An emotional journey through space

Rating: 9/10 (24 August 2015)

The movie begins with a few clichÃ©s - a flashback, another bad dream, a bunch of old people reminiscing events of the past. From the very beginning, the viewer is shown imagery of The Blight - a plague that has destroyed most of the food resources on the planet. Dust storms have ravaged the earth and humanity is facing extinction. Farming has become the main occupation and all other industries have taken a back seat, owing to the scarcity of food.
Brilliantly played by Matthew McConaughey, Cooper, once NASA Astronaut, now turned farmer, refuses to accept living with the animalistic instincts that everyone else has resorted to in this period of crisis. The love for Science and the capability of human beings as creators still have him captivated, which can clearly be seen when he uses his ingenious abilities to bend technology to his will.
Cooper lives with his kids, Tom and Murphy, and his father-in-law, Donald in a simple, suburban farmhouse. Murphy finds strange anomalies in her room which Cooper identifies as coordinates in binary.
And then starts a journey which can only be seen to believe its grandeur. Cooper follows the coordinates to discover NASA still under operation. He is invited on a mission to save humanity, which may mean that he will never see his family again. Through amazingly realistic acting performances by both McConaughey and Michael Caine, one gets hints of the true motivations and internal conflicts in the characters.
Cooper, being their most competent pilot, decides to assist NASA in its mission. This is where one sees the results of a stellar (pun intended) effort put in the visual effects for the movie. The imagery of interstellar space and wormholes created by the VFX team is striking in its scientific accuracy, and simply beautiful. It sucks the viewer right into the narrative and never lets him go. For the next two hours, the viewer's heart takes as many dives and turns as the lonely journey of the crew of the Endurance, a team of four humans and two support robots. The robots are exceptionally well voice-acted, with their tongue-in-cheek humor providing a calming change of pace in an otherwise tense narrative.
Adding to the extremely powerful atmosphere is Hans Zimmer's gripping music, which is no surprise, considering the level of dexterity we have come to expect from Zimmer. The soundtrack is similar in tones to his other works, such as The Dark Knight and Inception, but it adds a sense of innocence and childish wonder to the atmosphere. While pumping you up for the numerous action-packed sequences, it periodically adopts a darker and deeper tone to signify the desperation felt by the crew and the entire human race. The piece which plays in the background of the ending credits is one of the best melodies I have ever heard.
All of this is put together in such seamless interpolation by Nolan that it is difficult, maybe even impossible, for words to capture the wizardry he achieved on screen. Interstellar may very well be Nolan's greatest masterpiece yet.