Christopher Nolan is one of the most highly-acclaimed directors of this decade, with every film of his receiving praise from critics and audiences alike. One of the less compelling features in Nolan’s filmography is this science-fiction picture from 2014, an effort that doesn’t quite have a handle on the concepts it explores, but nonetheless knows how to grab one’s attention.
Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a corn farmer in rural America, trying to provide for his family – consisting of father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow), son Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy) – in a world where food is scarce and dust storms are an all-too-frequent occurrence. He is closest to his daughter, who he affectionately calls “Murph”, and has instilled in her the same fondness for science that led him to become a test pilot for NASA years earlier.
One evening, after a particularly brutal storm, a strange dust pattern appears on Murph’s bedroom floor, with Cooper believing it to be a message; by decoding the pattern, he asserts that the patterns are co-ordinates being delivered in binary code. With curiosity having got the better of them, Cooper and Murph travel by pick-up truck to the co-ordinates, which are revealed to be the entrance of a secret NASA base.
Greeting the two at the facility is Professor Brand (Michael Caine), who explains that the purpose of the base is to find new worlds for humanity to inhabit, thus saving the race from an inevitable extinction. Brand’s team is about to embark on an astronomical expedition to the far side of Saturn, where they are to enter a wormhole – one which, potentially, leads to other habitable worlds. The professor believes that Cooper is the best person to lead their team, but if that’s to be the case, he must leave the rest of his family behind.
One of the notions put forward in Interstellar is that feelings of love and loss transcend across dimensions; another is the belief that the spiritual world is interconnected with the physical world. Both are rather clever, outlandish ideas that are thrust upon the viewer, yet never explored thoroughly. As an example of the second idea, one of the characters claims it is “They” who placed the wormhole where it is, a notion that isn’t spoken of again until an inopportune moment in the third act.
Another major problem is that Interstellar struggles to establish its own identity, housing nods to iconic sci-fi films such as 2001, Star Wars and even Gravity, but never truly distinguishing itself from those releases. Furthermore, the picture becomes quite tiresome at certain points, a fact which could be attributed to either the run-time – at nearly three hours in length, Interstellar is Nolan’s longest film to date – or the pacing, which is slower than Nolan’s other works.
None of this is to say that Interstellar is a boring affair, for there are times when it is tense, emotional and even exhilarating. The third act is where the movie truly hits its stride, containing mind-blowing concepts and a pretty thrilling action sequence that looks fantastic on a big screen. Yet even before that happens, Interstellar provides audiences with plenty of entertaining moments, such as a visually stunning journey through the aforesaid wormhole, or comic-relief in the form of robot TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin).
As with all Nolan productions, a talented ensemble has been gathered to act-out proceedings. Anne Hathaway, Wes Bentley and David Gyasi play three of the four astronauts in Cooper’s mission, while back on Earth, the likes of Casey Affleck, David Oyelowo and Topher Grace all have supporting roles. The latter part of the film sees Jessica Chastain take the lead as an adult Murphy, being her usually impeccable self, while McConaughey outshines everyone with yet another extraordinary performance.
Interstellar is flawed – that fact is undeniable. But it also provides viewers with glimpses of brilliance, the kind that need to be seen in a cinema to gain the greatest experience. Moreover, it’s a science-fiction blockbuster with an original script, something that the world could always use more of.
This film was previously reviewed for YO Bendigo on November 17th, 2014.
