Ambitious, Startling: Truly Stellar

Rating: 9/10 (28 January 2015)

"Interstellar" (2014), directed by Christopher Nolan, is a wildly ambitious science fiction film, an original film that seems an anomaly in contemporary Hollywood, not based on a franchise or well-known book. With a screenplay written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, it belongs to the tradition of inquisitive sci-fi, following in the path struck by Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) and Roger Zemeckis' "Contact" (1997), seeking to explore deep space and what it holds for humanity. It would be churlish to reveal too much about what McConaughey's crew find through the wormhole, but suffice to say that the planets they do explore feel grounded in reasonable conjecture that reflects the real risks of interplanetary travel. The film in particular captures both the frightening beauty of space, courtesy of Hoyte van Hoytema's luminous, beautiful cinematography. One of the film's most powerful scenes is McConaughey watching twenty-three years worth of recorded messages sent by his children, seeing his daughter Murph grow up in a matter of minutes (played as a child by Mackenzie Foy and as an adult by Jessica Chastain), a devastating commentary on what is known as "spacetime".
The scenes on Earth are equally compelling, the first act shows a world not so far in the future suffering from a blight that has ravaged crops across the globe. McConaughey and his family live in the American Midwest which is dominated by dust storms; Nolan cleverly intercuts reminiscences from those who survived the dustbowl during the Great Depression to underline the connection with the past.
It's a sign of Nolan's standing that he can pull together such a fine cast: Oscar-winner McConaughey is supported by Anne Hathaway, Academy-award nominee Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Michael Caine with Bill Irwin providing the voice of the dryly acerbic robot TARS. Nolan deftly juggles both the spectacle (provided by both models for the spaceships and computer-generated imagery) and the characters, creating a fully-rounded film where we're invested in the drama of McConaughey longing to return to his children: it's this trust in emotion rather than the shock and awe of visual effects that gives the film its heart and soul and sets it apart from other Hollywood blockbusters.
Nolan's film has an aspiration to greatness that shames all other films in its league; daringly original and ultimately moving, propelled by its organ-driven Hans Zimmer score. Its conclusion though may be too pat, more wish-fulfilment than reality. Yet taking the movie as a whole, it's a forgivable slip in the scheme of a much grander vision.