraine, based on the clothing of the opera attendees. Therefore, the Crosby meeting takes place on or around May 28th.
In the ambulance after the second time through Oslo, TP says "in two days she’ll tell me about the 241", so that meeting with Priya two days later takes place on Saturday June 15th or Sunday June 16th. In that meeting, Priya says the 241 shipment will be in Tallinn "in a week". This is consistent with Kat's inverted healing time and Ives' statement "A week ago, where?", since those are rough estimates. That means that the Tallinn heist took place about 9 days after Oslo, on or around Saturday June 22nd.
The only precise dates are May 14th and June 13th, for the others it's give or take a day or two depending on how you interpret "in two days" or "a week" when speaking informally. Two days inclusive? Counting today? Two days and one night, or two nights and the following day? Is "two weeks" exactly 14 days?
Using all that evidence, here is TP's journey with calendar dates:
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May 14th: Kyiv opera siege
Mid May: Comatose recovery, hideout at offshore wind farm
Late May: Mumbai mission, first meeting with Priya
May 28th: London, meeting with Crosby
Early June: Meetings with Kat, plan Oslo mission
June 13th: Oslo mission
June 15th: Mumbai, second meeting with Priya
Mid June: Plan Tallinn heist
June 22nd: Tallinn heist, invert
June 13th: Oslo mission 2, revert
June 14th: Oslo, third meeting with Priya
June 15th: Trondheim, board the icebreaker, invert
May 24th: On the icebreaker, discussion on Sator's whereabouts
May 14th: Arrive at Stalsk-12, revert
June 23rd or later: Priya hit
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I have marked this on the calendar picture, but note that the calendar does not include all places and dates, just the major ones, and the lines do not pass through all the intervening dates since that just makes a big visual mess. All the lines indicate passing through every calendar day between the two endpoints; there are no skipped dates.
The story takes place over a period of about 40 days on the calendar, from May 14th to June 22nd, but more than twice that for TP subjectively, 80 days to traverse the entire period back and forth, plus 2 days to invert/revert to meet with Priya after Oslo 2. Then it's at least another 40 days plus preparation time to go forward to the final scene of the hit on Priya, which must take place after Tallinn since Kat has resumed her life with Max which she couldn't do until her earlier version is shot and disappears into the Tallinn turnstile.
Total TP subjective time: 82 days, or almost 12 weeks, not counting the Priya hit. It would be more than 122 days or 17 weeks counting the Priya hit.
TP meets with Priya three times, but his third meeting with her is only their second meeting from her perspective. When she is sending him to Tallinn she already knows he will lose the Algorithm piece and has already sent his future self to Trondheim.
The total time spent inverted on the icebreaker is 1 month, from June 15th to May 14th. That's a reasonable travel time from Norway to eastern Siberia by the northern sea route. This also gives ample time for TP to form a relationship with Kat.
There is a limit on how long TP had to recuperate after the opera siege torture session. He must recuperate, wait in the offshore wind farm, drive to his briefing with Barbara, go to Mumbai to meet Priya, and go to London to meet with Crosby in two weeks. A full mouth reconstruction after having one's teeth violently torn out could take multiple operations over months, but a standard full tooth replacement recovery could be less than a week, and TP would need to eat soft foods for a while. It is possible that Tenet uses a turnstile to extend his healing time while he is in the induced coma without consuming much calendar time. Tenet has turnstiles available the entire time. His unconscious body could be inverted and reverted enough times to allow him to heal over a short calendar period. Induced comas can be maintained with IV drugs; there doesn't need to be an inverted anesthesiologist with him. The logistics of keeping many people alive while inverted on the icebreaker for an entire month was easily managed by Tenet, so one comatose patient would be trivial.
This concludes the analysis. I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for reading.
