Interstellar
(2014):
Written by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan, directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring:
Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Billy Irwin, Michael
Caine, Ellen Burstyn. Running Time: 169 minutes.
Rating: 3/4
Any of us who have avidly followed
the trajectory of Chris Nolan’s career have no reason to be surprised at the
subject matter of Interstellar. The man has always eschewed the normal “rules”
of storytelling; out of the 9 films he has helmed so far, only 3 (Insomnia, The Dark Knight, and The Dark
Knight Rises) follow the typical pattern of presenting the story to us
straight, from start to finish. And Insomnia was a studio-ordered remake,
not one of his original screenplays.
Given his tendency to break his narratives into as many pieces as
rational sense would allow, it was only a matter of time before he threw all
caution to the wind and proclaimed Time Itself to be his new stomping
grounds. It was an inevitable next step
in the life of a man determined to cinematically question every facet of
self-perception imaginable, and the result is Interstellar.
But I am getting ahead of
myself. We open on Earth an unknown
number of years in the future. A blight,
possibly-though-never-explicitly aided by global warming (kudos to the film for
not going for the easy points), has wiped out all crops on earth except for
corn, which is heavily harvested by a small number of farmers in the American
Midwest. Times are so desperate that
teachers and other authority figures openly refer to themselves as a “caretaker
generation,” blatantly lying about past space exploration to keep their
children focused on how to better cultivate the Earth. None of this sits well with Cooper (Matthew
McConaughey), a former NASA pilot and engineer who tries to raise his kids,
especially his preternaturally brilliant daughter Murph, to have a sense of
wonder at life and at the stars. When
strange goings-on (ghostlike, according to Murph’s description) in Murph’s room
seem to be sending them coordinates of some sort in Morse code, they follow
them to what, it turns out, is the remaining base of NASA, forced to operate in
secret after the tide of public opinion forced governments to abandon any open
support for space exploration. There he
finds his old mentor Dr. Brand (Michael Caine) and his daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway). From them he learns that another blight is
soon to come, one that will both destroy all remaining corn and will also
consume so much oxygen that the remainder of humanity will suffocate as a
result.
That said, a lone form of salvation
has appeared near Saturn- a wormhole leading to another galaxy, where a handful
of potentially habitable world circle a massive black hole. Cooper is convinced to lead the final team,
which will include Amelia, to seek out the best one (several teams have been
sent out before, and a few have sent back positive return signals). The elder Brand will stay behind to complete
an equation that should allow him to solve gravity itself, thus allowing
humanity to leave Earth en masse in massive space stations before zero hour
hits. Murph is obviously heartbroken by
her Dad’s decision to leave, and their agonizing separation is perfectly timed
with the countdown for the final lift off.
As she sobs into her grandfather’s arms while Cooper drives off, we hear
simultaneously hear the launch countdown.
The crew is lifted off into the recesses of space, preparing themselves
for whatever they may find through the wormhole.
By now, a great number of cinephiles
are solidly split between those who adore the general body of Chris Nolan’s
work, and those who may admire his technical prowess but loathe his seemingly
incontrollable urge to explain EVERYTHING about the complexities he thinks up
for each of his films (the rest, to judge by appearances, do not give half a
rat’s tail either way). This film will change
the minds of no one in either camp, and if anything is likely to reinforce and
harden any preconceived notions or attitudes towards the man that a particular
viewer walks into the film with. The
characters are, for the most part, the same stock archetypes of stoic
professionalism willing to sacrifice their own humanity for any great ideal of
their choosing. This is very often the
point in his films- his stories tend to both respect or even revere such a
mentality while also being brutally honest about the price that must be paid as
a result. Thankfully, much to film’s
salvation, Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway end up being fairly inspired
casting choices; both are able to bring along more than enough pathos to
overcome the clunkier bits of exposition they are handed (and was there every
any doubt that Michael Caine would sell his biggest scene like DiCaprio huckstering
bad stocks?).
I was also rather amused to see the
first effort we’ve ever gotten at straight humor from Chris Nolan (of the
non-pitch-black variety, that is) in the form of…...a snarky AI robot (named TARS)
voiced by Billy Irwin. Like with his
decision to finally turn to time itself as a plot device, it is ironically
fitting that Nolan’s first comic character is not, in fact, a human, but a
robot programmed to simulate human humor and emotion. Interpret that as you will. And the result is a character all its own in
recent sci-fi memory, one that would easily outrank all the flesh-and-blood
creatures gamboling about as the most emotionally-engaging persona on screen
were it not for McConaughey opening up every last gate holding back his tear
ducts. This will be another factor in
the film dividing audiences, but I enjoyed TARS immensely, not least because of
the unique style of movement the designers came up with for how the robots
move. I’m not sure what’s supposed to
hold their various constituent parts together, but based on my experience with
a certain trick wallet, I would guess magnetism of some kind.
There are, to be sure, stumbles
other than the standard Nolan-isms on full display, ones that are harder to
ignore. Unlike in a number of my past
reviews, I will not delve into spoilers for this film- like many of Nolan’s
films, there are several twists built into the story’s structure that are best
experienced cold- but I sadly cannot ignore one smaller twist where two of the
human characters (without saying who or where or why) turn antagonistic to
Cooper’s mission, in ways that very much feel as if they are only there for the
purpose of adding clearly identifiable bad guys with human faces. Given that the stakes for the entire affair
were already pretty damn high, this was entirely unnecessary, and is a strange distraction
from the otherwise very solid third-act, where the various plot points and
story pieces Nolan has set up come together beautifully in one of the most
visually and thematically interesting mashups of actual scientific theory and
more mythical sci-fi wonderings we’ve gotten in….hell, I can’t remember the
last time we had a big-budget movie try to push a discussion like this. This, combined with the looming threat of
human extinction, was more than adequate for the purpose of creating dramatic
and nervous tension. The fistfight in spacesuits
was just extraneous.
And yet…for all the ways Nolan seems
to inadvertently trip over his own toes in his eagerness to match the
transcendent splendor of the final sequences in Kubrick’s 2001, there is a staying power in the film’s more potent scenes
that it’s slower parts and occasionally punishing length can never undo. Cooper’s final goodbyes with his family, the
buildup to and subsequent journey through the wormhole, a sequence involving a
spinning station, and a major third-act segment involving the giant black hole
itself are all the sort of scenes that could easily become sci-fi legend, given
a little time for the film to make its impact felt. There has been a bevy of criticism leveled at
the film for the ways it holds itself back, and while many complaints are not
without merit, it should bear remembering that the reason sci-fi as a genre
exist in the first place is to make whatever leaps, however halting, into the future
of both mankind in general and the art of cinema specifically a writer or
director can dream up. Interstellar takes more than a few leaps
of logic and daring, and the simple experience of watching the jumps in action
is its own special treat, even when it can’t always stick the landings.
-Noah
Franc
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