Interstellar Review

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Michael Caine

Christopher Nolan has a new film, and Interstellar is one ambitious film. The famed director of the Batman trilogy, as well as cult favorites Memento and The Prestige (and who could forget Inception?) brings us this epic tale, of astronauts using a wormhole to find a new planet. Sounds ridiculous right? The stuff of fiction? I was very surprised to find how immersed in fact this movie is. There is a lot of scientific exposition. And I was extremely confused by almost all of it. It's been hours, and I'm still working Interstellar through my brain, and I'm sure I will be for a couple days now. In the near future, a second Dust Bowl has almost destroyed Earth. Crops are all dead except corn, and the dust threatens the people and their way of life. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a pilot-turned-engineer who is recruited by Michael Caine's character to man a mission to find a new world to inhabit. This involves him leaving his family, which includes his beloved daughter Murph, who he promises he will return for. I'm a huge Nolan fan. Inception is in my all-time top five, with The Dark Knight not too far behind. But something holds this movie back for me. And I think it's that it tries to, as the expression goes, "have its cake and eat it too."

The storyline is very intricate. There are so many twists and turns, and I love a good twist so much, that I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the movie. I'd go even further than that. Just the last 20 minutes really killed it for me, but I'll get into that later. Did I mention this movie is 170 minutes, just shy of 3 hours? Don't worry, it doesn't seem long, and it's all essential, except for the end. Let's talk about the acting. Matthew McConaughey nails it. He gives it his 100% and pulls it off. I'm really becoming a huge fan of his after Dallas Buyers Club, which he of course won the Oscar for, and his work on True Detective. I must honestly say that I'm not a fan of Anne Hathaway. Don't get me wrong, she deserved the Oscar for "I Dreamed a Dream" in Les Misérables but I just don't like her. And she does well to hold her own against McConaughey, she's just a very hateable character. If you think Sandra Bullock jeopardized the lives of her crew in Gravity, wait until you see Amelia Brand. Brand's father is played by Michael Caine, who is the leader of sorts of NASA. He does well, but even more so than his daughter, Dr. Brand is a character you end up hating. There's also one cameo from a huge celebrity, that I'm surprised they kept secret for this long. Don't look up any cast listings. It's a great surprise, and he does a great job. I can't spoil it and tell you who, because that would ruin the surprise.The rest of the performances are separate from these three, so I'll get to them later.

I'll get to the science, but first, let's look at the Earth performances. As Cooper and his team make their way through the wormhole, and end up in a galaxy orbiting a black hole, time moves slower for them. I believe that this would actually happen should you end up near a black hole, but I'll need to ask my science teacher a lot of questions about this movie to ever really know what was fact or fiction. Jessica Chastain plays his daughter Murph, years after he's left, while Casey Affleck plays his son. Both are bitter with resentment towards their father, and deal with it in different ways. His son sends him messages, but later abandons him as his family dies from the storm. Murph never sends him messages, and largely becomes absent. She calls him once, to tell him that it's her birthday, and that he promised he'd be back when they were the same age. Chastain carries the Earth half of the movie, as she navigates a world without hope, and you start to really like her character. Mackenzie Foy plays Young Murph, and she does an excellent job as well, but it's Chastain, who is so subtle yet powerful as his scorned adult daughter, wanting to accept the possibility of return, but full of spite nonetheless, that really shines.

So here are my problems. While I largely believe what the movie told me, I have no idea if it's true or not. My brain boiled over about a half hour into the film, and I just stopped trying to figure it out. There's a lot of "artificial gravity", with hints at aliens, a fifth dimension, and obviously a lot of talk about what can displace time and how to save time, and what percentage of the planets share Earth's gravity, and a lot of stuff I didn't know what to make of. If you're not a science fan, this movie will try and shove information down your throat. If you're not mature, you will not be able to take it. This is an extremely sophisticated movie that requires 100% of your brain and 100% of your attention. I'm lucky I had some people there to explain it to me, and for the first third of the film I was convinced I hated it, because I didn't understand it. Speaking of thirds, the ending, was a load of garbage to me. Pure Hollywood. I'm able to separate the end from the rest of the film, but I've seen many  critics pan the entire thing just for the ending. It's overly sentimental, and tries to tie every last loose end in the movie. And I'd rather just let the characters be left ambiguous. I feel that could leave it to the viewer's imagination, much like Nolan did with the ending of Inception. I think at this moment, Nolan slipped up and became emotionally-manipulative. For a director who is usually so original, this was a pretty cliché filled ending.

 I wanted very badly to love this movie. And I was content I would. I will warn you, this is not at all the movie the trailers sell you. Almost all of the trailers' content is seen with in the first hour. I was expecting to feel so sad at the sight of him leaving his daughter, but I never felt close to them. I think the creators got a little carried away with the scale of Interstellar and the script suffered as a result. At the end of the day, you can't blame the acting sometimes, or the scenes. You have the blame whoever wrote that character or wrote that scene. Nolan and his brother wrote the movie, and I think the director has too much control over this movie. He oversaw the music, helped with the cinematography work, directed it, produced it, and wrote it. And I think that is where the problem was. This is Christopher Nolan trying to sell us his magnum opus. It's epic, and he expects everyone else to think it's his best work. But I think you can't sell an opus, it just happens. Did Hitchcock know Psycho would be his? I think he's trying too hard with this movie. One review I read quoted the following line from Inception:"Whose subconscious are we in?" is repeated by Ariadne throughout the movie as they jump from dream to dream and everything blurs. The reviewer went on to say, and I agree, that the answer while watching Interstellar is Nolan's. You're in Nolan's subconscious. And everything is exactly how he would want you to see it, but it doesn't all connect.

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