Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, Wes Bentley, John Lithgow, David Gyasi, Mackenzie Foy
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Synopsis: A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in an attempt to find a potentially habitable planet that will sustain humanity.
Wow. Wow wow wow. Christopher Nolan is incapable of making a bad film. OK, so Interstellar has flaws. Blah, blah, blah. Who cares when the film as a whole is so visually spectaular and inspires such a sense of awe. I mean, this is what cinema was invented for. Moments like this, and Gravity and the first time you saw Avatar in 3D. Yes, the films in question aren’t the best films ever made on a story telling or dialog point of view, but for sheer jaw dropping visual scope they take some beating.
After Gravity it was going to take something special to make space seem as real and vast. Nolan just may have pulled it off with Interstellar, whilst also adding more of a plot aswell. Sure, the story may not be to everyone’s taste and the science is apparently questionable (went over my head to be fair) but who really cares? We are watching a film here. A piece of fiction that is supposed to excite and thrill, and you can’t say it didn’t do that well.
The film is set in the not too distant future, the earth ravaged by droughts and famine. Matthew McConaughey (the career revival shows no signs of slowing down) plays an astronaut turned farmer, trying to look after his kids. With the prospect that humans will become extinct, scientists headed by Michael Caine have found a worm hole which could lead to new planets where mankind can start a fresh. McConaughey, as you would guess, is tasked to lead a team to find a suitable planet.
The actors are all top notch from McConaughey and Hathaway right down to young Mackenzie Foy as McConaughey’s daughter. But the real star of the show is, as usual with a Nolan film, the visuals. Space and it’s planets are unbelievable. One scene where the spaceship floats past Saturn, as a tiny little speck, just has to be seen to be believed. It is true cinema.
The film has been accused of being too saccharine with the whole father/daughter stuff, but I disagree. Maybe having children myself it appealed to my parental side, but some of the plots about timeshifts etc were truly heartbreaking and had me holding back the tears.
Personally my only critiscism of the film was the last twenty minutes which didn’t hold up as well as the rest of the film. Obviously I’m not going to give anything away, but those twenty minutes meant I couldn’t give the film the full five star’s the previous two and half hours richly deserved.
Nonetheless Interstellar is a film, more than any other perhaps, that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible. A true feat for cinema, and full marks to Chris Nolan once again.
