A MUST WATCH (preferably in IMAX) !!

Rating: 8/10 (27 October 2019)

Christopher Nolan holds a special place among Hollywood's top billed directors for his unique credo of creating mammoth blockbusters which venture beyond being a slam-bang visual spectacle to engage the viewers' grey matter. After The Dark Knight Rises, the triumphant capping to a glorious Gotham trilogy and nested, nebulous dreamscapes of Inception, with Interstellar, Nolan has set his sight quite literally beyond the visible horizon. As in the case of excellent Inception, Nolan is again fiddling with one of his pet themes of asymmetric time lines across one or more planes. The vastly differing speeds of passage of times between earth and in space, especially close to black holes.

In the not so distant future, the survival of human beings on earth is at peril. Global warming and ecological degradation induced blights have killed most of our food crops and corn is the sole surviving food crop. The human race is on the brink of a near certain extinction through starvation and diseases induced frequent dust storms. The human race is pushed back to pre-industrial agrarian age to sustain life on the planet where schools train students to become food-growers of the future.
Cooper (Mathew McConaughey), a widower, former NASA pilot turned forced farmer, lives in rural America with his son Tom, daughter Murph and father-in-law. Murph is an intelligent and curious kid who shares a deep bond with her father. Strange events involving the bookshelf of their home set Cooper and Murph in a journey which leads them to a secret installation which happens to be a near defunct NASA headed by Professor Brand (Michale Caine) and his team including the Professor's daughter, Amelia (Anne Hathaway).
Professor Brand states that they are planning to send a team of astronauts on an inter-galactic mission to find new planets suitable for human inhabitation. To this end, the mission would make use of a large wormhole that had appeared mysteriously near Saturn some years ago. Brand urges Cooper to be the pilot of this mission as the other members have no flying experience outside a simulator. Cooper accepts the offer much to the chagrin of Murph who believes that this is dangerous and could well be an one-way journey. Nevertheless, Cooper sets out on this daredevil mission after making a solemn promise to Murph to return from the mission, no matter what the circumstances.
It is also revealed that NASA under Professor Brand has been working on utilizing the mysterious wormhole for several years to find new inhabitable planets in far away galaxies to replace the earth which is withering in a wasting dust bowl. They have already sent several manned probes - called Lazarus missions - through the said wormhole and three of them such probes have been transmitting some basic signals indicating potential destinations which could hold promise for humanity. Brand wants Cooper to lead a mission through the wormhole to explore these three planets for possibilities of human sustenance. Meanwhile, Brand is also working on earth in solving an equation which could help escape earth's gravity and enable a larger mission to transport humans from earth to a planet to be located by Cooper and his team. If the transport of humans at such a large scale to the new planet, which is Plan A, fails to succeed, Brand has devised a Plan B which involves creating a new settlement on the new planet from a collection of fertilized embryos being transported along with Cooper and his team.
Cooper's team includes Amelia Brand, physicist Romilly, geographer Doyle, and two multi-purpose artificially intelligent robots- CASE and TARS. Their long mission involves an initial docking with a rotating space station Endurance which would, in turn, carry them on a two year long trip to Saturn in hypersleep mode. Thereafter, they traverse through the wormhole to reach a distant galaxy where they find that the three planets to be explored by them - Miller, Mann & Edmunds (named after the pilots who had flown on the initial Lazarus missions and reached those planets) - are orbiting around a super massive black hole called Gargantua.
The intense gravity of the black hole distorts space time in such a way that one hour in a planet orbiting near the black hole could be the equivalent of seven years in the earth time. This poses an additional constraint of time on Cooper's team over and above the limitation of fuel to explore these planets and return to earth before the human race embraces a painful extinction through starvation. While Cooper and team are busy on their mission which skews their time line, several decades pass on earth, where we find that the now grown up Murph (Jessica Chastain), a brilliant astrophysicist, is assisting Professor Brand in solving the equation while Tom (Casey Affleck) is struggling to sustain the farm and save his family.
What happens to Cooper and his team as they set out to explore these three planets ? Could they explore all the three planets ? Could they identify a planet hospitable to human sustenance ? Did Professor Brand solve the equation that could help him operationalise Plan A ? Could Cooper keep his promise to Murph ? Could Cooper's team find the planet in time to save the human race from extinction ? How did the worm hole near Saturn come about in the first place ? Who had put it there ? An technologically advanced race of aliens ? Or super-evolved humans ? Why would such an advanced race want to help us in the first place ? The movie answers most of these questions through a narrative spanning across galaxies while raising several others as we walk out of the movie hall. Remember, the scene in Inception where a whole city folds in half over itself.. Suffice to say that the Nolans have written Interstellar in manner quite similar to Inception's city such that the entire movie folds over itself as it proceeds to its conclusion.
This is a movie which engages, nay, demands the viewer's undivided attention to understand the proceedings on screen. In fact, it would help a great deal if we go prepared with some basic understanding about stuff like black holes, worm holes and time travel (Click here for a quick primer from Stephen Hawkings himself).
The movie checks several key elements which we have come to identify as a Nolan template - be it dealing in wildly ambitious themes dealing with cerebral &/or psychological conflicts, exceptional set pieces, movies which kindle several questions which linger on long after viewing and which requires repeat viewings & further reading for better understanding and above all movies which are superlatively entertaining. While it is true that the movie deals with dense and theoretical concepts in physics, it is to the credit of Nolan that he renders most of these accessible within a narrative which results in a momentous movie that stretches the horizons of a Hollywood blockbuster. Yet, at its very core, this is a very human drama involving the emotional bond between a daughter and her doting father which places love as a force which transcends all dimensions -hitherto known and unknown. While a drama like this can be set in any period or geography, Nolan, true to his penchant, has chosen to stage this on an interstellar scale, in a very literal sense.
While not a very challenging role in the league of Dallas Buyers Club, Academy Award winner McConaughey sparkles in the role of Cooper and is effective especially in his scenes as a vulnerable and emotionally conflicted father. But, it is Mackenzie Foy who plays the young Murph whose performance which tops the charts among a cast which includes such renowned performers as regular Nolan collaborator Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway among others. While Hans Zimmer's score puts the galactic proceedings on an overdrive with a thumping score, Hoyt Van Hoytema, who has handled the camera in the absence of Nolan regular Wally Pfister, captures the action in space in visuals which are simply overwhelming.
Interstellar does not trump the towering 2001 - A Space Odyssey, which remains the definitive touchstone for a space movie. Yet, Nolan's movie, despite its calculated cinematic liberties, succeeds in bridging the narrative of a Hollywood blockbuster to cutting edge concepts in space science (thanks to his collaboration with renowned astrophysicist Kip Thorne), which are accessible to the commons. And, while it may, on the surface, appear to be a sensational sci-fi flick set in space packed with resplendent visuals and set-pieces, Nolan has suffused its core with the power of love and bonding in what could well be his most heartfelt movie till date.