Going into Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR, don’t worry so much about what other films or directors this absolutely epic work might remind you of. Just because Nolan (and his brother, co-screenwriter Jonathan Nolan) uses intellect to propel the story forward occasionally does not make him Tarkovsky. Just because things get a little trippy toward the end doesn’t make him Kubrick. And just because he approximates sentimentality and emotion doesn’t make him Spielberg. Honestly, INTERSTELLAR works best when Nolan is being Nolan—a bit cold, harsh, putting the mission of saving the earth in front of personal connections, and, of course, making the remarkable seem commonplace to everyone but his audience.
Before I dive into my review of INTERSTELLAR, let’s talk about ambitious filmmaking. Let me be clear: I’m a fan. But "ambition" and "quality" are not the same thing. In fact, they’re far from the same thing. I see a whole lot of ambitious films in a given year by some of the greatest directors living today. But the truth is, I don’t give points for ambition; I give points for whether a filmmaker can translate said ambition to the screen. I consider recent works like PROMETHEUS (I was not a fan), CLOUD ATLAS (I adored), or on a smaller scale, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY (let’s go with the writer-director’s original two-part version, which I was fairly neutral on). Regardless of scale and money spent, there’s no denying that all three films are extremely ambitious as filmmaking exercises. And perhaps not surprisingly, they were all wildly divisive in terms of critical and audience reactions.
I think many people respond to ambitious filmmaking because they simply can’t believe the film got made at all, that a studio ponied up--in the case of INTERSTELLAR--hundreds of millions of dollars to make a film that is an original work of science fiction, one not tied to a franchise and with no possibility (I hope) of a sequel. That might be more “risky” than “ambitious,” but let’s not split hairs. I guess my point is I can’t think of a situation where I’d ever give a film extra praise for simply being ambitious. If the ideas are bold, the story compelling, the acting moving, the visual style exceptional, expect the appropriate response. But I’ve seen ambition go so wrong, so often, it would feel foolish to be impressed by that and only that.
Some of my favorite moments in INTERSTELLAR are right at the beginning, looking at the life of farm family in the presumably near future, where the planet is drying up to the point where crops aren’t just limited but entire foods are becoming extinct, with humans likely not far behind. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey, in his only big-screen appearance of 2014 and his first after his Oscar win for last year’s DALLAS BUYERS CLUB) is a former astronaut who never quite made it into space and has since become a fairly resourceful farmer and single father to two young kids. Just following Cooper around for a day gives us some idea of the world he lives in. It’s a life and planet on the brink, while some still believe that things will somehow improve “because they always do”—the literally can’t wrap their brains around the idea that the world is evaporating before their eyes.
Cooper’s daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy, perhaps best known as the human-vampire spawn in the final two TWILIGHT films), thinks there are ghosts in her room knocking books off shelves in specific patterns; she and her father also notice dust patterns on the floor of her room that seem to spell out coordinates to someone on earth. And before long, the pair on on the road to that last remaining gasp of NASA, which is secretly plotting ways to save the human race by exploiting a recently found wormhole near Saturn that coincidentally leads to three planets in another part of the universe that might be likely candidates for recolonization of some sort. Cooper’s seemingly coincidental showing up on NASA’s door makes projecct leader Prof. Brand (Michael Caine) and his astronaut daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) convinced that he should join the next multiyear mission. Turns out other missions have gone through the wormhole before with varying results.
Several other things seems clear, more or less. Something put that wormhole there and perhaps sent Cooper messages through his daughter’s bedroom to take him to it, and so a great mystery is sparked about what type of being make this last hope for humanity possible. INTERSTELLAR works best in the framework of the film’s big mystery and in the confines of the mission itself, explaining both the science and rules to us as we go. The technology is advanced to a degree, but a great deal of it should be familiar to most fans of films about space travel (real and imagined)--the exception being the ship's mind-blowing robot TARS (voiced sarcastically by Bill Irwin), which is something of a jack-of-all-trades companion with movability that I never got tired of observing.
What’s curious about Cooper as the film’s hero is that he has no intention of sacrificing himself for the betterment of humanity, unlike some of his comrades in exploration (who also include Wes Bentley as Doyle and David Gyasi as Romilly). He’s aware that he might be killed, he has every intention of returning home to see his family because he’s been told that’s a possibility. McConaughey’s homespun delivery for Cooper seems a strange choice, but it ultimately won me over because he convinced me a guy like is probably not unlike many of the test pilots and astronauts of NASA’s earliest days. Although I admit, when McConaughey starts delivering some of the film’s more metaphysical dialogue, it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue the way it should, and it may make you giggle.
Director Nolan absolutely nails the technical aspects of the film, from the special effects to the imagining of what a near-future earth would be like to the prospects of what other planets might bring visitors in terms of hope and perils. In particular, the landscapes of these possible future homes for human are extraordinary, and the way the theory of relativity (which isn’t so much a theory in this story) plays out adds a true sense of urgency, and ultimately sadness, to the proceedings.
I don’t think I’m spoiling anything to say that Cooper’s mission takes much longer than anyone expected, and his kids grow up so much that they turn into Jessica Chastain and Casey Affleck, who have both suffered a great deal (especially Chastain’s Murph) in the years their father has been gone. And it’s at about this point in the story where INTERSTELLAR begins to lose focus. Nolan introduces some highly emotional elements to his story to the point where they start to guide where this tale ultimately lands, and these elements feel more like Nolan is trying them on for size. Sadly they don’t fit right, but rather than abandon them, he wears them like an ill-fitting, oversized jacket that he’d rather pack with filler than trim down. Every decision, every development, every event is talked about to the point of exhaustion, sometimes twice or three times. Overexplanation is one of the film's biggest problems and makes you really feel its running time.
But what's most infuriating about INTERSTELLAR is how it handles the emotions it lets loose into its wonderfully detached confines. And there are few finer actors today than Chastain to play a character that is both acutely intelligent while being able to cry her eyes out at the prospect of being somehow reconnected with her father. But most of the scenes with the adult Murph just grind the proceedings to a halt. Perhaps audience members with kids will have the exact opposite reaction I did, but I can only convey the sheer and utter failure these scenes had in moving me to any degree. And the more surreal elements that tie the film together are far from the best examples of the Nolans’ collective brain power doing its best work.
Nolan never gets far enough off track and away from his strengths to completely topple the applecart, but anyone who doesn’t acknowledge the glaring flaws—especially in the back half of this nearly three-hour film—just isn’t being honest with themselves. As a self-professed fan of emotional connections done right in science fiction, I’m also keenly aware of how often those two things don’t mesh. Sadly, INTERSTELLAR has several scenes that ring so forced and false that they can’t be dismissed or excused, and they weaken the total viewing experience. There’s enough classic Nolan to get you through the rough patches, and that should be enough for most to enjoy the experience of watching this movie. But consider yourself warned.
