Interstellar is Christopher Nolan’s latest thought-provoking, visually stunning and slightly confusing film venture to date. The simplest way to explain Interstellar is that humanities time here on Earth is drawing to an end as our crops are being destroyed by what is called Blight, a very little explained plague of dust. The hope of humanity rests on the shoulders of a team of explorers who must travel beyond our own galaxy to find a safe haven and secure a future for the human race. That’s the long and the short of it. The concept is simple to understand, it’s the rest that will be a challenge. Warning spoilers ahead…
Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a former NASA pilot turned farmer who is recruited to be part of that team of explorers by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and NASA who has gone underground and beyond the public eye. Brand had discovered a wormhole just beyond Saturn that could be the key to the human races survival. Professor Brand even recruits his only daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) for what will become a one-way mission. They just don’t know it yet.
You see, there was a Plan A and Plan B. Plan A was to find an inhabitable world and bring the people of Earth to their new home. It was the optimistic plan to get them out there. The more realistic Plan B was to start over on that inhabitable world. It was a one-way ticket and Professor Brand knew it.
When Cooper left home, he left his son and his daughter Murph behind. He left them with a promise and a hope that he will return. Not wanting him to go, Murph never said goodbye and for years, yes years (more on that shortly) never sent a message for him to receive. Although Cooper never aged, Murph did. She grew up into a young woman (Jessica Chastain) who has taken over where Professor Brand had left off. She was determined to find a way to make Plan A work and save the human race.
Interstellar is as much about relationships (in this case father-daughter), as it is about time and space. We will always wish we had more time. It’s human nature. There’s always too much or too little of it. Time has been the one commodity that we as a race take for granted. Time was not on their side in more ways than one. The people on Earth were on borrowed time and as we’ll discover along with Cooper and Amelia that one-hour in space meant seven years back home. What would you do or think of if you faced that reality? Such was the dilemma Cooper, Amelia and their team had to face.
The biggest drawback for Interstellar is that it runs almost an hour too long. But a contributing factor to that drawback is sensory overload in the final act with its fifth dimension, third dimension and possible parallel worlds discussion. You could almost hear the audience’s frustration in trying to decipher the riddle of the theory of relativity when it comes to explaining time and space. This film may have made 2001: A Space Odyssey easier to understand and that’s no small task.
Make no mistake, Interstellar is a worthwhile film that invokes discussion. Nolan has a way of getting into the mind of how humans think, the relationships we develop and harvest as well as our basic instincts when it comes to self-survival. The one line that I believe sums up the human race and our will to overcome, comes from Cooper himself, “We’ll find a way. We always have.”
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain and Directed by Christopher Nolan.
Interstellar ***1/2 (out of 5 stars)
May the Dork be with you,
JPB
The Dork Knight
