Nolan's best film yet.

Rating: 10/10 (25 March 2015)

Interstellar is Christopher Nolan's ninth movie. Practically all of his films up to Interstellar have been of great quality and in my opinion he has yet to make a forgettable movie. Initially Spielberg was to direct this movie but in hindsight I think Nolan turned out to be a better candidate. I didn't go see it in the theater but after having seen it I wish I had. This is definitely a movie worth seeing in IMAX. It was a courageous gamble to make a movie on such complex subjects in a Hollywood culture where people don't care too much about philosophy or physics in movies. However, Interstellar turned out to be more than just a showcase of hypotheses to make Sci-Fi fans drool.
As before, Nolan has turned a difficult subject into art. Slow build-up, raw emotion, dark and epic storytelling and as always great plot twists to accommodate Nolan's style of directing. An experimental and out-of-the-box style of writing that we recognize from films like Memento and Inception have yet again produced an interesting storyline with the ontological paradox from the Tesseract being the story's pinnacle. Just like in some of his previous movies you are often referred to earlier gained information, and it doesn't make the movie easy to watch at first. There's a lot of information en story put in just under three hours and it keeps on going so you barely have time to grab a beverage if you want to keep up.
Nolan chose 35mm film over digital recordings which I thought was neat. Also the visual effects done by Double Negative were fabulous. They did a lot of shots with miniatures and screens, thus preventing a CGI- fest which is at least admirable when computer graphics are taking over practical effects more and more. His loyal contacts Michael Caine and Hans Zimmer have again created a Nolanesque atmosphere and I especially feel I need to credit Zimmer here for doing a splendid job. Hans created the score of the movie with the exact mood this film needed with underlying themes such as sacrifice, despair, psychology, survival instinct and almost religiously infinity, significance and existence.
For a fan of science-fiction movies like me the topics in Interstellar were also great; space-colonization, multidimensional, apocalypse, relativity etcetera. But I also think it's of utmost importance that a science-fiction movie feels authentic and plausible. Astrophysicist Kip Thorne consulted Nolan throughout the writing to make the story abide to the laws of science for the most part. Aside of that, Interstellar does make a lot of implications on gravitational singularity that exceed what we know to be established and factual to create 'the equation of gravity' using Einstein's relativity and quantum mechanics. Nolan uses these hypotheses along with established science and in doing so he exploits implication to create an amazing plot. So it's hard to critique the math and science behind Interstellar because it never claimed to be factual and merely portrays possible scenarios.
After watching it twice I can better appreciate the movie for being so layered and for all the information it holds. McConaughey and Damon's acting were terrific and felt really human. The characters overall were subtle in their function and even the role of T.A.R.S. felt original. The only downside I think was that the movies over- explains situations a lot instead of leaving it to the viewer to figure it out. I guess they did this to lower the film's entry-level being really complex already and being a blockbuster. It felt like it erased some of the authenticity like you would get in other movies. Perhaps I'd like to think Nolan is the next Kubrick, who knows.
In any case, I was greatly impressed with Interstellar and I will need to do a revisit in a couple of months to confirm my verdict. But with the Matrix-like impact this movie made I'm giving it a 10 out of 10 and am ranking it second on my list, right behind The Matrix.