Shock and awe

Rating: 8/10 (15 December 2014)

Despite an ear-splitting soundtrack that often threatens to drown out important dialog, Interstellar is a profound hit, a love child of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact. Its effects are special, its casting top notch, and its meaning sufficiently ambiguous. In other words, this is a fairly typical Christopher Nolan movie.
In the movie, Earth is suffering through historic blight so bad that huge dust storms block out most sunlight and cause major breathing problems for the humans. (And probably the animals, too.) Such has been the sad state of affairs for some time; America in particular has become an agrarian society. Unfortunately, it's a failing society, and it's only a matter of time before the planet is uninhabitable by mankind.
Enter ex-scientist/pilot Coop (Matthew McConaughey) who's now a single dad raising two precocious kids along with his father in law. Through a series of plausible coincidences, Coop and his daughter Murphy stumble upon plans to send a manned mission to another galaxy by use of a wormhole - and those in charge want Coop to be the pilot. The idea is that the spacecraft Endurance, piloted by Coop, will fly through the wormhole and land on one or more of three potentially life-sustaining (according to data sent back by probes) planets. Once a suitable planet has been located, citizens of Earth will be transported via space stations - assuming NASA scientist Dr. Brand (Michael Caine) can solve the gravity-is-a-harsh-mistress problem.
Aboard the Endurance with Coop are scientists Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), Romily, and Doyle, along with robots TARS and CASE. That they do enter the wormhole and come out in a wholly different galaxy (the movie should have been called Intergalactic, right?) is not a spoiler. The trouble is that at least one of the three planet candidates is very close to a large black hole, ominously named Gargantua. What if this planet is the best alternative to Earth? Can't be safe to be so close to a black hole; luckily, the planet's mass is large enough to keep it from passing Gargantua's event horizon, so all is good. Well, good as I can make it without explaining what troubles Coop and crew run into, and that could ruin things for you, dear viewer.
It's possible some will find this movie to be a little overplotted (yet too vague), with a surfeit of exposition to help things along. This is necessary in part, though, because of two different timelines - that of Coop in the far-off galaxy and that of Murph back on Earth itself. And this is because of a time slip that Coop encounters that slows time for him relative to Earth time, to the tune of one outer-space minute equaling several years on Earth.
Admittedly, there were moments when I felt like I'd missed something - that's attributable to how quickly Nolan propels the plot and to how damnably loud the soundtrack is at times. Hans Zimmer's score is excellent, but clearly someone figured that turning it up to 11 was the way to go. I mean, why allow an intricate plot get in the way of booming, sweeping sounds? Also, like Kubrick's 2001, the final twenty minutes can be puzzling. There's not much more that can be said about this that won't reveal something important. I found it fascinating and satisfying and in keeping with the rest of the movie. Perhaps not all loose ends are tied up at the end, but I'm one of those who feels that's a good thing.
Nolan's Interstellar is spectacle supported by solid science and a fertile imagination. If the Academy Awards included only five nominees for Best Picture, this film probably wouldn't make the cut - but it should be among the top ten for the year and thus earn such a nomination, along with some for sound and effects.