A Beautiful, but Less Impressive Effort from Nolan

Rating: 8/10 (21 November 2014)

Interstellar is quite possibly the most anticipated film of the year. And how can it not be? It's a CHRISTOPHER NOLAN film! Chris Nolan has earned his title as one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation. When you have movies like Memento, The Prestige, Inception, and The Dark Knight on your resume, you most definitely have the right to be called that, and with that comes immense expectation and sometimes blind adoration for whatever he does. Like with every film, you've got to go in with an open mind, no matter how much you love the director. So I went into Interstellar, trying to have little expectation, and ended up really enjoying it, but not nearly as much as Nolan's other films.
There are so many GREAT things about Interstellar. The cast is wonderful and acts brilliantly and authentically, particularly Matthew McConaughey, who just keeps impressing audiences more and more as his career progresses. The film is expertly shot, with gorgeous visuals (reminding me of Gravity), and fantastic special effects. Hans Zimmer's score is powerful and complements the scope of the story. There's a great pace to the movie too; it can feel long at times but overall it is never boring. The scientific research to go along with the narrative is impressive as well. There are some nice surprises and twists (typical Nolan) here and there as well and that keeps things interesting. The best thing about Interstellar though, is it's emotional depth. My favourite part of the film doesn't involve any special effects or moments of discovery and exploration, but a showcase of heartbreaking emotion displayed by McConaughey as he sees his family grow up through a series of video messages. It's packed full of great emotional moments that make it memorable. It's actually a lot more attached to its characters emotionally than most of Nolan's other films.
However, towards the end, the film seems to slip from Nolan's grasp. It's been seen before that Nolan sometimes can bite off more than he can chew with plot. Inception was an amazingly complex plot that's concepts had to constantly be explained by the characters to makes sense of things. The Dark Knight Rises ended up becoming too big in scope, and plot holes became so apparent at times. The concepts of Interstellar go all over the place in the final act, to the point where it's so far reaching that you have to force yourself to suspend disbelief. It just doesn't flow, and it's not fleshed out really at all; it just sort of collapses. It's not necessarily incoherent, or bad, it's just too much, and not all that satisfying. It's such a beautiful journey, but runs off the rails. A small thing that pops here and there in the film is poor editing, in which sometimes scenes aren't as clear as they should be. This isn't new to Nolan films; The Dark Knight and Inception suffered from some poor editing in the action sequences.
Overall, Interstellar is a solid movie, and it's apparent that it has been made by a master filmmaker, which makes it enjoyable, but at the same time, makes it more disappointing. It's definitely one of Nolan's less impressive efforts, and I just can't see it as the "genre-defining" film mentioned in the comments of others. Like I mentioned before, there are people that are going to adore whatever Nolan does, no matter how great or not great it is. I can't say I'm one of those people, because I've seen Memento, The Prestige, and all of his other movies and I know how great he can be. Still, go see this movie; it's definitely one to see in theatres, and make your own opinion of it.