High on ideas and themes, Interstellar makes your jaw drop - occasionally.
Interstellar, put shortly, is Christopher Nolan's most ambitious film. It tries to handle so many themes in mere three acts - love, survival, wormholes, blackholes, five dimensions and what not. But even with such an weighty baggage the film succeeds putting most of the things just right.
In near future (perhaps about 40-50 years from now), Earth is short of crops. Only corn grows - wheat, okra, etc are all gone. There are frequent dust storms and population is decreasing, apparently due to starvation and lung-diseases. We are introduced to Cooper (McConaughey), a widower former pilot/engineer, who has two children and a father-in-law. Murph (Mackenzie Foy and older version Jessica Chastain), his ten year old daughter, believes that there is a ghost in her room trying to communicate with her. Her father, however, believes that there is no such thing, and there must be some explanation for strange dust patterns on the floor. It leads him to a secret headquarters of NASA, which people believe was shut down many years ago. Professor Brand (Michael Caine) ask him to join the mission to travel a wormhole and discover all the new potential habitats for Humans. Coop agrees, leaving his children behind and aims to save humanity.
Writing beyond this point will probably spoil many crucial events in the film (and honestly, length of this review too). The film's script has enough length so that likes of Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon, Topher Grace and Ellen Burstyn are in the cast. Fortunately enough, barring Damon, everyone does a fantastic job. Matthew McConaughey gives another stellar performance. His relationship with his daughter, Murph is well written and exceptionally executed by McConaughey and Foy/Chastain. Indians are lucky enough to get English subtitled version of Interstellar, without them, the loud sound mix would have muted pretty much every dialogue McConaughey mumbles. Hathaway gives another brilliant performance and her chemistry with McConaughey is great. For the very first time, Nolan has actually given woman in his film a lot more room. Murph and Amelia are Nolan's only female characters which are not just there as dead wives or plot devices. Interstellar is strongly based on elements of parental bonding and love, which are least Nolan like - as if Spielberg's spirit has descended into Nolan.
As expected, cinematography (Hoyte Van Hoytema) in the film is an eye-feast. The color palette used here by Hoytema is consistently bleak. Shot on 70mm photographic film, Interstellar's texture is grainy and sometimes too dark. And yet, its breathtaking. Shots of the space ship passing Saturn in quite space have a dream-like quality.
For the first time, wormholes and blackholes are shown in a film like they would actually appear (if they exist!) based on mathematical models. One set piece, which showcases a giant tidal wave will certainly take you to the edge of your seat. There is another one, which involves a rotating space station, which looks more redundant than impressive, thanks to 2013's amazing Gravity. Hans Zimmer's music is finally not recycled from his own previous scores, which is a welcome change. Score is obtrusively loud sometimes, but the main theme of the film, which is just some few notes on a church organ, is beautiful.
*inevitable major spoiler ahead*
Writing beyond this point will probably spoil many crucial events in the film (and honestly, length of this review too). The film's script has enough length so that likes of Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon, Topher Grace and Ellen Burstyn are in the cast. Fortunately enough, barring Damon, everyone does a fantastic job. Matthew McConaughey gives another stellar performance. His relationship with his daughter, Murph is well written and exceptionally executed by McConaughey and Foy/Chastain. Indians are lucky enough to get English subtitled version of Interstellar, without them, the loud sound mix would have muted pretty much every dialogue McConaughey mumbles. Hathaway gives another brilliant performance and her chemistry with McConaughey is great. For the very first time, Nolan has actually given woman in his film a lot more room. Murph and Amelia are Nolan's only female characters which are not just there as dead wives or plot devices. Interstellar is strongly based on elements of parental bonding and love, which are least Nolan like - as if Spielberg's spirit has descended into Nolan.
As expected, cinematography (Hoyte Van Hoytema) in the film is an eye-feast. The color palette used here by Hoytema is consistently bleak. Shot on 70mm photographic film, Interstellar's texture is grainy and sometimes too dark. And yet, its breathtaking. Shots of the space ship passing Saturn in quite space have a dream-like quality.
For the first time, wormholes and blackholes are shown in a film like they would actually appear (if they exist!) based on mathematical models. One set piece, which showcases a giant tidal wave will certainly take you to the edge of your seat. There is another one, which involves a rotating space station, which looks more redundant than impressive, thanks to 2013's amazing Gravity. Hans Zimmer's music is finally not recycled from his own previous scores, which is a welcome change. Score is obtrusively loud sometimes, but the main theme of the film, which is just some few notes on a church organ, is beautiful.
*inevitable major spoiler ahead*
For those who are concerned about the film's physics I can safely assure that it is no harder than Wikipedia's introductory passage on Time Dilation, Black Holes or Wormholes. Kip Thorne has given some input to the film, but I reckon it extends beyond visuals. In the third and final act, Cooper literally and delibrately falls into a black hole to unriddle the mystery of singularity. Cooper does survives, defying pretty much everything which physics tells us - about heat, Roche limit and event horizons. What follows after that is apparently what you have seen many times before - in Back to the Future or even Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but in five dimensions. The film goes from interstellar travel to time travel within matter of minutes.
If you think back after the end of the film, you notice many paradoxes and plot holes of size of a black hole. But if you cling to suspension of disbelief, Interstellar all-together ends with a sublime and haunting note. Nolan may not have excelled in general relativity but in film-making, he's no less than Einstein. It is not a perfect film by any means, but alas, it would have been a masterpiece if it had got everything right.
4/5
If you think back after the end of the film, you notice many paradoxes and plot holes of size of a black hole. But if you cling to suspension of disbelief, Interstellar all-together ends with a sublime and haunting note. Nolan may not have excelled in general relativity but in film-making, he's no less than Einstein. It is not a perfect film by any means, but alas, it would have been a masterpiece if it had got everything right.
4/5
