A Dazzling Spectacle About Space Voyages. ♦ 70%

Rating: 7/10 (11 November 2014)

While I was calm as space until I found the propaganda take effect on the plot, I couldn't really decipher why flashy humor and melodrama (read sentiments) was in abundance about a journey which requires serious concentration. Of course, the makers, the film lovers, and people who pretend to be in the crowd by advertising they are the film lovers - they all could bring up many reasons about it: "humankind is involved, bud. what do you think humans are? we are emotional, you ignorant piece of space debris!" Others may say: "humor lets them relax, don't you see? Man, Nolan is God. Nolan Nolan Nolan!"
Agreed.
I'm just an opinion-er. The plot starting off depending more on Hans Zimmer than the actual visuals, Interstellar talks about a near- future Earth (non-fiction #1) where crops are dying, dust storms are giving people not rashes, but serious, cancerous lung diseases, and people are forced into agriculture (Orwellian? or simply fascist?). So, the people who are actually farmers but pretend to be geniuses with lots of love for their daughters and sons and baseball, stick drapes to their shoulders and play faulty superheroes. Matthew McConaughey is one such character. He is very good, and I would have used the word "excellent" had it been a weepy melodrama with Meryl Streep as the actress who talks about saving the Earth by committing suicide or something, eventually both sweeping the Oscars. But, no, you have more annoying characters to come.
The superheroes, commissioned by a propagandist Sir Michael Caine through NASA, go on a voyage to find a habitat for humans who are all dying by coughing only or maybe starving, too. Now I was thoroughly impressed by the space spectacle (fiction #1). Double Negative folks are really something; Inception, even. While it will remind you of Gravity, it holds it for too long and this is where melodrama kicks in. Mind you, as we go further, you will find humor in the nooks and corners of the film. You may laugh, you may weep, and all science fiction disappears in thin air, unless you think the inside of a space shuttle in a studio shown in the film gives you the wind of it. Altercations between the characters kicks in, and it seemed they didn't only annoy the audience, but each other, too. Anne Hathaway was annoying, although her character seemed real (non- fiction #2). Expendables 4 is what you will see for the next few minutes. I am starting to recoil from Nolan's notions just because of one particular scene, which takes up almost all of the second half and all we see is the constipated characters doing a interstellar space stunt with a shuttle and their roving vehicle. After the scene, there is heavy humor and the characters testify it. Irony.
The time and space parameters with respect to their linearity and how age matters was wonderful to watch and it was the only new thing that fascinated me in this celluloid. The next interesting stuff were the climax sequences, which you will require at least some basic idea about physics in order to construe. It was like Upstream Colour, but with more CGI and brains.
There is intergalactic fight scene between two astronauts which may not have been put up for humor effect, but I laughed. A villain (non-fiction #3) comes out of nowhere and takes up at least 20 minutes, which further upset me.
The main story as a whole is, thus a mixture of fiction and non- fiction. The science about dimensions was really food for thought and mesmerizing to watch. To ponder upon the final sequences per se will bring you pleasure and you may end up clapping, even, but that is how Nolan's films have been all these years. They flip-flop from one element to another, sometimes without coercing them together. This leads to a pressurized air gap in any normal moviegoer's analysis. I think I may have helped in breaking the pressure.
A film which 1. refreshes propagandist theories about government and survival and holds onto it (which people are somehow trying to forget and move on with their lives and click selfies), and 2. uses thematic elements unfathomable to normal audience cannot be considered a masterpiece, at least in celluloid. Dante's Divine Comedy is understandable, so is Rodin's The Thinker. And so was Nolan's Inception. But, Nolan's Interstellar, which is an artistic space film, but fails in many other sub-genres? You decide.
BOTTOM LINE: Interstellar is a dazzling spectacle and I use the word "spectacle" because it mocks itself in some ways, publishing a story so naive and situational and dramatic, it is a modified version of what ended up in Kubrick's or even Ridley Scott's work-desk garbage bin 20 years ago.
Can be watched with a typical Indian family? YES