Book Review: Interstellar

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Steven McC

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Oct 12, 2014
Scotland
As this is such a big release and I imagine many of you will go to see it I'm going to make a huge effort not to include any spoilers...but no promises!

I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan's films. The Dark Knight really surprised me. I couldn't envisage how any film about a man who dresses up as a bat and beats up criminals could contain serious content, but through personifying Batman as 'good' and the Joker as 'evil' Nolan lifted the film to another level and made it a dialogue about human nature, with Harvey 'Two-Face' ending up as the physical embodiment of humanity - half-evil, half-good; the main players of the film making the executive decision to tilt his head so that only the 'good' side showed in the end. Since most blockbusters are completely empty of thematic content this made TDK stand out a mile and Inception also showed brains and brawn.

So I was eager to see Interstellar. A sci-fi epic about humans reaching out for a new world to replace the increasingly uninhabitable Earth seemed the perfect vehicle for Nolan's talents.

The movie is definitely not your average blockbuster. The pacing is slower than Nolan's previous films; purposefully so, I felt, with very few action sequences in the first half. I wondered if Nolan was testing the modern audience, a little, seeing if they could handle pacing similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and judging by the amount of people I could hear talking during the film (for which they surely have to introduce capital punishment) sadly the answer may be no.

As the story takes place over a number of years and the space travel regularly involves the atronauts going into cryo-sleep for several years the structure can feel jagged and forced at times, though when the action sequences arrive they are engrossing and Matthew McConaughey is a compelling lead. His relationship with the daughter he leaves behind on Earth is the bond of love that attempts to anchor the film amidst some relatively technical science involving wormholes, gravity and relativity. Some comic relief is provided along the way by TARS, a robot successor to HAL (2001) who has a sense of humour setting that can be altered and some decent lines. Matt Damon makes an appearance but doesn't really shine. Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain are better and Michael Caine makes his obligatory appearance in a Nolan film.

Nolan's objectives in Interstellar are genuinely as broad as this: to address the science underlying space and the place of human love within this spectrum. I don't believe he fully achieves this - Interstellar didn't feel like a classic to me, not everything worked - but I admire him for trying. A big budget director who wants to explore intelligent ideas and has the guts to challenge an audience is all too rare. Not quite stellar then, but worth a watch.
 
He’s one of the select bunch of directors to whom the studios defer, i.e. a director operating within the studio system, but acting as an indie. I’d love to see his contract.

INTERSTELLAR is a tentpole movie, a phenomenon, film-as-event. As such, it’s something you gawp at rather than relate to (a good contrast would be MR. TURNER – opposite in almost every respect).

Must admit I didn’t get the wormhole thesis. Our race somehow reaches the stars, then opens up a wormhole near Saturn so that we can... reach the stars again? Er, isn’t that a bit of a logic bomb...?

Enjoyed the ride, shaken not stirred. This generation’s “2001”?
 
In my day job @Steven McC I work on an environmental project funded by The Big Lottery. I haven't seen this movie yet because I will wait for the blu ray to be released and watch it without the all too prevalent distraction of audience noise that you mention. From what I have heard about Interstellar the Earth's environment is being destroyed - how much is that emphasised in the movie and what messages does it give out about that (without too many spoilers)?
 
In my day job @Steven McC I work on an environmental project funded by The Big Lottery. I haven't seen this movie yet because I will wait for the blu ray to be released and watch it without the all too prevalent distraction of audience noise that you mention. From what I have heard about Interstellar the Earth's environment is being destroyed - how much is that emphasised in the movie and what messages does it give out about that (without too many spoilers)?

It is certainly emphasised that the Earth's environment is being destroyed (it is the reason humans must search for a new planet) but little information is given about the precise causes of this. A character does at one point suggests a culture of backlash now exists against the 'wastefulness of the 20th century', suggesting that humans may be responsible for their own downfall, but this is subtly done; as ever, Nolan flirts with politics but doesn't come down firmly on one side.
 
That is very interesting - thank you @Steven McC To be completely fair on the director and let's not forget the screenwriter(s)! Climate change has been covered in other major releases so let's hope it is now so thoroughly accepted that they didn't need to emphasis it too much :)
 
It’s not emphasized at all. There’s a throwaway reference to Moon-landing doubters – apparently by then, the orthodoxy is that the Apollo Moon landings were indeed all faked in order to draw the Russians into a ruinous space race – but other than that, little or no reference to wider politics.

I did find the implied message a bit disturbing... that the Earth has basically become a used Kleenex that we now need to vacate (cf Elysium).
 
Well, I meant to watch Turner anyway, though I've never been fond of him. And Interstellar sounds worth a watch. I think the Earth will die a natural death, a little later than the current estimate, but will be uninhabitable for natural reasons for so long a period before that, it's beyond imagining. We will not witness its demise, we will be gone or altered so much as not to seem like 'us'. Science suggests we won't and couldn't vacate; our bodies won't let us. Wild spacecraft wouldn't drag me to creepy old Mars anyway, sniff.
 
"If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars." - Carl Sagan
Du du dududu du du duuuu! I can't think of that quote without the auto tune song immediately coming to mind. :confused: The film sounds good but I'll most likely wait for it to come out before I see it. The idea of leaving Earth behind frightens me a great deal! All the people and animals and lives lost. :eek: I don't think I'd leave.
 
Cue 'The Final Countdown'....
We're leaving together,
But still it's farewell
And maybe we'll come back,
To earth, who can tell ?
I guess there is no one to blame
We're leaving ground
Will things ever be the same again?
It's the final countdown
We're heading for Venus and still we stand tall
Cause maybe they've seen us and welcome us all
With so many light years to go and things to be found
I'm sure that we'll all miss her so.
It's the final countdown.



If we were Venusians and saw us lot hoving into sight coming into our airspace, and it was because we'd trashed our own place, what might we do? Might it begin with Z and end with P with an A in the middle...
 
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