What the nitpickers are missing about “Interstellar” is how gripping it is, how gracefully it combines the galactic and friendly, how neatly it explores the infinite in the tiniest human details.
Peter Travers said in his review, “Of course, Nolan has never been the cold technician of his reputation.” Watch “Memento” again, or “The Prestige,” or the underrated “Insomnia.” What really makes “Interstellar” stand out is how Nolan wears his heart on his sleeve. Nothing like emotion to hold someone like him up to criticism. Travers said, “But even when Nolan strains to verbalize feelings, and the script he wrote with his brother Jonathan turns clunky, it’s hard not to root for a visionary who’s reaching for the stars.”
Travers continued, “Which brings us to a plot full of deepening surprises I’m not going to spoil. The poster for Interstellar presents McConaughey surveying a wasteland. It’s meant to be Saturn, but it could just as well be Earth, where environmental recklessness has morphed the planet into a Dirt Bowl starving and choking its citizens.”
Nolan spends the first third of the film in the American farm in the near future, introducing us to widower Cooper (McConaughey), a former test pilot, who depends on his father-in-law (John Lithgow) to help raise 15-year-old son Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and 10-year-old daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy). Like her dad, Murphy is a rebel who refuses to buy into her school’s official saying that the Apollo space program was a lie.
It’s when dad and daughter find the remains of NASA, led by Cooper’s old boss Professor Brand, played by Michael Caine, that the story starts to pick up. Cooper goes into space to find a new planet to live in, leaving behind two kids who may never forgive him.
The physics lessons (Cal-tech’s Kip Thorne checked) start when Cooper captains the Endurance mother ship with a science team consist of Amelia (Anne Hathaway), Brand’s daughter, Romilly (David Gyasi), and Doyle (Wes Bentley). Travers joked, “And don’t forget R2-D2 and C-3PO. Not really. The ex-military robots of Interstellar are called CASE and TARS.” The great Bill Irwin voices TARS, a loquacious pillar that looks like something from Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and sounds like the HAL 9000. (Travers said, “Note to viewers: Kubrick’s 1968 landmark and George Lucas’ Star Wars franchise are part of Nolan’s DNA. React accordingly.”)
Travers noted, “Next comes the wow factor that makes Interstellar nirvana for movie lovers. A high-tension docking maneuver. A surprise visitor. A battle on the frozen tundra. A tidal wave the size of a mountain. Cheers to Nolan and his team, led by cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema and VFX supervisor Paul J. Franklin (Inception). See Interstellar in IMAX, with the thrilling images oomphed by Hans Zimmer’s score, and you’ll get the meaning of “rock the house.””
However, it’s the final, quieter hour of “Interstellar” that gives the film quality and lasting value. Travers notes, “All the talk of black holes, wormholes and the space-time continuum take root in Coop when he realizes his two years in space have occupied 23 years on Earth.” His children, the now-adult Tom (Casey Affleck) and Murphy (Jessica Chastain), inform of decades of joys and resentments in video messages that Cooper watches in speechless silence. McConaughey gets everything without featuring one of them. He’s an expert, his face a road map to the life he’s missed as his children vent on him with so many emotions.”
I think everyone could tell that McConaughey was on a roll. Starring along beautifully with the inspiring Chastain, who puts amazing bravery and grace in Murphy. Familial love is the focus, not the romantic type. How does that work into space journey? Nolan gives Hathaway a monologue about it. Travers said, “But dialogue is no match for the flinty eloquence shining from the eyes of McConaughey and Chastain. They are the bruised heart of Interstellar, a film that trips up only when it tries to make love a science with rules to be applied.” In “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Kubrick saw a future that was inevitable. For Nolan, our reliance on one another is all we have. Travers said, “That’s more the stuff of provocation than a Hallmark e-card.” Nolan believes it’s better to think through a movie than to just sit through it. I think that is a great idea.
Now I must be honest, this movie is long. I didn’t like the fact that it was near three hours, because it kept changing from boring to engaging. There was not a set area and kept switching, but still, it was a good movie. I think you will be able to get into this, if you can sit through the movie in one sitting. If not, then you can watch it in parts. That’s what I have been doing with long movies during the pandemic. You can still watch this because it’s not a complete waste of time and is still a good movie. Expect a cameo from Matt Damon.
Alright, that concludes “Space Month.” I hope everyone liked this month. Look out next month when I start back up with this year’s “Black History Movie Month.”
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