Interstellar is big. It’s ambitious and it’s personal. Director and co-writer Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight) has taken a film centered on a world-saving space expedition to another galaxy, and turned it into a story of humanity and a father’s love for his children (though, mostly just his daughter). Thinking back on all that happened in the span of the film’s exhaustive 169-minute running time many highs come to mind — epic highs as the universe bends, giant waves fill the screen and frozen clouds contribute to an icy, alien landscape. But for as epic as these highs may feel, the film doesn’t necessarily offer the same returns once the final scene fades to black. The survival of the human race is at stake in Interstellar and I can’t say I ever really felt that as much as I was marveling at moments in the narrative that seemed to offer nothing but a foregone conclusion in the end.
The story begins with something of a scorched Earth scenario, or a soon-to-be scorched Earth is probably a better descriptor. Crops are dying and corn has become humanity’s most stable crop. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a farmer living with his father-in-law (John Lithgow) and two children, Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and Murph (Mackenzie Foy). Tom wants to follow in his father’s footsteps and be a farmer, but Cooper’s past extends well beyond his days as a farmer, back to a time when he was an astronaut for NASA. This brings us to Murph, whom he sees himself in and who recently got in trouble at school for telling other kids about the moon landing, an event that is believed in Interstellar‘s future to have been faked so as to cause the Russians to go bankrupt in their attempt to do the same. Damn you Kubrick!
Problem here is Tom’s abilities as a farmer and Murph’s scientific tendencies may not be all that useful in the future. Humanity is destined to die out, suffocating as the decline in oxygen from Earth’s atmosphere continues. Avoiding spoilers, this scenario leads to a mission into a wormhole near Saturn that will send a group of explorers, including Cooper, searching for a new, habitable planet in another galaxy, forcing Cooper to leave his children behind in search of a new planet humanity can colonize.
McConaughey, along with the rest of the cast, is very much up to the task with particular kudos to Jessica Chastain on whom the emotional heart of the story resides in the film’s second half, playing Murph 23 years after we first met her. In fact, any issues with the cast mostly pertains to the characters more than the performances. I’m still having a hard time finding reasoning for Casey Affleck‘s character’s behavior and Matt Damon‘s character is both fascinating in it’s study of humanity’s survival instincts as well as frustrating in that he serves as nothing more than a cliched, tension-building story arc with nowhere to go but the obvious. Though, I guess, since Damon’s character’s decisions lead to one of the more impressive action set pieces in the film it can be forgiven on some level.
Joining Cooper on his space mission are Amelia (Anne Hathaway), Romilly (David Dyasi) and Doyle (Wes Bentley). Amelia definitely has a couple brain fart, Prometheus scientist moments where her decision-making stills negatively affect the mission in the stupidest of ways and another moment of spiteful anger that comes out of the fact Nolan forgot to put someone in charge of this mission.
Where the narrative succeeds, however, is in its treatment of the science behind the story, which Nolan treats in a fascinating way by initially just rolling straight through without explaining much of anything to later using exposition to catch anyone up that isn’t following along. Considering we’re talking about scientific phenomena that can’t easily be explained, if at all, it’s quite easy to follow everything that’s going on.
For example, the usage of time and its effect on the narrative is wildly fascinating and affecting, particularly in the case of Dyasi’s character in a moment of realization that hits very hard after the team returns from a visit to a planet surface they believe may serve as a possible new home. And a scene best ambiguously described as the “tesseract scene” is probably the most compelling in the entire film, coming almost two hours into the narrative and just as I began to wonder just what the hell would happen next to propel this into its final 40 minutes.
In terms of the film’s length, it follows in the footsteps of its inspiration, which largely seems to be The Right Stuff and the obvious, 2001: A Space Odyssey (in this one the monoliths walk!). You’ll also find an ode The Wizard of Oz, The Grapes of Wrath and a touch of To Kill a Mockingbird in just about every scene dealing with Cooper and his fractured relationship with his daughter (though, someone will have to explain to me why, by the end of the film, Cooper doesn’t even ask about his son).
As visually pleasing and scientifically intriguing as Interstellar mostly is, it’s in its ugliness you’ll find some of its flaws. The cosmic cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Her) is wonderful, especially as the image opens to span the 98 feet high IMAX screen. However, at times, the image is muddy and damn-near out of focus, particularly in later scenes set on Earth.
Additionally, the sound mix is rather horrendous as some of the quieter scenes are layered with a throbbing bass that is so distracting you’ll have a hard time focusing on what is being said, caring more about when the rumbling will ever end than what’s being said on screen. Conversely, the sound can also be incredibly effective whenever Nolan decides to allow the film moments of silence, but I would have thought he’d learn to do a little more of that considering the Kubrickian influence, but no, on top of rumbling bass and other noises you have Hans Zimmer‘s score, which, at times, is fitting, but for the most part just another clamorous distraction.
My initial instinct is to call Interstellar a fascinating film, but one I feel already at ease with, satisfied I’ve gotten everything out of it I can. I don’t think there is much more to derive out of this narrative unless you wanted to look deeper into the theories of time and gravity it explores and at that point we are well beyond the movie and moving more into quantum physics.
In the end you have a blockbuster film with big ambition and outside of Nolan and, good or bad, probably the Wachowskis (Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending), the idea of making a blockbuster that’s about something is a lost art. While it isn’t without its issues, Interstellar remains a film with a lot to explore during its lengthy running time, and it’s likely to energize a few young minds to look deeper into space, testing the boundaries of humanity. The film itself may not be a home run, but I wish other filmmakers would strive for the same level of quality, size and scope Nolan does every time out.
