The best science-fiction drama I've seen since Kubrick's 2001

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2018)

It has been a while since I watched this movie for the first time. I have rewatched it several times ever since, just yesterday actually. That motivated me to finally write a review.
Interstellar is sort of a hybrid-movie. It's not fully drama, but not fully sci-fi either. It's pretty much a perfect mixture as in Chris Nolan absolutely masters the addition of a very personal and human element in the story.
The movie starts out like a drama. We get introduced to a broken man (Cooper) with his kids and his farm. Step by step, we realize that this family is living on a pre-apocalyptic earth which runs out of food for the people who inhabit it.
The real science-fiction comes in later, after the theme of the Father-Daughter-relationship is properly established. That way, we experience the entire movie with all its epicness with this deeply personal aspect in the back of our minds. Especially the first half of the movie is tremendously strong and evoked emotions for me that I never thought I could feel in the science fiction genre.
Also, a Christopher Nolan movie wouldn't be a Christopher Nolan movie if it didn't incorporate a mind-bending element in some way. In Interstellar's case, it is a wormhole. A wormhole and the question who put it there. The plot keeps a decent amount of complexity throughout the majority of the picture. In more laid-back moments during watching it, there was always this question of 'what's all this for? Why did things happen like they did?'. It kept me interested until the end, when I got presented an answer that was complicated, yet satisfying.
Another ingenius part of the movie is just ho well put-together it is. The scenery on earth with the farm, the corn and the dust is so authentic, so real and only adds to the credibility of the characters' situation. Then of course, there's the insane vastness, endlessness of the universe which Nolan and Hoyte van Hoytema, the director of photography, display oh so perfectly. On top, every scene beholds so many details, things other directors wouldn't mind during the production of a movie of that scale. All the visual goodies combined with Hans Zimmer's music - which is truly outstanding, some of his best work here - Interstellar makes a sci-fi epic that, through the proximity and personality that's created, is truly one-of-a-kind. Every element works exactly as it should, and as soon as one fully understood that plot, it becomes so rewatchable, despite a runtime of just short of three hours.
Interstellar as a whole isn't comparable to sci-fi blockbusters such as Star Trek, Star Wars or Blade Runner. And yet, it still remains a blockbuster just as much as it is a drama. I would say the only movie in that genre (and there aren't many of them in the first place) and competes - or even exceeds - Interstellar is Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A space odyssey.
If you go into Interstellar with a bit of patience and will to think a little while watching, you'll be treated with one of the most visually appealing sci-fi dramas ever.