Interstellar review

LOOK AT THE STARS

Rating: 10 out of 10

The filmgoers of today should deem themselves fortunate to be living in the present space and time to witness Christopher Nolan’s cinematic odyssey on the big screen called Interstellar. This is phenomenal cinema. It is visually elegant, emotionally resonant, ambitiously bold, imaginatively tall, an absolutely phenomenal piece of cinema.  It is what cinema used to be – a motion picture event. IMAX? I wish I could see this film at a planetarium.

My reaction whilst exiting the theater was of total astonishment. I was gobsmacked by the mere existence of this film. This big-budget mainstream film with a marquee of A-list stars challenging every notion of blockbuster filmmaking. How many filmmakers these days do what Nolan just accomplished? How many? Stanley Kubrick did it; Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and James Cameron have done it. How many filmmakers can do this today? The answer is clear and loud.

THIS is science-fiction. Interstellar is no space opera, intergalactic fantasy or apocalyptic tragedy. It is 'no holes barred', pure and hard science-fiction. Rod Sterling (the man behind The Twilight Zone) once said: “Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science-fiction is the improbable made possible.” It’s not been truer for a mainstream film in quite a while when it made the improbable seem so fantastically possible.

(Spoilers sprinkled hereon)

The film is split into three visually and thematically distinctive acts. The first hour is a set on a farm on Earth in the near future. We are living in a dust bowl, where resources are thin, the earth is becoming inhabitable but NASA is a cult and farmers are scientists. The protagonist Cooper is played by Hollywood’s current acteur suprême - Matthew McConaughey. While I actively dislike this actor, it is when filmmakers like Nolan make me look past my judgments that I find films worthy of watching. The best actor in this segment is Mackenzie Foy, Cooper's daughter who wants him to "stay". This first hour is a family drama and a terrific one at that.

The second act is not set in earth. A search for a planet, which could support life, begins. There are three: Miller, Edmunds and Mann. There is also a wormhole called Gargantua. I wouldn’t like to divulge more information for the sake of your experience. This act is further split into a space adventure and a thrilling horror film. Anne Hathaway and Matt Damon (Astronaut Mike Dexter!?) are brilliant here.

The last act. Now, this is where Nolan gets down to business (or for that matter, forgets filmmaking is a business). This is where you sink lower into your seat. It forms your opinion about the film. You’re into it or you’re not. I could hear frustrated murmurs and unwarranted laughs. You bet I was into it. I presume I couldn’t explain every scene to you but even when I don’t fully understand it yet, it makes complete sense. Especially when Jessica Chastain and Ellen Burstyn are on screen. This is where the film's pivot - the father-daughter relationship comes to a poignant close. This is also where the film is a direct homage to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and unabashedly indulgent.

Before I get into that, let me name-drop some other films I was reminded of. Star Wars. The Black Hole. Alien (and by extension Prometheus). Close Encounters of the Third Kind (fixing the issue Spielberg himself has with it). Jurassic Park. Contact. Guardians of the Galaxy. The Right Stuff. Gravity. Field of Dreams. Signs. Solaris. The Tree of Life. I could tell you when and why I was reminded of these films but there are many other reviews, which have already done it for you. More importantly, never does Interstellar feel like an imitation of any of them.

This is not this generation’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Let’s be honest, is there any film that can ever be another 2001? What it should be, to today’s generation, is a necessary introduction to Stanley Kubrick’s work. If you are reading this and you haven’t seen the best science fiction film ever made, go change that right now. I still remember when I saw 2001 for the first time. My 15-year-old self loved watching films in the wee hours of the night. I thought I’d watch 15 minutes and doze off. I had read a review which mentioned it could get tedious and boring. Forgive me, I was fifteen. What transpired later was I sitting through the next 2 ½ hours wide-eyed, parallel to the television, awe-struck by the wonders and possibilities of the cinematic medium. I had no idea a film could do that. HAL 9000 frightened me more than any human villain and I did not understand the final half hour even one bit but good lord was I in complete irrevocable awe of what I had just seen. It’s still one of my most vivid cinematic memories. You never forget experiencing a great movie for the first time.

The visual effects are astounding but the key elements to the film are the cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema and the production design by Nathan Crowley. The circular pattern of the Endurance and the spherical Gargantua wormhole would be engraved in the collective subconscious of film lovers everywhere. Just like the spinning totem from Inception. Then there is Hans Zimmer, taking cues from Richard Strauss. His organ-thumping score is one of his best works. 

Nolan is usually criticized for being too cold and humorless. As for cold, this is the first Nolan film which broke my heart not just once but several times. I cried at many places. Especially when Cooper contacts Murph through the singularity. I had no idea a Nolan film would conjure up such purity of emotion. The most surprising element is the humor, which is mostly delivered by an R2D2-like (but more handy) robot named TARS. Guess what the criticism is this time? The film being melodramatic and sentimental. I mean… I can’t even. Give the man a break!

The climactic sequences play with more than four dimensions and this is where I hopelessly fell in love with it. While the film is cardinally scientific, I can’t help but feel it isn’t as much about the science, as it is about what science can never grasp. If there is one time traveller, it is love. (Also, the Doctor). The film makes no effort to hide, what it wears on its sleeve. It is easy to nitpick on the sentimentality. To me, the film isn’t what it is; because of the science or the heart. It is the soul that reverberates. The film soared for me when I saw it as a parable on death and the after-life. Not after-life as we (don’t) know it, despite mentions of ghosts. Now, I do not say it is about death and the after-life, but that I saw it as such. It's about higher beings, what comes after we evolve from this planet. The part spirit guides play in our evolution. Either way, I don’t think I would have seen it that way unless Nolan didn’t lead me there. Of course, he had to intellectualize everything for the consumer to digest.

Nolan isn’t considered one of the greatest talents just because he puts up a grand spectacle or reboots the blockbuster over and over again. He has been making films about the psychological (Memento, Insomnia and Inception) and the physical (the Dark Knight trilogy). These films were generally about looking inside/ at oneself. He boldly goes towards the metaphysical with Interstellar. He is now looking outside/ at us all. Nolan is also obsessed with realism. He gave us an interesting redefinition of magic realism coupled with science in The Prestige; he made a campy superhero become the impetus to the most realistic comic book film of all time. He made reality the stuff of dreams and fading memories. It only makes sense for space and time to get some Nolan grounding.

Two of Nolan’s best (or my favorite) films have the protagonist wanting to return to his children. The union of father and child. “We’re not meant to save the world. We’re meant to leave it.” This statement is karmically true but could also be seen as a pessimistic one. There is a deep spirituality in these films as science without spirituality is futile. If only it could be brought to the forefront. I’m guessing it will be when Nolan focuses on the mother and not just the father. It would be unfair to expect what I want from his movies than what he so majestically provides.

When you exit the theater with all your shiny criticisms, just ask yourself one question. How many films these days challenge your conventional movie watching experience more than Interstellar? One more time, with feeling. How many filmmakers nowadays give you something you didn’t know you could ask for? Be sure to know what Christopher Nolan has delivered.

I began by naming some directors who have accomplished what others never have. To be specific, I’ll quote the film itself – “We used to look up in the sky and wonder about our place in the stars”.

Look Up.
And Wonder.