Interstellar Review

Director:  Christopher Nolan

Starring:  Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, Mackenzie Foy and Michael Caine

Cert:  12A

Running Time:  166 mins

Synopsis:  When a wormhole (which can theoretically connect widely separated regions of  spacetime) is discovered, explorers and scientists unite to embark on a voyage through it, transcending the normal limits of human space travel…

As I staggered out of the screening room from Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR, my ears well and truly battered by Hans Zimmer’s celestial choirs, I found myself feeling elated, confused, headachey but overall generally satisfied. This isn’t a quick jaunt into the cosmos punctuated by a few laser dogfights. As you might expect from the director it’s an ambitious and emotionally exhausting epic that comes at you every which way.

The setting is an on-its-knees rural America, a mass of farmland wrecked by duststorms in an indeterminate future. Ex-astronaut Matthew McConaughey is part of the “caretaker generation”, seeing out middle age ensuring his kids don’t get brainwashed by their woolly-minded liberal teachers. When he receives a mysterious communication the trail leads him to a project long thought dead – a team of scientists, led by his former tutor Michael Caine, who are building a spaceship. It isn’t long before McConaughey is blasting off in search of a wormhole that could take humanity to another world and a brighter future. The set pieces that result are like symphonies, with Zimmer’s perpetually driving score shredding nerves and pounding senses. There is a sequence involving a tidal wave that delivers a “heart in mouth” moment faster than a butcher with a good aim.

An admirable quality to the production lies in Nolan’s almost total reliance on practical effects. As with Duncan Jones’ MOON the effect is like watching a movie from another era and while some of it appears unsophisticated it enhances this world of grungy consoles and weathered skin no end. There are robots, but they are perhaps unlike any you’ve seen before. Nolan and his team have gone out of their way to make them as unaesthetic as possible, rendering them as articulated monoliths, just one of numerous nods to 2001, from the sonorous singing to Cooper’s spectacular personal odyssey. The principals, no matter how photogenic, are often shown in unflinching close ups. Even Anne Hathaway looks like she’s been through the wars. It’s a story of souls as well as starscapes and the most affecting moments derive from a locked-off shot of McConaughey’s anguished features. Like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN you’ll frequently find yourself drained, which is appropriate as some elements of the film are Spielbergian, such as the machines’ synthetic, jocular personalities and the well-drawn father-child relationships. Of course Nolan has always tended toward the cerebral, so while you have good performances and characters the INCEPTION effect kicks in and the plot is buried in exposition for the last act. Christopher and his co-writer brother Jonathan insert a surprising and bleak development into proceedings – featuring a very special guest star – and from here things gets muddled and the narrative seems overextended. The central concept feels like a promotional film for a religious sect as gradually the lines between belief and rationality become blurred before the power of gut instinct and heart wins the day.

The lead part of Cooper is McConaughey through and through: flippant, buccaneering and ever so slightly aggravating. His role is to cut through the technobabble of his fellow passengers and use his loaf to get the intellectuals out of a variety of scrapes, all the while attempting to absorb the ideas being presented to the multiplex audience. He makes a decent partnership with Hathaway, whose icy boffin Brand sadly becomes rather passive early on. Jessica Chastain plays the daughter Cooper left behind decades ago and is a strong presence, even though she ends up as a mouthpiece for the final explanations.

INTERSTELLAR can arguably be viewed as a masterpiece or a valiant mess. Maybe it’s both. But one thing’s for certain in this crazy universe – I’ll be going to see it again.

[usr=4]