Not the epic it claims to be.

Rating: 4/10 (8 November 2014)

It's a big film, a big achievement and by no means a bad film but I'm not quite sure what sort of film it is and that's where the problem lies for me. It has elements of all the things I like, at times it's a Hard (ish) Sci-Fi flick with a big budget, big production values and it's all weaved together with a heartfelt simple story of a relationship between a father and daughter, the problem is, in trying to be all of these things at once it manages to be none of them in a satisfactory manner. It's a strange three hours watching because it's a rather schizophrenic piece that constantly flirts with one style after another, never quite making a commitment to what it wants to be. I have have no qualm with films that break the traditional rules of structure or style if it works and I'm more than open to a big blockbuster prizing open peoples minds a bit (I loved the recent Horns that did exactly that with much success and a tiny budget to boot) but here it just didn't work for me because I felt every jerk of style and pace was simply used as padding to compensate for a lack of clear storytelling, it really felt like a bit of 'style of substance' imagery and/or dialogue was slotted in every time the audience started to struggle with the plot or got bored with the visuals. So what's the film about? (Don't worry you'll get no spoilers here) Essentially it pays homage to a lot of Sci-Fi gone by, most notably 2001 A Space Odyssey, big shoes to fill indeed! so is the partnership of Christopher Nolan and his brother as good as Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick?...err, no. It's quite simple, this isn't a film about spaceships or relativity, it's a story about a man's love for his daughter and his struggle to be a good dad. That's it, so why the need for all the space travel and science? Well I don't know to be honest, it dabbles with big questions about the meaning of life, the universe and everything but doesn't really touch them because the film isn't actually about the big picture, it's an intimate look at one family's relationships - so why then the constant nod towards showing the massive scope? I'm not sure, it certainly don't give any helpful perspective to the protagonist's plight. Visually this is no Gravity and most of the time the cinematography is well...dull, I saw it in IMAX and with hindsight there was no need because like I say the audience isn't being pushed outwards towards answering the big questions, it's being pulled in and constantly being asked to put the those big issues aside and look at things from a more delicate personal perspective of one man and how it affects his life. If you're expecting big beautiful futuristic images of technology and vistas of space then you'll be disappointed, it's a very low fi look (aside from the youngster pleasing Minecraft style robots which are admittedly rather cool) which may have been intentional to kind of dupe audiences into thinking it's a sincere, intelligent application of science but it's not. This isn't Hard Sci-Fi at all, in fact it's quite squishy and veritably slushy most of the time, Nolan happily puts his science text book down and picks up his copy of Mills and Boon whenever he feels the need to do so (a few moments have Titanic quality dialogue to them) so don't expect anything more believable than an episode of Doctor Who when it come to the science side of things, he just visually fills the screen with a lot of retro 70's looking dials and dirt, almost trying to make you think you're watching found footage of an old NASA launch which I can only assume is to make the more impressionable of the audience think they're seeing something very intelligent going on but sadly this isn't the case. There's no point in trying to make sense of anything and why should you, it's a Hollywood film after all and not a science lecture so just enjoy the (rather dull looking and slow) ride and don't ask questions! this would all be fine if I didn't constantly feel like Nolan was trying to dupe me into thinking that this was some form of profound masterpiece, why mis-sell the film? there's nothing wrong with a bit of 'by the numbers' schmaltz, I've no problem with that but why try to hide it? Hopefully you won't begin to put the jigsaw pieces together until after I did about what's actually happening but you'd have to be pretty slow not to cotton on until the obvious 'and now we explain it all quite vaguely' segment at the end that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of quantum leap. So what is this this film? It's not a big action flick, it's not a realistic piece of Hard Sci-Fi and it's too long and boring to be a relationship piece. It certainly has it's moments with plenty of time in the three hours to find them and it did actually bring me to tears a few times (The introduction of Matt Damon's cameo is just a momentary piece of exposition but it knocked me sideways) The performances are great throughout and the cinematography is well, adequate I guess, it was rather bland and pedestrian to my eye but maybe that's just me. As I say, I don't think it's a bad film at all, just not a memorable one, it's got no guts, no flair and when you take away the mammoth viewing time and ask yourself what the film was trying to say all you're left with is a nice little story about the power and meaning of love that's wrapped up and smothered by a rather silly and inept attempt at a highbrow Sci-Fi epic.