Best film I've ever seen

Rating: 10/10 (17 November 2014)

I'm glad I lived long enough to see this film. To me, it's right up there with 2001 A Space Odyssey, It's a Wonderful Life, Schindler's List, The Shawshank Redemption and Citizen Kane.
In the near future, the Earth has fallen prey to a global blight that has killed nearly all crops except corn, which will soon begin to fail. The whole planet is covered in an increasingly large storm of dust and all human activity has reverted to farming in a vain attempt to grow enough food in the failing earth. Nolan doesn't make heavy weather of why it happened, but the blight is breeding in the Earth's nitrogen and is an irreversible extinction event. Coop and his daughter, Murph (the hero and heroine of the film, respectively), study strange poltergeist-like incidents in her room, which leads them to a base which is the remains of NASA, and ultimately leads Coop to his destiny to follow earlier explorers through a stable - and manufactured - wormhole to three possible Earth like planets, encouraged by physicist Professor Brand (Michael Caine). The wormhole's benevolent makers are simply referred to as "them", and we must initially assume that they are rather like the anonymous, God-like creatures who created the Monoliths seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I say initially, but won't spoil the denouement for you.
Coop is the only pilot left in an age when the Moon landings are denied, and farming the only career. He is soon convinced by Brand to lead a final mission to explore the three planets marked as possible new worlds suitable for human habitation. Coop is joined on the "Endurance" by Brand's daughter biologist Amelia (Anne Hathaway), physicist Romilly (David Gyasi); geographer Doyle (Wes Bentley); and two AI robots, TARS (Bill Irwin) and CASE (Josh Stewart). There's a nice humanity about these droids which contrasts with Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey - indeed they provide the very few laughs this movie contains.
The three worlds identified are in the vicinity of a Black Home, Gargantua - which plays a similar role in Interstellar to the Monoliths of 2001: A Space Odyssey. After the approach to Saturn, Coop pilots the Endurance through the wormhole, and they decide to explore the world identified by the (now silent) explorer, Miller. In a terrifying episode, Coop and his companions are stranded for mere three hours on the stupendous oceanic tides of Miller's world, which is so close to the Black Hole that one hour on the planet's surface is dilated to seven years of Earth time.
When Coop returns he finds over 20 years worth of messages waiting for him, and his son and daughter grown up. This scene is perhaps the pivotal moment of the film, for Coop's promise to his daughter that he will return recedes as the movie progresses. McConaughey and Jessica Chastain play these scenes with such searing intensity that it becomes the emotional anchor around which the rest of the story revolves.
None of the above minor spoilers have given away the essentials - or the extraordinary, mind-bending twists that Jonathan Nolan's screenplay provide, by the way. The film grows to a remarkable, moving and mind-bending conclusion that Hans Zimmer's cathedral-like soundtrack resonates to perfectly.
I read somewhere that Interstellar is like a three hour crescendo. That's beautifully put. The three hours fly by, rather like the horrific relativistic episodes that strand our hero Coop further and further from his daughter.
I felt from the first couple of minutes into the film that I was watching one of those films that stay with you forever. On leaving a movie theatre I normally snap out of movie mode and back into the real world. When leaving Interstellar, I found myself almost too choked to speak. I'm still processing this movie days later.
Finally, a hat-tip to young Mackenzie Foy who plays young Murph with such warmth, and believable conviction that she successfully establishes the emotional core of the movie together with McConaughey. It is the bond of these two characters that will ultimately provide an anchor point not just for the story - but the very future of mankind.
Don't worry if you've heard a lot of talk about the heavy reliance on quantum physics and so on. Interstellar is about the nature of love, loss, trust, loneliness and the passage of time, across any and all boundaries. These universals transcend any of Kip Thorne's theoretical physics you may have read about....
Mind-bending yes, but also heartwarming.