Dion TohMovie Review: Interstellar
In iTunes, a 1080p HD download of Transformers: Age of Extinction would cost you 6.37 GB of precious space. The world’s first 4K resolution movie, Timescapes? 160 GB. Interstellar? Cue the Ride of the Valkyries, because it’s almost 800 terabytes.
To put that into further perspective, that’s about 128,600 copies of Transformers: Age of Extinction, and enough explosions during their combined runtimes to last you a lifetime.
Of course, it’s not just the physical size of Interstellar that’s super massive, as it’s got a story large enough in scope to back it up. Standing at a bladder-bursting 169 minutes, strap up for a long ride into another galaxy.
Somewhere in the future, Earth is ravaged by intense dust storms. Crops are razed as more and more flora species perish (not an unlikely possibility in our own reality), and humanity faces extinction as our home planet becomes increasingly inhospitable.
In this dusty dystopia, a very fatherly Professor Brand (Michael Caine) dictates: “We’re not meant to save the Earth, we’re meant to leave it.”
We then follow Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a retired pilot, and a team of 3 scientists as they traverse the heavens through a conveniently placed wormhole in search of the perfect real estate but not before an extensive introduction and some family time with Cooper’s daughter, Murphy (Mackenzie Foy).
With a plot as capacious as the universe, director Christopher Nolan weaves together an epic of space travel, the fate of the human race, parental woes, romantic interests, betrayals, faith, and buckets of tears. The universe, without saying, comes with its own black holes, as does Interstellar’s script.
For example, new astronauts can take up to 2 years to train before being space-ready, but Cooper, retired-pilot-turned-farmer, takes all of a few days to be prepped for humanity’s last beacon of hope.
Somewhere in the future, we hope that we’ve developed some extremely resilient walls, because the only thing separating NASA’s meeting rooms and the build site of their final spacecraft is just a thin, sliding office wall.
Also, if TARS (a cuboid robot voiced by Bill Irwin) is so intelligent, we fail to see why we’d need to sacrifice human astronauts to scout faraway planets.
The inconsistencies can sometimes jar the believability of the world that Nolan’s created, but the sheer magnificence of its visuals eases the flight quite generously. Glorious starlit infinities and intricately designed set pieces are the norm, not the exception, in this 65/70mm format film.
Add to that marvels like the scientifically accurate black hole Gargantua, or whole planets of water or ice, and it’s worth watching simply for the rapturous sights alone.
Hiccups litter the performances of the cast as well. On the up side, we have Matthew McConaughey, father of 3, who executes the role of a gruffy single parent perfectly. He’s a mischievous dream parent with his irreverence for school teachers at 1 point, then messing it up by bungling his relationship with Murphy with insensitive ease at another.
Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) masquerades as a calmly confident scientist on Earth, but later curls into the quiet desperation of a person who’s out of her depth when she’s light years from home.
Michael Caine is a scientist devoted to his cause and pursuit of gravity and happiness in another planet. All 3 characters will reach a breaking point during the movie, as we see their characters and moralities transformed.
With a stupendous cast, it’s easy to see how other less important characters might slip in standards, or simply not have the chance to shine, if at all. Both Doyle (Wes Bentley) and Romilly (David Gyasi), comprising half of the team of scientists sent, might as well have been left on Earth if all they’re going to be are mouthpieces for scientific narrative. Interstellar is an expansive film, but concentrates on very few of its characters as expendables are simply left in the star dust.
Luckily, Hans Zimmer is not one to be easily left behind. In what is one of his most intense scores to date, the composer eschews Inception’s iconic horn for a literal and figurative organ-pounding soundtrack that leaves both heart and instrument gasping for breath. The impressive notes reach heights of euphoric climaxes, shifting the intensity up several notches.
Although at times used to great effect, Nolan also employs it to keep the adrenaline level of lackluster scenes artificially high, leaving this reviewer confused about what we’re supposed to experience when the visual on screen contradicts the mood of the music.
Interstellar is a paradoxical film. It worships the future and advancement of technology, yet interjects the technobabble with faith and mumblings of higher beings. It descends quickly into out-of-this-world delusions nearing the conclusion, and is littered with elements that strains to snap our suspension of disbelief. It boils down a narrative about the fate of the world and somehow manages to make a task of this magnitude orbit around Cooper’s family.
In the end, Interstellar is more journey than destination. And it does so while looking positively stellar.
Rating: 4/5
Information:
Release Date: 6 November 2014
Runtime: 169 minutes
Language: English
Censorship rating: PG13
Genre: Adventure, Sci-Fi
Director: Christopher Nolan
Main actors: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain
Photos Courtesy of Interstellar’s Facebook page and Website