Interstellar? More like insipid.

Rating: 5/10 (25 October 2015)

2001, anyone? That brilliant piece of filmmaking that challenged us to do something that mainstream Hollywood has long since shelved: Think. Use your wonderful brains, people! Remember that films don't have to be simply a means to an end; they can push past our own intellectual limitations, establish beautifully thought-provoking horizons just beyond our reach, and best of all, can be memorable not for what they say, but for what they do. It physically pains me to see promising filmmakers with the appropriate intellectual boundlessness to follow in Kubrick's footsteps pushed to the side in favour of bland individuals with little more than visuals and violence in their creative arsenal. Admittedly, I enjoy my CGI extravaganzas as much as the next guy, and that is why Interstellar is a six-and-a-half-star film in my book. As far as visuals go, it's really, well, stellar. But it is simply too unsatisfying and draws too many parallels with 2001 (without delivering on them) to be considered as anything more.
Here's the rundown: Earth is dying. Sandstorms are consuming the world (Mad Max prequel?). Humanity is losing hope. It's all very bleak, but concepts often are. In fact, as far as original settings go, it's rather stirring. The settings in most pre-apocalyptic films are already basically destroyed, but in Interstellar, the bleak atmosphere of impending destruction is done rather well. It invoked within me a surprisingly genuine lack of hope. But this is mostly owing to the fact that this segment of the film was shot in rural Alberta, which is pretty close to where I live, so I was able to recognize the deterioration of the landscape, having been there many times in my childhood.
Matthew Mcconaughey stars as Cooper, a retired pilot working on the farm with his son, daughter, and dad. I've always found Mcconaughey's performances to be rather cloying, since the first film I saw him in was Mud and he fit so perfectly into the role that I can't exactly see him doing anything else. Coop's daughter, Murph, finds extraterrestrial messages that send them off to the secret NASA headquarters, which are surprisingly close to their house. Coop meets the head of NASA (Michael Caine) and his daughter (Anne Hathaway). He is then offered the opportunity to leave Earth to find a new home for humanity, which he reluctantly accepts (to the selfish ire of Murph).
When the space scenes are actually in space (Saturn, the wormhole, and the black hole), they are undeniably breathtaking. There is a particularly beautiful shot in which the spaceship, little more than a speck in the distance, silently glides past Saturn, kindling a sense of the emptiness, loneliness, and most importantly, sheer vastness of space. But once we step inside the ship, the story and narrative begin to lose their momentum as the actors discuss love, nature, and all sorts of misguided ideas with all the intelligence of, well, actors. The scientific discussions are sort of engaging, but the film would have succeeded just as well had science been left undisturbed.
Since we're on the topic of science, let me say this: I don't understand why people revel in Interstellar's scientific accuracy. Films are not textbooks, and if you think they are, you'd probably be better off reading a textbook. You might as well go after The Matrix for being an affront to the laws of physics. And the science in Interstellar is basic stuff. It's thin, easily understood, and easily applied. Notice 2001 had no science. There were no explanations, scientific discussions, nothing. But the question remains: did we need them? Of course not.
Anyway, back to Interstellar. After they go through the wormhole (which was put there by unknown sentient beings), they arrive at a solar system orbiting a black hole which has three promising planets. Black holes mess with time, and that concept is played with rather effectively, except for the fact that it turns Murph into an annoyed, peevish Jessica Chastain who takes up too much screen time.
And then one of the single most viscous and ridiculous monologues about love takes place. It would have been fine, had Nolan realized that love and science don't mix, and when they do, it just sounds ridiculous. But it happens, and its saccharine sentimentality induces cringes of a ridiculous magnitude. Your reaction to this scene (and perhaps the whole film) is a testimony to your cynicism. Needless to say, this scene made me feel like dung, and when Matt Damon's character sees it fit to do the same thing, I felt even worse. The script is long-winded and pretentious, saying too much when saying less would have a greater effect.
However, the docking scene is excellent, a visual marvel among visual marvels, a raucous nod to 2001 that forcefully pushes past Kubrick's weightless spaceship ballet into something that is stunningly intense, but stunningly serene as well.
Interstellar's climax is extremely disappointing, a strange mix-up between 2001 and Deus Ex Machina that has the audacity to present itself as profound. Given the buildup of the hopeless "no escape" feeling generated by the first bit of the film, the ending is a blatant narrative cop-out that was hastily strung in when the Nolans realized that they already had way too many pages and had to figure out a way to end it, and fast. Which they do, and the audience is greatly the worse for it.
Interstellar is a film trapped by the impossibility of its own concept to find itself at a happy ending, its blandly scripted and acted characters, and its desire to be something more, without having the intellectual horsepower and narrative creativity to do so. Perhaps if Interstellar slimmed itself down by discarding its plot, characters, and dialogue, it could have been a fantastic theoretical documentary that swept us into a stunning unknown.