Review: Interstellar
The films of Christopher Nolan are not known for their heart or sentimentality. They’re known for their intelligence and weaving weighty themes with top-shelf entertainment.
So how successful was Nolan’s first crack at sentimentality? Well the answer is complicated.
Our two main engineers, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) and Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) both have personal stakes on the mission that drives this film. The Earth needs to find a new planet to populate. 12 scientists have lead crews to explore 12 different systems for potential colonization.Cooper and Brand will lead a team of intrepid scientists to explore three planets that show promise. Cooper is leaving behind two children in hopes of saving the human race and Amelia is in love with one of the explorers who sent back promising data back from one of those three systems.
Cooper, Brand and the crew have very frank conversations about the pros and cons of having emotions dictate how the mission should be conducted. Now the dialogue in these scenes are very on the nose, almost hammy. Luckily however, the actor’s here save the day. Both McConaughey and Hathaway both underplay these scenes with great effect. They used the frank nature of the dialogue as an advantage. Lesser actors would have over-emoted and taken us out of the movie, but McConaughey and crew are too smart for that.
The script gets bogged down by it’s complicated science. Accurate or otherwise, it makes it difficult to really get into the heart of the movie when the movie stops dead to explain a complex theory that plays a part in the narrative of the film. There is a complex time loop theory that is in danger of not quite paying off emotionally because the script has trouble reconciling the emotion and the logic of the story.
The movie is ultimately saved however by it’s visuals. It looks GORGEOUS, especially in 70MM IMAX. If you see it in any format, that’s the one. There is as little CGI as possible, especially for a sci-fi epic, but it’s blended perfectly with on-camera effects and creates a haunting feast for the eyes. The visual splendor however does not just extend to just the intergalactic moments. The scenes that are Earth-bound are treated with the same care as the moments in galaxies far, far away, reminding us not just what our heroes are ultimately fighting for, but also helps make the complicated science in the movie easier to digest.
This movie is an epic where the imagery, themes and heart out shadow the length and overall clumsiness of the script. The detractors of this film are right about this film’s many flaws. It can get confusing at times, the dialogue can be a little too on the nose, and the dues ex machina of an ending will probably have you slapping your forehead more.
It’s clunky, wordy, and about 25 minutes too long but ultimately… I was moved.
[rating=3]
