By Brett Blake I think it’s safe to say that Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR is not the immediate, out-of-the-gate masterpiece I expected it to be. An argument could certainly be made that it’s a very messy - almost disjointed - film, and it would be tough for me to refute that. It’s a movie full of rough edges, and for some people this might be enough to torpedo the entire enterprise. But when the movie does click, in moments of huge scope and ambition and emotion, it’s as impressive a cinematic experience as you’ll find this year. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of those moments as the movie probably needs to fully overcome its flaws. Centrally, the story revolves around Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former test pilot turned farmer in the not-too-distant future, a future where mankind (and Earth itself) is on a downward spiral due to increasing difficulty in growing food. He is presented an opportunity to command an interstellar mission to search for other hospitable worlds on which humanity might thrive, with the trade-off being that he must leave his family behind, including most notably his young daughter, the curious, science-hungry Murph (Mackenzie Foy). It is this father-daughter relationship that forms the movie’s biggest and most affecting throughline, and even as Coop does leave the confines of our solar system (via a mysterious wormhole near Saturn) with his team of astronauts, his family is foremost on his mind. What follows is spectacle of the highest order: an extraordinary visual portrait of space travel complete with awe-inspiring visuals and moments of sublime beauty. Allow us to get the good stuff out of the way first. Matthew McConaughey is simply fantastic in the lead role, imbuing Coop with his trademark aw shucks everyman charisma; he’s the perfect anchor for the grand-in-scope adventures on which the movie takes the audience, and he brings a degree of committed emotion to the story that pays off in big ways by the end of the film. He’s as great here as he was in his Academy Award-winning role last year in DALLAS BUYERS CLUB. Around him, Nolan has assembled a rather terrific cast, but save for McConaughey, Anne Hathaway (as a fellow astronaut), and Jessica Chastain (in a role that some might consider a spoiler), most of the performers are kind of wasted, to be honest. The likes of Michael Caine, John Lithgow, Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn, William Devane, and Topher Grace all show up at various points (and do fine work), but none of them get much to chew on (though, to be fair, Caine and Burstyn’s final moments in the film do have an impact). Indeed, young Mackenzie Foy’s Murph leaves a bigger impression than any of them, and the sequence in which Coop tells her he’s leaving - potentially forever - might be the most heart-rending scene of Christopher Nolan’s filmography, and Foy is wonderfully effective in it. As a purely visual, cinematic effort, INTERSTELLAR is an unqualified success. The special effects are often jaw-droppingly good, and the depiction of wormholes, black holes, and other space-time phenomena are marvelous. The cinematography and production design are among the very best of the year. Hans Zimmer’s score also deserves some special praise; for all the criticism (some deserved, some not) that he’s engendered over the years for popularizing “power anthems” and simple chords in film scores, Zimmer remains adept at finding the emotional centers of the films he works on. That’s never been more apparent than with INTERSTELLAR, for which Zimmer has crafted his finest score in years. The music perfectly captures both the majesty and suspense of space travel (he employs some wonderful, Philip Glass-ian repetitive phrases and motifs that give moments a kind of religiosity), but his work for the movie’s Cooper/Murph relationship is particularly effective, and it underlines the big moments of the film in grand fashion. But now we must begin to sort through the areas in which the movie doesn’t fully function. This is the first Nolan film that works better as an emotional experience than as a narrative one - the quest of one man to attempt to save humanity and still return home to his children is powerfully handled, but the specifics of that journey - plot-wise - leave something to be desired. So much of the movie’s second half hinges upon elements that feel quite arbitrary and contrived, motivated by nothing other than the screenplay’s need for them to happen. For example, there’s a late-in-the-game surprise guest star (an A-list Oscar-winner, no less) who pops up and proceeds to engage in a useless subplot that appears to exist for the sole purpose of adding some extra conflict and action to the story. It’s a quite literal out-of-nowhere development, narratively, and it also undermines the more optimistic view of humanity that the script appeared to be favoring up until that moment. Additionally, the specifics of the movie’s resolution (which I will avoid discussing in detail here) feel kind of equally arbitrary, and even a little bit silly. It’s a climax that hits effective beats in terms of emotion, and it involves heady ideas and cool visuals that I guarantee you’ve never seen presented in a movie before, but taken purely at face value, it’s a really strange sequence. Then you add to that the fact that Nolan chooses a really peculiar final moment on which to close the film and cut to the end credits (something he’s been a master at up until this point; think of the final shots of INCEPTION or any of the entries in his DARK KNIGHT Trilogy); if the movie had continued on for just one more brief scene, it could have sent the audience out of the theater on a much higher, more rousing note than the current, underwhelming final shot does. All of that is just symptomatic of the screenplay itself. Nolan and his co-writer, brother Jonathan Nolan, are more concerned with Coop’s family journey than they are with the specifics of crafting a satisfying narrative plot. Big revelations are glossed over, while others are over-explained. Again, as I said, it just feels kind of messy, which is quite surprising given the kind of clockwork precision found in the plots of all of Nolan’s previous films. Even saying all of that, there are still plenty of reasons I find myself admiring the film. It’s far and away the funniest movie to come from Nolan up to this point. Its ambition is laudable, as is its celebration of space flight, scientific curiosity, and mankind’s pioneering spirit. It’s also overflowing with complex, fascinating, and difficult ideas, something that certainly cannot be said for the majority of mainstream films released today. And it has a terrifically positive, warm inner core that so many science fiction films seem to lack in favor of cold and gloomy sterility. Christopher Nolan is at the very top of the list of my favorite directors currently working (right up there with Spielberg and Scorsese), so I wanted to walk out of this film with my first thought being, “This is my new favorite movie of the year.” That was not even close to my first thought, and after giving it a lot of intense contemplation, I have arrived at this: INTERSTELLAR is a stunning visual and emotional achievement weighed down by some questionable narrative/plot choices. It is absolutely worth seeing (and on the biggest screen you can find), but it is a little disappointing to report that it’s not the home run I was hoping it would be.
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