A rare gem of the modern cinema.

Rating: 8/10 (23 November 2014)

In the near future, climate change takes its toll, slowly but surely wiping out food crops. An ex NASA pilot Cooper and his daughter Murphy comes across a gravitational anomaly, which Murphy thought as a ghost. From one of the anomalies, they get a binary code of a location. They go there and find that it's a new NASA site. As one of NASA's best, Cooper is offered a place for the interstellar journey through a black hole in saving the human race by way of finding a new home, a new planet, for the whole species. He takes the position, despite Murphy's disagreement. He goes with Dr. Amanda Brand, Doyle, Romilly, and the robot TARS. And after fetching the Endurance module and the robot CASE, they go in through the black hole near Saturn to visit the three possible new worlds. Brand also experience the 'ghost' as Murphy did. The first world has a great time-slippage anomaly where an hour spent there equals roughly seven years on earth. Cooper and Brand argue about it, he wants to go there to finish the mission fast and go home to Murphy, while Brand rejects it due to the time slippage. They eventually go there, but immediately gets swept away by a gigantic tidal wave. Brand insists on fetching the data pack, thus taking more time, claiming Doyle's life, temporarily disrupting the lander craft. Seemingly unaffected, they ultimately return to Romilly, who have aged 23 years due to the time- slippage.
Finding the first world a failure, they then go to the second world, Dr. Mann's world. They find Mann, literally waking him from death in cryo-stasis. Based on Mann's data, the team decides to continue and set up a pioneer colony site. But Mann, surrendering to his primal urges, betray the team in his effort to go back home, killing Romilly while doing so. Apparently, Mann's data was all lies. He manages to steal one lander and tries to board the Endurance module as the team gives chase. But Mann can't dock the lander well. He ends up blowing parts of the Endurance when he forces to dock. Cooper and Brand manages to reclaim the Endurance though through a risky stunt. Cooper programs CASE to steer the Endurance to the third world. But after Brand gets in the module, Cooper breaks away and sacrifices himself and TARS, after knowing that the life support can support only one person. Cooper only inside his space-suit and TARS with him, gets sucked into the Gargantua black hole. But strangely through the black hole Cooper arrives floating in a crude space-time continuum that's only limited to the back side of Murphy's room back in time. He finds out now he is the Murphy's 'ghost'. He continues on relaying the codes Murphy found in the past, and also the quantum data TARS collected. After all data is code-relayed, Cooper gets sucked out of the continuum. He gets picked up and brought to the space station orbiting Saturn, the human's new home made with Murphy's data. Cooper comes to and gets reunited with the now old Murphy.
The story is just a great example of how a great and detailed epic can be told in the modern era. At almost three hours duration, it quite pushes the boundaries of the contemporary moviegoers' boredom tolerance level. But the movie is so great that it quite literally nailed me to the chair, forcing me to hold my bladder almost through the whole third act LOL. It makes the movie detailed on both the emotional and the scientific fiction content. Knowing it's another of Christopher Nolan's sci-fi, I anticipated the movie to be just like The Matrix (1999) and Inception (2010), which I have to watch more than twice to fully understand the grand story. But thankfully Sci-Fi is one of my favorite genres besides Action and Adventure. Thus watching Paycheck (2003), and other astronauts and time-travel movies really pays off.
I really like how the movie really pays attention to making a realistic depiction of theoretical quantum physics ideas about black holes, gravitation, time slippage, and ultimately space-time continuum. And those depictions are really great works. Watching at IMAX 2D, I really enjoy the journey through the black hole, the giant tidal wave, and other scenic shots. The movie also takes great advantage of the consequences of the physics, especially the time slippage and space travels issues. The scene where Rom aged 23 years in a few hours, the time-to-time shots of Murphy growing old, the final reunification of Cooper and Murphy are great scenes that really touches the heart, though it sure needs a lot of understanding to discern them.
The acting overall is one job. Matthew McConaughey did a great job in both depicting the remorseful father and the calm risk-taker ace pilot. Anne Hathaway did very good in giving balance to the story, although I don't think her role is any more significant than that balancing purposes. Jessica Chastain is also giving great emotional balance to the other angle of the story. Michael Caine's performance quite completes the story for a side villain. But actually Matt Damon really grabs the spot for the complementary villain.
My final say is that Interstellar (2014) deserves it's place in the best movies list everywhere. An 8 out of 10 score is my rating for this movie. It's indeed a rare find of a gem among today's modern cinema.