Interstellar: FILM REVIEW
Eli Glasner | CBC News | Posted: November 5, 2014 8:51 PM | Last Updated: November 5, 2014
Christopher Nolan's new science fiction epic is no 2001, but it's filled with tiny treasures
So, there I was, sitting in an IMAX theatre for a preview screening of Interstellar. The giant screen was filling with director Christopher Nolan’s space odyssey, when the movie went silent. Just as the space capsule reaches the docking station, Hans Zimmer’s reverential score paused and I heard nothing, except the vacuum of space and the 70 mm projector whirring behind me.
It was glorious.
In a way, that’s a big part of the charm of Nolan’s epic adventure: It's made with a mixture of old-school movie magic and high-tech CGI.
Following in Kubrick's footsteps
In many of his space sequences, Nolan seems to follow in the footsteps of his idol Stanley Kubrick, employing miniature models. Watching the light dancing across the pinwheeling star craft, one can practically feel the texture as the sun ripples across the outer shell.
At the same time, Nolan consulted with theoretical physicist Kip Thorn, bringing to life visualizations of black holes so advanced they plan to publish scientific papers on what they’ve discovered.
By fusing classic filmmaking with cutting edge physics, Nolan succeeds in creating the kind of movie we hadn't seen from him before. Interstellar is warmer, bigger, broader and filled with a sense of hope. From a cinematic explorer who likes to push the boundaries of blockbusters, we get the story of Cooper: a grounded test pilot who lives on a dying planet choked by dust. The idea of anchoring this larger-than-life tale with real science is something that is Nolan-esque. From The Dark Knight to Inception there’s an intriguing mix of grit and grandeur to his stories.
Texas thespian Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper with a familiar twang. He’s a frustrated farmer who yearns for new horizons. Cooper has a poetic bent to his dialogue that strains credibility at time, uttering phrases such as "This world's a treasure, but it's been telling us to leave for a while now." He gets his chance when the remnants of NASA recruits him for a mission to the stars.
An Impossible promise
Faced with a journey through a wormhole to discover habitable planets, Professor Brand (Michael Caine, a familiar face in Nolan’s company of players) forces Cooper into an impossible promise. "I’ll be back," he says to his daughter Murphy but with space travel and the rules of relativity being what they are, when or if he’ll return is an open question.
With Wes Bentley, Anne Hathaway and David Gyasi along for the ride, Earth’s last astronauts zoom off through the wormhole. Here is where Nolan begins flexing his movie making muscles in earnest, as the galaxy bends and ripples like a shimmering soap bubble.
When Nolan was 7, his father took him to see both Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey in about the same year. Interstellar feels like the stepchild of both of those films with Matthew McConaughey as a modern-day Han Solo, a rocket jockey fuelled by gut instincts. Like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, Interstellar also aims higher, reaching to say something about the human condition.
Ambitious visions
And yet in a film filled with such awe-inspiring images I found myself in a forgiving mood. No, Interstellar isn’t 2001 since Nolan’s far too sentimental for that, but it’s filled with tiny treasures: David Gyasi as the fragile scientist Romilly, or Bill Irwin as the voice of the faceless robot TARS, a sly joker who looks like a distant relation to Kubrick's monolith, not to mention the jaw-dropping action scenes filled with visionary vistas.
Occasionally, Interstellar’s ambitions exceed its grasp, resorting to coincidences and clichés about "love transcending space and time." The problem here is the Nolan directing/screenwriting singularity. Co-written by his brother Jonathan, Interstellar orbits around familiar themes and Christopher Nolan is an exacting filmmaker but also a romantic. He shoots on celluloid, uses practical sets and locations (Alberta and Iceland appear in this film) and tries to ground his actors in a physical experience. With the subwoofers cranked to 11 and the screen filled with mind-blowing images, Nolan is trying move audiences, to give them an unforgettable experience, although it could have benefited from someone outside his bubble of influence to reign in this hyperspace Hallmark card.
It is believable? Not quite. Forgivable? For sure.
4 stars out of 5