Beautiful and breathtaking, but what is the point being made?

Rating: 8/10 (23 November 2014)

The movie takes place sometime in the not so distant future. Crops have been ruined by blight and the focus of the world has moved from technology to agriculture to ensure that the supply can meet the demand for food. In short, Earth is dying and killing mankind in the process. Former NASA pilot Cooper (McConaughey) is now a farmer living with his teen son, ten-year old daughter Murphy and father. Murphy discovers some strange happenings in her rooms with things being knocked off her shelves and Cooper discovers this to be a message which points him to the underground version of NASA.
Cooper enrolls for a mission with 3 other scientist and 2 robots to travel through a worm hole to discover hospitable planets.
The first act of the story concentrates on the father-daughter dynamics (Mackenzie Fay does a great job as the young Murphy) and the second and third act of the story deals with interstellar travel and the possible discovery of other humans who were sent by NASA to search for the hospitable planets and how Cooper manages to fight time, space and gravity to get back to his family billions of miles away. I was unaware that Matt Damon was in the movie, so that was a nice surprise when he appeared and after ten minutes I badly wanted him to disappear.
The movie runs for over 160 minutes, not that you notice. The special effects are amazing and the worm hole, new planets and the space travel have been created very intricately. Nolan has his signature sweeping camera shots and character build up to involve the audience with his story.
I enjoyed the movie but a few things didn't work for me. The core of the movie was food being scarce but beer was plenty. The amount of dust/dirt that was flying around, there was no way to keep anything clean for a period of time – so certain things could have remained on Cooper's farm as it did towards the third act. And the final act has Cooper meeting with his progenies who show no interest in him whatsoever – I mean you would like to hold the hand of your grandfather even if you never met him right? Michael Caine ages beautifully in 23 years (he goes from ancient to more ancient and doesn't look a day older). I would like to share more peeves, but that would be giving away more of the plot.
This is a good movie – one of those you absolutely have to watch on the big screen, but it will left me wondering at the end "What was the point of it all?"