Interstellar is a movie that you will either buy what is being sold or you won’t.
Unfortunately for me, I did not buy much of what Christopher Nolan was trying to do with this Interstellar, the nearly three hour film that explores space, time, human emotion, and your ability to stay with a movie. To be quite honest upon leaving the theater I was thoroughly unimpressed with Interstellar. However, I instantly knew it was a film that I should sleep on before writing a review. After all there have been several films such as this one or this one where pondering the film either led to a different feeling or where pondering was necessary. So while I have had the rare opportunity to spend time marinating on a film before cranking out an opinion, I’m not sure that I’ve settled on anything other than maybe slight appreciation.
Interstellar is a movie about ideas wrapped in scifi spectacle and told by Oscar caliber talent at each turn. When a blight begins wiping out earth’s food, a group of astronauts led by Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) ventures out into the far reaches of space to try and find another planet that can sustain life.
Of the many things Nolan throws at you with this film, the visuals are sure to stay with you for a while, even as they “homage” (some would say imitate) previous films. Watching the tiny space ship sail past large planets or seeing the harrowing effects of a dust storm, Nolan gives you spectacle necessary for this tale. Unlike some of his other films though, he doesn’t lose the characters in the action, allowing their emotions and actions to be clearly conveyed. It’s clearly Nolan’s most ambitious film and he’s definitely in control of the film from start to finish, both good and bad
This is as far as I’m willing to go without discussing things that might be considered spoiler so from here on read at your own peril.
The problems for me with Interstellar stem from the fact that movie can’t really decide exactly what it wants to be. It seeks to be a cool cold experience like 2001: A Space Odyssey but also wants to be as humanist as the last drama, and those tones combine to not work. Mainly with the emotional stuff and humanistic aspects. I have no problem with a film wearing heart on it’s sleeve, but a movie can certainly overexert itself. Take for instance the moment where after a disaster on the first planet, Cooper and Brand (Anne Hathaway) return to the main ship only to find out that it’s been 23 years worth of time since they left. It’s a devastating moment, one that blends high emotion and science together. Unfortunately, this movie often goes for the obvious and overwrought, using Anne’s excellent crying ability at every possible turn and ramping up the character’s emotions to levels they didn’t need to be at in order to accomplish this. There’s having emotional material and there’s trying to mine the audience for every tear and reaction possible, which is what Interstellar kept trying to do. I wish Christopher Nolan would have trusted his subtle instincts more.
Speaking of subtlety, this movie quiet often goes for the convenient to setup the unbelievable aspects as if by tying the plot in a nice bow that it won’t have you confused. The opening video recordings gave me an inkling of how the film would end and much of the setup (finding NASA was laughable) and everything post black hole was…well it broke the suspension of disbelief I had. Furthermore, for a group of scientists, they sure made poor decisions. The first planet they land on is nothing but water, although there was enough of a surface to land on/walk, but how would that place have sustained life? What are the motivations
It’s questions like that which plauge Interstellar at every turn. The ideas a film gives can only be so good as the method used to deliver them. The dialogue is insanely on the nose, and for a filmmaker as cerebral as Nolan, that was a bit of a disappointment. Interstellar also veers into the religious in a way that clashes immensely with what seems like a science driven picture. Also, there’s a particularly crazy reveal when this character pops up and while it leads to one of the film’s most thrilling sequences, it left me cold.
Keeping me cold was the editing between the present in space, the present on earth and eventually the in between time. There were moments that I was legitimately angry that the movie switched from it’s timeline and there was a sense of the cuts not being motivated by anything. Particularly near the end when Cooper gets separated from Brand. I spent 20 minutes wondering what was going on with her character, only to have her thrown in a sentimental ending that kind of undoes its own logic.
Despite all of this, Interstellar is a film I’d encourage everyone to see, even if it didn’t add up for me.