To the stars - away from the common sense!

Rating: 1/10 (9 November 2014)

This year is not very good for the sci-fi cinematography. Besides multiple unintentional parodies of the genre (like X-Men: Days of Future Past), there was actually only one big-budget movie worth watching: On the Edge of Tomorrow. It seems like Tom Cruise is one of the few Hollywood stars able to wisely pick roles. His recent achievements leave little to desire: Valkyrie, or Knight and Day are good at worst, with the high pitch of Oblivion. Are we able to say the same about Matthew McConaughey?
Unfortunately, not. Although his recent movies are above average (True Detective or Dallas Buyers Club), the latest picture he plays in, Interstellar (directed by Christopher Nolan and written by him and his brother), is a huge letdown and misunderstanding. I don't think anyone being fond of "hard" science-fiction stories will like it. Here is why.
Firstly, the story. It is in general similar to Mission to Mars or The Red Planet, where the handful of daredevils are put in the spaceship to venture on a mission, which result will impact the whole human race. Unfortunately, which is the usual problem in this case, the whole plot is neither engaging, nor entertaining. We have a bunch of uninteresting people making uninteresting things in space. Maybe because of the long time span of the picture, the viewer quickly gets bored and does not care about the main characters. Besides, the space adventure is mixed with the very personal story of the father trying to save his children (which is also a time-consuming thread here). Anyway, the main conclusion of Interstellar is the banal statement that "love is the most important thing in the world". Do we really need to sit for almost three hours in the cinema to get this?
By coincidence, the second problem is the length of the movie. Currently, when the the picture is recorded not on the tape, but in the digital medium, every director tries to surpass his rivals by creating as long movie as possible. Maybe it is supposed to be the emblem of his might, skills or wisdom? I have no idea, but the fact is that the contemporary blockbusters are difficult to watch especially because they last for three or more hours, having the plot for only half of this time. This is exactly the case with Interstellar. The presented story is far from complex, and could easily fit in two hours. In fact, the first forty minutes of the movie have nothing to do with the rest of the story and could be recapitulated by the narrator in two sentences...
This film tries to treat the topic of interstellar travel seriously. Unfortunately, some ideas are presented according to our current knowledge of physics and astronomy, while others are just stupid. This mixture makes the suspension of disbelief, necessary to enjoy such movie, impossible to attain. On one side we have wormholes, black holes, higher dimensions of space and the silence of the void. On the other hand, there is totally unconvincing reality of the XXI century, where farmers are more valuable than engineers (guys, really?) and tomography is (mysteriously) gone. In one scene the physicist explains convincingly the work regime of the wormhole (by the way, this scene is IDENTICAL to the one from the far better Event Horizon). In another, we see the mission robot TARS, being the member of the crew. I know that humanoid machines from fifties seem ridiculous today (like the one from The Day The Earth Stood Still), but they are really the top quality idea compared to the robots depicted in Interstellar. It is difficult to believe someone created such a model and the whole crew agreed to put it the picture! It's almost like the the wooden planet from the initial script of Alien 3...
The number of errors and non-logical events is just amazing. Anyone complaining about the lack of consistency in Prometheus (which was also much better than this one) will have the real hunting ground here. In fact, the more time passes after seeing the movie, the more nonsenses are detected. Don't think about this too much, anyway, its not worthy...
The Nolan brothers used their imagination a little bit too much in the final part of the story, where the word "magic" (interchangeable with "nonsense") comes to mind. As the result, the viewer is left at the end indifferent to what is presented on the screen and does not care about the fate of the characters... Please recall the infamous Black Hole, and You will have the impression of what is going on here...
The music is of course the extremely important part of every picture. If the composer knows his craft, the soundtrack complements the images, creating the flawless combo (as was in Terminator, Starship Troopers, Aliens, etc.). Here we have the attempt to create the epic atmosphere, but the events shown on screen are rather uninteresting, therefore the resulting impression is just the overwhelming noise, making the viewer angry instead of touching or moving him.
Unfortunately, it seems like making a good movie about the interstellar travel is extremely difficult. People like to go to the movies and see a good story. There are multiple requirements for the entertaining movie: the mystery, the convincing scenery, the real characters we could care about, finally, the emotional strain, often related to the dangers our protagonists are exposed to. Interstellar does not offer anything of these. It is a long and boring sermon about the future of Mankind in the universe, pretending to be the science-fiction movie. With this picture Christopher Nolan proved his only memorable work was Prestige and the Batman trilogy was not the accident, but the clear sign that his main achievements in Hollywood will be too long, boring and utterly disappointing pictures, initially rising hopes for a good time spent in the cinema, but leaving in a complete, sad disillusion after all.