Interstellar movie review (2014) | Little White Lies

Inter­stel­lar

06 Nov 2014 / Released: 07 Nov 2014

Two people, a man and a woman, standing in a field of tall corn.
Two people, a man and a woman, standing in a field of tall corn.
5

Anticipation.

Christopher Nolan is finally unburdened of Batman. We can’t wait to see where he goes.

5

Enjoyment.

Not quite as sturdy as Nolan’s best, but still the most transportive space odyssey since 2001.

4

In Retrospect.

Nolan embarrasses other blockbusters, but he can’t quite compete with himself.

Christo­pher Nolan’s sci-fi epic is his most ambi­tious film yet, if not nec­es­sar­i­ly his best.

There are no fuck­ing aliens in Interstellar.

That’s not a spoil­er. You’d soon­er find an explic­it sex scene in a Yasu­jiro Ozu film than an alien in one by Christo­pher Nolan.

Nolan is fas­ci­nat­ed by the spec­u­la­tive, but he abhors the super­nat­ur­al. This is, after all, the same guy who made a tril­o­gy of super­hero movies in which pow­ers’ were almost exclu­sive­ly expressed through soci­etal influ­ence. Over the course of nine fea­ture films, only one Nolan char­ac­ter has open­ly dared to vio­late the laws of nature, a trans­gres­sion he paid for by dying sev­er­al dozen ago­nis­ing deaths before ulti­mate­ly being left to rot in an over­sized dunk tank.

In a time when bud­gets have grown bot­tom­less due to the cost of con­jur­ing arti­fice, Nolan makes films which are intox­i­cat­ed by the real. While that phi­los­o­phy extends to his pref­er­ence for prac­ti­cal effects and his endur­ing com­mit­ment to shoot­ing on film, his hard-nosed ratio­nal­ism is most explic­it­ly seen in his sin­gu­lar approach to nar­ra­tive struc­ture, which has less in com­mon with tra­di­tion­al sto­ry­telling than it does with sci­en­tif­ic experimentation.

The films of Christo­pher Nolan gen­er­ate emo­tion in much the same way that a super­col­lid­er gen­er­ates par­ti­cles, accel­er­at­ing until they achieve a veloc­i­ty that allows the abstract con­cept at their core to be seen and con­firmed. Nolan may not be look­ing for the Hig­gs boson, but he uses a sim­i­lar approach to dis­til and demys­ti­fy the sub­atom­ic ele­ments of nar­ra­tive fic­tion. His films fever­ish­ly cross-cut between par­al­lel planes of action until the ten­sion gen­er­at­ed between the tem­po­ral games­man­ship of their struc­ture and the emo­tion­al stress of their char­ac­ters syn­the­sis­es into a quick­sil­ver snap­shot of a sin­gle idea — mem­o­ry (Memen­to), sac­ri­fice (The Pres­tige), jus­tice (the Bat­man films), and dreams (Incep­tion). His films don’t begin with a char­ac­ter, they begin with a word.

If Inter­stel­lar is Nolan’s most ambi­tious film, it’s not because of its cost or its inter­galac­tic sweep, but rather because love” is the most spec­u­la­tive and unsci­en­tif­ic force that he’s ever tried to prove. When Nolan was recent­ly quot­ed as say­ing that his new opus is about What hap­pens when sci­en­tists bump up against these things that defy easy char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and analy­sis — things like love”, his com­ment engen­dered skep­ti­cism from peo­ple who haven’t become fetishis­ti­cal­ly sub­mis­sive to their enthu­si­asm for upcom­ing event films. And while Inter­stel­lar throws itself on the sword of sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty almost every time it’s on the precipice of arriv­ing at a moment of cin­e­mat­ic won­der, Nolan’s approach to love is ulti­mate­ly as blunt and prac­ti­cal as we should expect from the man who reduced the human sub­con­scious into a rigid lad­der of colour-cod­ed game worlds. Inter­stel­lar doesn’t just con­tend that love is real, the film argues that it’s down­right Darwinian.

Like exact­ly all of Nolan’s non-Bat­man films (and some of those, as well), Inter­stel­lar is about a mid­dle-aged white man who des­per­ate­ly needs to crack a code in order to for­give him­self for fail­ing a woman. The man is Coop­er (an emi­nent­ly believ­able Matthew McConaugh­ey), a wid­owed for­mer pilot who’s rais­ing his two kids on a corn farm in a world so inhos­pitable to liv­ing things that rogue drones are treat­ed like wildlife — the Earth of the film’s near-future has expe­ri­enced a vague die-off, its every with­ered facet an organ­ic reflec­tion of Cooper’s qui­et grief.

The girl is Cooper’s daugh­ter, Murph (Macken­zie Foy and Jes­si­ca Chas­tain, both extra­or­di­nary), a char­ac­ter who seems born from crit­i­cisms regard­ing the female char­ac­ters in Nolan’s pre­vi­ous work. Where­as the Nolan of old would have used the mem­o­ry of Cooper’s wife to dri­ve the hero well beyond the bounds of rea­son, Inter­stel­lar removes the roman­tic ele­ment from this core rela­tion­ship, replac­ing it with a pater­nal dynam­ic that bet­ter accom­mo­dates the respon­si­bil­i­ty bur­den­ing the film’s pro­tag­o­nist. What ful­ly allows Nolan to cement this for­mer weak­ness as a new strength, how­ev­er, is that Murph becomes much more to this sto­ry than just a totem of lost love (Cooper’s under­writ­ten son, on the oth­er hand, becomes Casey Affleck).

Through a series of seem­ing­ly inex­plic­a­ble events that are hard to explain but easy to demys­ti­fy, Coop­er and Murph find them­selves face-to-face with the last rem­nants of NASA, per­son­i­fied by Dr. Brand (Michael Caine) and his daugh­ter (Anne Hath­away). Brand remem­bers Coop­er and his skills as a pilot, and so decides to share with him their planet’s great­est remain­ing secret: Earth is dying, and dwin­dling oxy­gen sup­plies mean that Murph’s gen­er­a­tion will like­ly be humanity’s last. Unless! Unless Coop­er can pilot a team of sci­en­tists — and a stub­born­ly cute but not too cute droid called TARS — through a con­ve­nient­ly placed worm­hole that will allow them to explore dis­tant, poten­tial­ly inhab­it­able worlds with­out run­ning out the clock. It’s not a sui­cide mis­sion, but every true explor­er knows that safe­ty isn’t guar­an­teed. Coop­er is forced to choose between stay­ing with his young daugh­ter or poten­tial­ly sav­ing our species from extinc­tion. Faster than you can say For All Mankind”, Coop­er and his crew are glid­ing by the rings of Sat­urn on awe-induc­ing 70mm IMAX (don’t even both­er see­ing the movie in any oth­er format).

For the first 90 min­utes of Interstellar’s 169-minute run­time, the film pro­gress­es in a lin­ear fash­ion, buck­ing the inward­ly spi­ral­ing tra­jec­to­ry that char­ac­ter­izes most of Nolan’s sto­ries. As soon as Coop­er and the rest of the gang touch down on the first poten­tial plan­et, how­ev­er, we’re rock­et­ed back into the sweet embrace of Nolan’s com­fort zone. Sev­er­al of the scripts that Christo­pher Nolan has co-writ­ten with his broth­er Jonathan begin at the fringes of fact before leap­ing into the wild blue yon­der, Inter­stel­lar sim­ply — and effec­tive­ly — delays that jump. When the free fall begins, the film’s depic­tion of rel­a­tive time between worlds is uncan­ni­ly sim­i­lar to how Incep­tion toyed with rel­a­tive time between dreams, but where that film used pseu­do-sci­ence in order to derive a porno­graph­ic plea­sure from the logis­tics of its con­struc­tion, Inter­stel­lar leans on (some) actu­al sci­ence in order to cre­ate a strong emo­tion­al bedrock for a sto­ry that can’t pos­si­bly con­vey the logis­tics of its telling. There is no amount of clunky expos­i­to­ry dia­logue in the world that could suc­cinct­ly school the aver­age view­er on the ins and outs of the­o­ret­i­cal quan­tum mechan­ics, and no one — not even the almighty Christo­pher Nolan – will ever make a Hol­ly­wood film capa­ble of pro­vid­ing answers about space-time that have elud­ed our most bril­liant sci­en­tists for years.

It’s a para­dox that should com­plete­ly strip this film of its pur­pose, but Nolan thrives in the lim­bo between log­ic and emo­tion, lev­el­ling the play­ing field between the two by riff­ing on the for­mer in order to crys­tallise the lat­ter (maybe he should have direct­ed Star Trek?). Inter­stel­lar begins as a cau­tion­ary tale about cli­mate change and the per­ils of over­pop­u­la­tion, and even­tu­al­ly blos­soms into a gal­vanis­ing call for explo­ration, but the greater pur­pose that binds its unwieldy plot togeth­er is a mer­ci­less­ly prac­ti­cal mes­sage about how love is humanity’s best chance for con­tin­ued survival.

By con­sult­ing with renowned the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Kip Thorne, the script’s con­cep­tion of grav­i­ty as the miss­ing link between space and time is sure­ly root­ed in a foun­da­tion of fact, but to poke holes in the sci­ence of Inter­stel­lar would be fun­da­men­tal­ly coun­ter­in­tu­itive to how the film oper­ates. Inter­stel­lar is pro-sci­ence, inso­far as knowl­edge is used as a means of emo­tion­al heal­ing. As per Nolan tra­di­tion, Coop­er is psy­chi­cal­ly dam­aged by the wounds in his under­stand­ing, and only through learn­ing more about the most obscure folds of his world is he absolved of his guilt and made whole.

While Inter­stel­lar is undoubt­ed­ly a tear­jerk­er — a piv­otal scene where Coop­er watch­es video mes­sages from home is the most bald­ly emo­tion­al moment Nolan has ever pro­duced — it might be the most prac­ti­cal con­cep­tion of love (famil­ial or roman­tic) ever put on screen. In no uncer­tain terms, and with­out dimin­ish­ing the pow­er of its sto­ry until its ago­niz­ing­ly fum­bled cli­max, Inter­stel­lar con­tends that love is noth­ing more than an essen­tial muta­tion, and that our instinct for self-preser­va­tion will rot and spell the end for our species if it goes unshared. It’s sur­vival of the fittest, but the fittest are only defined as such because they look out for each other.

The jaw-drop­ping imagery with which Inter­stel­lar depicts the vast­ness of space serves to rein­force our col­lec­tive small­ness, and the insane risks that we take in order to pro­tect the peo­ple impor­tant to us. Lever­ag­ing the ambi­tion of 2001: A Space Odyssey with the pathos of The Right Stuff, the graph­ics of Grav­i­ty, and the fever dreams of mod­ern physi­cists, Inter­stel­lar pro­duces some of the most exhil­a­rat­ing illus­tra­tions of space trav­el since A Trip to the Moon. Aug­ment­ed by Hans Zimmer’s excep­tion­al and unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly mea­sured score (some of which sounds like Philip Glass if he were sedat­ed and launched into orbit), the scenes set in the final fron­tier are astound­ing. While the var­i­ous plan­ets are con­vinc­ing­ly realised — though lim­it­ed by their bar­ren­ness — Nolan con­ceives of the void between them with a prac­ti­cal and painter­ly approach. In that regard, Inter­stel­lar has the feel­ing of a film that was built to last, par­tic­u­lar­ly when con­trast­ed against the glossy pyrotech­nics of Alfon­so Cuarón’s weight­less sus­pense saga.

On the oth­er hand, Inter­stel­lar ben­e­fits from its epic length just as much as Grav­i­ty did from its brevi­ty. The sto­ry hinges on being able to make the years that slip through its cracks feel gen­uine­ly pal­pa­ble, an effect it accom­plish­es through sheer dura­tion. In a film defined by the raw util­i­ty of its parts, even the run­ning time has its own pur­pose. Not all of that time, how­ev­er, is par­tic­u­lar­ly well spent. While Inter­stel­lar taps into a Spiel­ber­gian sense of won­der that Nolan has nev­er broached before (this project was ini­ti­at­ed under Spielberg’s com­mand), the film strug­gles to rec­on­cile that awed reach into the unknown with its director’s own trademarks.

Inter­stel­lar aspires to the same cross-cut crescen­do that made the last hour of Incep­tion so momen­tous, but it doesn’t have the ingre­di­ents required to repro­duce that feel­ing. This fail­ure is large­ly due to Affleck’s char­ac­ter, who’s essen­tial in broad strokes but inert when brought to the fore. The clum­sy clos­ing min­utes are plagued by sim­i­lar symp­toms, pro­vid­ing clo­sure to the film’s themes at the expense of its grace. For all of its awk­ward mis­steps, how­ev­er, Inter­stel­lar finds Nolan throw­ing down the gaunt­let at the feet of his con­tem­po­raries with a new­ly con­fronta­tion­al zeal.

Inter­stel­lar is by far the best and most com­pre­hen­sive­ly sat­is­fy­ing big-bud­get spec­ta­cle of the year… and that’s a seri­ous prob­lem. The cos­mic mar­gin by which Christo­pher Nolan’s lat­est film eclipses its com­pe­ti­tion forces it to dou­ble as an unset­tling reminder of how unim­pres­sive such a feat has become. Nolan has made a career of expos­ing the pover­ty of our cur­rent block­buster cin­e­ma, and not since Incep­tion has a film of this size evinced a nar­ra­tive ambi­tion on par with that of its scale (with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of inde­pen­dent­ly financed bomb, Cloud Atlas), but it was nev­er going to be any oth­er way.

If Nolan paints with too broad a brush for the film to func­tion as tren­chant sociopo­lit­i­cal com­men­tary, Inter­stel­lar is nev­er­the­less a sweep­ing con­dem­na­tion of com­pla­cen­cy. By virtue of their eco­nom­ics dis­place­ment, every block­buster is a com­ment on the cir­cum­stances of its mak­ing, and while Inter­stel­lar can only guess at quan­tum mechan­ics, it reflects the state of com­mer­cial cin­e­ma with a sci­en­tif­ic accu­ra­cy. Inter­stel­lar may not take us to new heights, but its reach is nev­er­the­less an urgent reminder that the movies will suf­fo­cate if we don’t try to get there. Just because we’re still alive doesn’t mean that we’re not dying. Inter­stel­lar illus­trates why Nolan’s most ardent fans think that he can take us for­ward, but it also proves that Nolan can’t do it on his own.

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