Yes yes yes, Christopher Nolan's latest opus, in it's way an obvious tribute to Kubrick's 2001, has polarized audiences more than any other film I can think of in the past year.
The story is fairly simple. Mother Earth is slowly dying, as her food sources dwindle. Massive dust storms blanket the planet, and farming has become the single most important job mankind can aspire to. Cooper, an engineer and ex-NASA pilot, who went unrealized in his dream of becoming an astronaut, is raising two children, his daughter Murph, and his son Tom, on their farm, with the help of their grandfather.
Murph is a chip off the ole' block, and has a predilection towards science, in the film an outdated and supposedly antiquated skill. Soon, she is finding weird markings left in dust on her floor, and with the help of her father, figures out they are coordinates. Deciding to follow up on the mystery, they are led to a NASA base, housing a last ditch operation, hoping to be the salvation of mankind. Before long Cooper is brought back into the fold, and made the pilot of an experimental craft that will travel through a black hole, left there by unseen forces (maybe alien, maybe not) in hopes of finding a hospitable planet, fit for the relocation of humanity, who must flee the dying planet we call home.
We all know this though, right? So I'll stop rehashing things here. My main point in adding my two cents to the conversation is this: I kept hearing about how "joyless" and "dry" and "heartless" this film was. It's a common complaint for the detractors of Nolan's films, which his brother Johnathan usually scripts. I strongly disagree with this sentiment. In the case of INTERSTELLAR in particular, what do people want? It's a film about the end days of humanity for crying out loud. This isn't space opera, bent on making people hoop and holler in glee, it's a cautionary tale, centered around a man who must leave his family for the greater good of all mankind. That's not a pretty picture. Also, the accusations of it being too depressing turn out to be, in my opinion, completely unfounded. As Cooper and his fellow crew members traverse across time and space, it is the clear intent of the writer and director to illustrate that nothing is more important than love. It may even be an emotion that is actually quantifiable by physics, and a major component in our ability as a race to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, and find a way in our collective darkest hour to survive.
INTERSTELLAR, for me, is also a rare film that really does need the element of surprise for the viewer to have the maximum experience, so I'm going to leave it here for now, and try to remain spoiler free for the most part. But as a piece of hard sci-fi that revolves around the rational, and the current scientific information of things like relativity and time/space travel, it completely works. I'm no science geek myself, but even I know this is most likely the single most spot on flick of it's kind, probably since Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke brought us 2001. INTERSTELLAR also works on an emotional level as a family drama. I say, don;t believe that haters. It's quite ride, and well worth your time and money.
To (somewhat redundantly) acknowledge the cast, it's of course full of A-listers, including Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon, Michael Caine, John Lithgow, and a criminally little-used Ellen Burstyn, with supporting roles wonderfully supplied by Wes Bentley, Casey Afflek, David Gyasi, William Devane, Mackenzie Foy, and an almsot unrecognizable Topher Grace.
I'll be adding INTERSTELLAR to my private collection so I can revisit it as well. Which for me says a lot.
Rating: 4.25 out of 5
~Sean Smithson
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