Of the films this fall, the one people seem to be most excited about is Interstellar. Not a big surprise: Christopher Nolan has ripped the big-budget filmmaking championship belt away from Steven Spielberg since the start of the new millennium, peaking with the Dark Knight/Inception. Interstellar, like Nolan’s second tier efforts, is breathtaking to look at, and just misses its high due to holes in the story’s foundation. I mean, I like Matthew McConaughey, but I can’t believe he’d be a NASA pilot.
In some unspecified part of the future, a blight has slowly been destroying the crops on Earth. The earth is dying, including for farmers Cooper (McConaughey), dad Donald (John Lithgow), Coop’s son Tom (Timothee Calamet), and daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy). Donald and Tom are resigned to their fate, but Cooper and Murph are dreamers, believing in ghosts and space. One night, the pair happenstance on a NASA project led by Cooper’s old mentor, Professor Brand (Michael Caine). With the Earth dying, NASA found 3 worlds through a wormhole, and wants Cooper to fly the mission with other crew members Romilly (David Gyasi), Doyle (Wes Bentley), and Brand (Anne Hathaway), the Professor’s daughter. Cooper decides to pilot the mission, leaving his kids behind, knowing that wormhole science could mean age acceleration for Earth and possibly missing his kids growing up.
Interstellar unapologetically references 2001: A Space Odyssey. It wants to be considered THAT good among the sci-fi elite. The movie’s story is the weak link. It does have some parts that get it in the vicinity, especially grounding the space story in real pathos. The Cooper/Murph relationship is set up very nicely, with Murph clearly seeing her father as a hero and her best friend. The wormholes distort time in a way the audience can understand (Event Horizon can sue for a shot by shot remake), and the effect of the time warping are rapid and emotionally jarring. The hour or so build up to Cooper’s fateful decision makes the separation painful and real. However, as the movie enters the wormhole, the plot is stuck between two worlds. It never quite builds successfully upon the effects of the Murph/Coop split until too late, and the space relationships were clearly left on the cutting floor to keep the running time below 3 hours, truncating any emotional effectiveness. As such, any parallels between humanity and science and space travel feel unearned, forcing Interstellar’s science under the critical microscope, which will Neil DeGrasse Tyson will rip to shreds. Interstellar gets its main relationship right, and coasts on awesome special effects to cover up its logic leaps.
Interstellar needs to be seen in the theater, preferably IMAX. The space travel is a spectacular creation. Nolan built several machines to simulate spaceflight without a green screen. The first images of the spacecraft passing Saturn are breathtaking in scope. The wormhole flight is pretty intense and Kubrickian. Ever wonder what a giant tidal wave looks like? You won’t anymore. Nolan even works a black hole into the proceedings. Each world is milked for maximum grandeur in either beauty or inhospitability. Nolan is one of the best at getting an audience to marvel at the wonders he gives life, then unleashes them on the main characters. The director knows how to milk something as simple as a space station docking for maximum dramatic effect.
Matthew McConaughey finally got to save the human race; good for him. His performance here has been described by others as a glue for the story as a whole, an apt description. McConaughey gets the audience to buy in on the pain of leaving his family and how every lost second weighs on him. This pain propels him forward to get the job done and keeps people riveted to the screen. There’s lots of talent on screen here supporting the chill Texan – Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, John Lithgow, David Gyasi, and Wes Bentley (plus a fun secret). All of the actors on hand give their all, but the big key here is Mackenzie Foy, who has about an hour to sell how much she loves her father before they get ripped apart, and then sell the pain and anger towards him. Foy delivers in all of her scenes with the Oscar winner; although it’s easy to get the audience on your side of you’re a sad little girl, Foy sells love and sadness better than Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine here.
I really wanted Interstellar to be my 2001. I like the Kubrick film, but it has too many flaws for me to put it among the elite. Nolan will have to settle, like 2001 for me, to be a stellarly crafted visual masterpiece with a story in need of another draft. We now know that Alfonso Cuaron + Sandra Bullock is greater than Christopher Nolan + Matthew McConaughey.