Christopher Nolan does it Again

Rating: 9/10 (8 November 2014)

Interstellar: 2014 (Christopher Nolan) â€“ 9 I really don't want to repeat what others have already said about this masterpiece of film making except that I absolutely agree with them. Nolan has certainly exceeded his expectations as a film maker and has created a film that will go down as a work of art. This is not surprising since many of us have already seen his Dark Knight Trilogy and Inception, however Interstellar seems to have taken him to a new level.
Matthew McCoCounaughey has never really been an actor that has caught my attention, and prior to seeing this film I was a little sceptical with him playing the lead role, however within the first fifteen minutes my doubts were simply blown away. The way he takes the character of Cooper, especially the struggle between him wanting to be an engineer (and wanting his children to follow in his footsteps), and the necessity of him being a farmer really created depth to his character, and the way he stood out from the other big name actors such as John Lithgow, Michael Caine, and Matt Damon has clearly demonstrated that he certainly has matured in his acting ability.
The one thing about the film making that really stood out (and if you have read many of my previous reviews you will know that I generally do not focus of the nuts and bolts of the film, but rather the themes and ideas that come out of the film) is the brilliant use of the soundtrack. The sound, and the music, were merged so well into the film that it literally became a living work of art. Nolan has certainly taken the idea of the film out of the the realm of base entertainment and into the world of art.
It is interesting that I have recently finished reading Hawking's book 'A brief History of Time' because, even though Hawkings is never mentioned in the film, having a much better understanding of modern physics helped me see aspects of the story much better than I would have if I had not read it. For instance, Hawkings talks about unified physics though we have yet to reconcile gravitational force with the other forces in the universe. However it is interesting to note (and this comes out in Einstein) how gravity and time appear to be related. This is something that regularly comes out in Interstellar, that is the relationship between time and gravity. This is clearly seen with regards to the black hole, where the closer you get to the gravitational distortion, the slower time goes relative to yourself. Where they only spend an hour on 'Miller's Planet', twenty three years have passed on Earth, to the point that it is believed that the mission has become a failure. This relationship becomes even more relevant near the end of the movie. The other thing that I note in regards to this relation is that gravity is the only force that does not have an equal and opposite force â€“ all gravity does is attract, it does not repel in the same way that the other forces do. So is the case with time â€“ it only ever goes forward â€“ it does not stop, nor does it go backward, and it is the subtlety of these two aspects of our universe that Nolan uses to great advantage.
Another aspect that I noticed in the film is what is termed the tyranny of distance. In our modern world this tyranny has since been defeated. We can travel around the world in less that two days (flying commercially that is), and we can communicate with people almost instantaneously. However, Nolan brings this tyranny back to confront us in force in Interstellar. The scene is initially set that the Earth as a habitable planet is on its last legs, however the solution to the problem is not a quick solution. Even to get to the wormhole to take them to the other galaxy where there is a possibility of a habitable planet (and the characters never know through the entire movie whether the planet exists or not) takes them two years, and once they are through the wormhole while they can receive messages from Earth, they cannot respond, or if they can, their response is very limited. Once again time also comes into play because time is forever marching forward, for both the Earth and the explorers, and the tyranny makes the possibility of the mission being a success ever more unlikely.
Unfortunately I am quickly coming to the end of the word count required for my commentary, and I still have not yet touched upon other themes that come out in the film, such as loneliness (space travel, as indicated in other films, is very lonely) and also some of the ideas of the black hole (where the laws of physics end up breaking down completely), however these are some things that the film also causes us to think about, and I am sure I have only scratched the surface.