Interstellar is an intriguing piece of film-making.
It’s full of ideas and ambition, but is let down by parts of the film-making
process that aren’t able to translate that ambition. Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight Trilogy & Inception) delivers a movie that makes
people work for their entertainment, eschewing an effects-driven extravaganza
in favour of characterisation set in a near-future world on the brink of
agricultural collapse. It uses the structure of classic science fiction films
such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounter of the Third Kind to
convey its message, which some viewers may find too on-the-nose. It’s a strong
but compromised work of speculative science fiction that is a calculated risk
by the director to deliver a cinema experience that doesn’t just spoon-feed the
audience every narrative outcome.
Somewhere in the near
future, humanity’s demand upon Earth’s resources has taken its toll. There is
not enough food to feed the planet’s population and desperate agricultural
practice have expelled too much nitrogen into the atmosphere. Climate change
is taking a brutal toll, as dust storms become major weather events and crop
blight is marginalising food production. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a
former NASA pilot & engineer who has become a corn farmer in order to do
his bit to help humanity struggle on. The appearance of a strange phenomenon in
his home lead Cooper and his 10 year old daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) to the
covertly-operating NASA lead by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and his
daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway). Brand convinces Cooper to pilot a mission that
will allow an intergalactic expedition to find humanity a new planet to call
home.
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| Jessica Chastain's characater of Murph witnesses the devastation of crop blight first hand throughout the second half of the film as she returns home to the family farm in search of answers to questions of universal importance. |
Interstellar was
co-written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan. The pair certainly brushed up on
the “great science fiction movies” before they sat down to write this film, as
there are nods to the genre’s past great littered throughout the film. Cooper
and Amelia are joined on their mission by Doyle (Wes Bentley) and Romilly
(David Gyasi), along with TARS, a robot voiced by Bill Irwin. Whether it was
intended or not, this segment of the movie feels like 2001: A Space Odyssey. Nolan’s dedication to making sure that the
space travel appears and feels to be scientifically accurate is similar to the
same dedication paid by Kubrick when he was making his masterpiece back in the
mid-1960s. Those who have seen 2001: A
Space Odyssey will also find it hard not to draw comparison between TARS
and HAL-9000.
The story also addresses the
passage of time associated with space travel and cleverly uses it to link back
to events on Earth, as an older Murph (Jessica Chastain) joins Professor Brand
in a bid to solve a mathematical equation that will help NASA to defeat gravity
itself and launch massive ships from the planet’s surface in order to save the
planet’s population. Murph’s visit back to the family farm to her brother Tom
(Casey Affleck) highlight the situation is more desperate than ever, as the
dust storms are never-ending and the clogged atmosphere is suffocating people
to their death. The Nolan brothers do not shy away from the question of
mortality throughout the story, as a number of important characters do not make
it to the end of the film. It’s an example of Nolan’s calculated risk that the
audience will accept, in a story that spans several decades and has an
interplanetary space mission central to its premise, that life will play out
the same for his characters as it does for all humans.
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| The search for humanity's new home is complicated when the crew of the Endurance discover the secrets of previous missions. |
At its core, Interstellar is a story about faith and
love. Not the feel-good romantic comedy stuff; more the power of connection
that two people can have between them that transcends all other matters in the
universe. Cooper and Murph are the embodiment of this connection in the film.
McConaughey is rock solid as Cooper. He’s both a superman and an everyman and
the character is not an easy sell, but McConaughey’s passion when he talks
about Cooper’s children’s future make him relatable as a parent and believable
in his delivery. Jessica Chastain impresses again as the older Murph and her
performance injects emotion into the story at a point where technicalities of
the plot could have completely overwhelmed the story. Anne Hathaway as Amelia
is miscast and lacks the dramatic punch to match it with McConaughey. Nolan’s
acting talisman Michael Caine looks similarly out of his depth. The director
has used the veteran actor in every film since he has made since Batman Begins and it’s unusual to see
him turn in a performance that doesn’t hit the mark. John Lithgow, Casey
Affleck, Topher Grace and David Oyelowo all appear in the film, but none have a
great deal of screen time to do anything other than get through the lines and
keep the story moving.
A lot of attention has been
paid to the technical production of Interstellar, especially Nolan’s use of
35mm film and IMAX technology. A number of the scenes were filmed using IMAX
cameras, but it ended up becoming quite distracting. The clarity of the 35mm
footage on the bigger screen lacked resolution and Nolan’s selection of IMAX
shots did nothing to improve the story. Hoyte Van Hoytema was Nolan’s
cinematographer on Interstellar and
the film looks different to the five films that Wally Pfister has done for the director.
Given the poor box office result of Pfister’s directorial debut Transcendence, it would not be
unreasonable to suggest you should never mess with a winning combination.
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| Director Christopher Nolan and Director of Photography Hoyte Van Hoytema filming with IMAX, |
Another element that does
not work for Interstellar is its
musical score. Hans Zimmer is a wonderful film music composer and he has
provided Nolan with great accompaniments to his previous movies. The score for
Interstellar is not one of them. The signature theme – Our Destiny Lies Above Us – is a moving piece of music in itself,
but the manner in which it is cut into the film becomes increasingly jarring
the longer the film runs. It’s especially overwrought in scenes where the crew
of the Endurance spacecraft are
tested to their physical and mental limits. It’s but another example of the
film-making process not quite matching the ambition of the story.
It’s easy to say that this
is not Christopher Nolan’s best film, but it is a comparison borne of a body of
work not matched by any other director over the last decade. Nolan sets very
high standards. Interstellar is an
extraordinary piece of film-making by comparison to the great majority of what
makes its way onto cinema screens. Viewers need to be prepared to think to
enjoy this film, but it doesn’t come with an in-built automatic satisfaction
button that can be pushed at the end of the film to make sure it’s everything
that’s wanted or desired.
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