In the near future Earth has become a wasteland due to drought and famine. Scarcity in food has led to a diminishing population, with the majority of survivors tasked with farming as a way to survive. Facing extinction, scientists discover a rip in the space-time continuum, which in theory could help humanity find a new home. Led by Cooper, a skilled pilot who has no choice but to leave his family behind, a group of explorers set out towards the wormhole in an effort to find a planet that could sustain human life. Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is another grandoise film from the director that manages to be highly inteligent and incredibly dumb almost simultaneously. Interstellar starts strong, offering a poignant portrait of a man in Cooper who must leave his family behind for the sake of humanity. Cooper is a explorer at heart, and the way the film captures his frustrations of living as a farmer, slowly dying, is one of the stronger human aspects of the film. The first two hours of Interstellar offer a beautifully realized, grandoise space oddyssey, but unfortuntely the final act of the movie is like Nolan's impression of an M. Night Shyamalan film. Its a weird thing to say for a nearly three hour film but Interstellar could/should have been longer, with a last act that feels incredibly rushed, silly, and borderline insulting to the viewer. Some are comparing Nolan's Interstellar to Kubrick's 2001 due to the ambition and scope but this is a terrible comparison. While touching on somewhat similar themes, Interstellar is draped in melodrama and the need for endless exposition, killing all sense of ambiguity that made Kubrick's film so powerful. Maybe its just me but I never felt nearly as emotionally attached to the story as I should have been, finding Cooper's daughter to be an over-the-top version of an angry daughter who won't forgive her dad for leaving her. This is a major emotional aspect of the film which makes little sense to me, considering she grows up to be a scientist herself, someone who you would believe should come to realize the significance and sacrifice of her father's decision to leave earth in an effort to save humanity. That being said, this is without question a film that should be seen on the big screen, offering a sense of wonder that few films due these days. There are some very powerful moments in the film, most notably when Cooper's character watches his children grow up via messages, but the grander ideas of the film feel lazy, almost like a rehash of Inception, replacing the dreamworld with the space-time continuum. Nolan's Interstellar is a film that I have a hard time not respecting due to its ambitious story but unfortunately its emotion and storytelling are just subpar. I'm really hoping this is the film that sends Nolan back to smaller stories, but who knows.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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