From critically acclaimed director Christopher Nolan comes one of the biggest films of 2014, “Interstellar.” You may know Nolan from his previous films, such as the mind-bending thriller “Memento,” the recent Batman trilogy, or my personal favorite, 2010’s “Inception,” all of which were well received by critics and audiences alike. Naturally, the question on everyone’s mind is, does this film live up to Nolan’s past successes?
“Interstellar” shows us earth, in the very near future, with society on the verge of collapse. Due to the scarcity of recourses, society has fallen back on agriculture as their only means of food, and now even that is beginning to fail. Clouds of dirt and dust fill the air, sometimes raging through towns like storms. It quickly becomes clear that unless something is done, the human race is doomed. With this as our backdrop, we’re introduced to our protagonist, an ex-rocket pilot, current farmer, named Cooper (played by Matthew McConaughey), who lives on his farm with his father in-law, Donald (played by John Lithgow), his son, Tom (played by Timothee Chalamet/Casey Affleck) and daughter, Murph (played by Mackenzie Foy/Jessica Chastain).
After a particularly bad dust storm, Cooper discovers a message, encoded in the dust on the floor of his daughter’s room. This message reveals coordinates to what Cooper discovers to be NASA, hidden far from civilization. Here he meets Professor Brand (played by Michael Caine), and from him, Cooper learns about “Project Lazarus”, a plan to save the human race. In space, a wormhole was discovered near Saturn, which led to a series of potentially inhabitable planets. Years ago NASA sent thirteen astronauts to study these planets, and now only three still respond. Thanks to his ability to pilot a rocket, Professor Brand pleads for Cooper to lead the mission through the wormhole, to check the three planets with astronauts still responding, and to ultimately find a new home for the human race. Cooper, thinking about the future of his children, agrees, and along with a biologist (played by Anne Hathaway), a physicist (played by David Gyasi), and a geographer (played by Wes Bentley), leaves for the wormhole on a journey that would likely take years of his life. The rest of the movie catalogues their journey through space to save the human race, as well as the goings-on back at Earth with Cooper’s daughter.
Despite a great premise, awe-inspiring visuals and music, “Interstellar” is a far cry from perfection. ONe minor complaints is that this film could be quite slow. Clocking in at just under three hours, “Interstellar” actually has too much time to tell its story, and a lot of time is wasted on nothing interesting. Some of these moments are setting up the rest of the film, but at the same time, there needed to be something more to them. these scenes significantly slow the pace in a movie that certainly could have gone a lot faster. Like them or not, films like “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy can fill up three plus hours, but this one can’t, there isn’t enough there to fill the massive length and stay interesting the majority of the time.
My major issue with “Interstellar” comes from its lack of subtly and ultimate predictability. The film uses a lot of foreshadowing, and coupled with its lack of subtly, if you pay enough attention a lot of major plot points later in the film are clear right out of the gate. That said, we are kept completely in the dark on several plot twists, but not in a good way. Some points that come up later in the film feel like they come completely out of the blue, there’s not just a lack of foreshadowing, but the lack of a logical basis. For a film that tries to stay in the ballpark of realistic science, these scenes are incredibly jarring. Twists like those are the ones that need foreshadowing; you need to establish that these things are possible in this universe, without that, these twists feel cheap, like they were made just to capture the mind-boggling flame that “Inception” and “Memento” had. The difference is that their, those twists were subtly foreshadowed and grounded in logic, and neither of those things are true here. Problems like these make the point which the entire film built up to feel sort of empty, which is sad because it was admittedly quite cool.
Despite any major issues, I’d never call “Interstellar” a bad film, there was enough to enjoy that I’d say it was worth the price of admission, if not the time spent. The music was breathtaking; although loud at times, the soundtrack was great regardless. The film was also visually stunning; I could complain about how boring some of the pit stops on the planets were, but it all looked so nice that I rarely noticed how little was really going on. The drama could go from great to clichéd. I do enjoy these characters, so the clichés rarely bothered me, and some of the drama early on really was fantastic. Mackenzie Foy, who plays Murph early on in the film, is a fantastic child actor, and the scenes with her and Matthew Mcconaughey before he leaves for space are some of the best in the film. The two have really great father-daughter chemistry and, clichéd or not, their scenes together were really, really good.
Ultimately “Interstellar” is an okay film, and honestly, I think it’s worth seeing just for the good parts, because when “Interstellar” is good; it is really good. It’s just held back by a lot of wasted time and some really predictable plot points. If you are interested, “Interstellar” certainly isn’t the worst movie you could stop at the theatre to see.