Interstellar (8 out of 10) Directed by Christopher Nolan; Written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan; starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain; rated PG13 (some intense perilous action and brief strong language); in wide release everywhere – but see it in Imax; running time: 169 minutes.
“Interstellar” is an important movie. But it is important for reasons other than its beautiful, bordering on perfect technical execution. It is kinda like the dream of space travel itself. It is big and bold, but its net impact, its ambition, is greater than its current ability. It is more than the sum of its parts, which is a good thing, since outside of its technical artistry, it really struggles. Story wise it stands on shaky legs, it over reaches and falls short, but the pure act of reaching puts us closer to something that we seem to have lost.
Cooper (a perfectly cast Matthew McConaughey) was one of the last and brightest of the Pilot/Engineers at NASA before they were unfunded to invisibility. He is now a farmer, doing his part to help feed a world that is running out of food, and time. He has two kids; Tom (Timothée Chalamet as child and Casey Affleck as an adult), a boy who loves their life on the farm, and Murph (Mackenzie Foy as a child and Jessica Chastain as an adult), a girl who is constantly asking why.
Through a strange set of circumstances, Cooper and Murph find themselves in the midst of the last vestiges of NASA, and Coop is recruited back into service. There is a chance that they have found a way to save the species and he is the best pilot they have. This doesn’t sit well with Murph, who feels like he is leaving her and Tom behind to go be an astronaut instead of staying and being their father.
There are moments in this film that will haunt you; the sound of blustery dry wind through the fields as it opens. The dust that seeps into everything and is everywhere. The huge dust storm obscuring the horizon as it rolls in. The endless corn fields. The sound of a rain storm on an iPod in a claustrophic ship in the depths of space. The ship as it passes in front of Saturn. And so much more. It is a marvel in the realization of the little moments that mix and fill your eyes and ears.
There is a warmth to all of the character interactions that Nolan hasn’t demonstrated much of before. The family stuff is relatively natural and sweet. Nolan is known for his staid, controlled characters. It is a nice change of pace for a bit to have some human warmth in the belly of one of his films. However, it is a mess with regard to character motivation.
There is so much going on here, intellectually and structurally that something probably had to be simplified and that seems like it was character nuance. All of the characters are defined by one trait: Murph as a child is always questioning trying to understand why, so it is sad that she never tries to understand why her father left. The son is only important to the story as a contrast to Murph.
John Lithgow plays the aging grandparent that represents the past that Cooper has lost. Michael Caine is the former NASA scientist that pulls Coop back into the game. Anne Hathaway is chasing after something hopeful far away, while Coop is trying to preserve what he has left behind.
At the beginning these are all characters with passion, instead of being characters that are obsessed, as they usually are in Nolan’s films. They flip over from passion to obsession as the movie enters its third act in order to create human drama, to raise the stakes, because apparently there is no drama inherent in doing fantastic, incredible, dangerous things. Aren’t the situations dangerous enough already without complicating it by ugly human emotion?
If you read the tweets of other influential filmmakers about Intersterllar, they all reference the same thing, because they know too, the ambition of the movie is far greater than its faults (and there are a lot). What the movie is trying to do is more important than what it ends up being. Because, hopefully, as it reaches and falls short, it is able to plant a seed, both in the minds of young filmmakers, but also young leaders, opinion makers, politicians and scientists, that “we are not meant to be stuck here, in the dirt, we need to be up there”.
When I was a child there was a real sense that the future was very, very bright. And that came from the space program. There was a real chance that I, personally, would be able to go to space one day. That didn’t happen. The number of people that have been in space since I was in kindergarten is probably smaller than the number of kids that were in Kindergarten in my school that year. When it was obvious that space travel would not be available to me, I had hoped my kids would be part of it, but it is clear that isn’t going to happen. I am now pretty much relegated to the sad reality that my grandkids won’t be going either.
Where “Interstellar” is greater than the sum of its parts is in what it aspires to do. And it aspires to get us thinking about space again. True, good hard Science Fiction has been hard to find. This movie loves science. Exploration is not something to be afraid of. It will be hard, but the cost is worth it.
It is great to have a big movie in which scientific progress is a positive thing. “Elysium” was a brutal, ugly movie that looked to divide. “Interstellar” wants to connect. I don’t care if we are an autocracy, democracy, or what have you, as long as the real purpose is to move all of us forward and outward as a species. We gotta get into outer space, not to get away from the poor and dying, but to save them, and our families, our legacy. Our species.
This the closest to a tract of what I believe that I have seen in a long time in the movies. “Contact” didn’t understand why we sacrifice. We explore for our loved ones, for the species. I grew up in the age of endless possibilities in space. The moon was only the beginning. When I was a kid, the possibility that I could go to space was palpable. This movie makes it seem possible again.
I really want to give it 10 out of 10 stars, but I just can’t in good conscience. I have too many problems with it to be able to do that. Just know that in my heart it does get a 10.