***BEWARE POSSIBLE SPOILERS***
You’ll
probably know whether or not you’re going to like Interstellar within the first half hour. The premise: a group of
scientists led by Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper has been tasked with traveling
into a wormhole near Saturn and finding a planet that could replace Earth,
which has been so ruined it can no longer sustain human life. You either accept
this – and, not to mention, all the quirks about bending space-time, hopping
dimensions and corn – or you don’t. If you can’t suspend your disbelief, you’ll
likely dismiss Christopher Nolan’s latest venture as maddening, self-absorbed drivel,
but if you can embrace the plot as it is, you’ll be rewarded with an immersive
spectacle that blends the grand scope of 2001:
A Space Odyssey with the more personal sincerity of Contact, one that recalls innumerable sci-fi flicks of the past but
never seems interested in trying to be anything other than itself.
Like last year’s Gravity, Interstellar begs to be seen on as large a screen as possible, and
its basic story is secondary to the mere experience of sitting and watching it.
An IMAX theater viewing especially provides a sensory explosion so enveloping
that it’s almost overwhelming. Boasting visual effects that, more than being
just stunning to look at, actually feel real,
the film serves as a sharp and more-than-welcome contrast to the blatant CGI of
something like the Thor movies or the
superficial, screensaver prettiness of The
Tree of Life. Assisted by Hoyte van Hoytema’s elegant cinematography, the
film doesn’t just present images of wormholes, distant planets and extra
dimensions – it transports you to them. Jaw-dropping shots of a spaceship
passing Saturn or approaching a black hole are matched by suffocating scenes
set in the dust-blown fields that apparently cover future America and an almost
disturbingly visceral sequence where a spacecraft gradually disintegrates into
nothingness, the you-are-there sensation enhanced by some finely tuned sound
editing. Composer Hans Zimmer contributes to the movie’s delicate tonal mix of
grandeur and immediacy with a marvel of a score that alternates between an
operatic, organ-played theme and more staccato, tense rhythms. Smartly executed
on practically every technical level, Interstellar
is a dizzying dream of a movie, inspiring the kind of pure awe that so many
films aim for but rarely achieve.
Yet, for all the visual
fireworks, scientific jargon and Prometheus-esque
philosophizing, there’s something very elemental, almost archetypal about Interstellar. The relationship between
Cooper and Murph (played by both Jessica Chastain and Mackenzie Foy, who is
perhaps the movie’s biggest surprise other than the Bill Irwin-voiced robot and
secret MVP T.A.R.S.) anchors the narrative, even as it traverses planets,
galaxies and dimensions, and resonates with an earnestness that comes off as
sweet instead of sentimental. At its core, this is a story about love – not
just the love between parents and children, though that’s a central focus, but the
one between lovers, siblings, people and their home, humanity and itself.
Helped by all-around solid performances from a recognizable cast and
uncluttered by prolonged action set pieces, Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s
screenplay spends enough time with the characters to justify an emotional
investment in their survival, even if some of the supporting roles could’ve
been fleshed out more, a challenge for a film already approaching the three
hour mark. Some of the movie’s best scenes are its simplest: a father tries in
vain to comfort his distraught daughter; a heartbreaking montage of video
messages; one character is so relieved to see another person, he collapses in
tears. Human beings are a source of both doom and salvation in Interstellar, the latter of which proves possible only through a sense of shared
community, devotion and empathy.
The past vs. the future. Science
vs. heart. Individual vs. collective survival. Humanity as a lost cause vs.
humanity as a transcendent exception. These kinds of dichotomies riddle Interstellar and perhaps explain why
this particular project feels like such a statement for Christopher Nolan,
whose career has been as contradictory as it is reliable. Since he emerged with
Following and Memento, Nolan has accumulated enough industry pull to have the
kind of artistic control and financial stability that most directors can only
imagine, and his resulting work, which can best be paradoxically described as
adult-oriented, middlebrow blockbusters, seems to inspire passion, measured
respect and criticism in equal measure. As much as he represents the
establishment, he also occupies a tricky yet interesting in-between area in a
filmmaking world that’s becoming increasingly polarized into extremes, with studio
tentpoles occupying one side of the spectrum and niche indies the other.
Especially post-Memento, his movies
tend to be not escapist enough to be truly populist, attracting such
descriptors as “pretentious”, “self-serious” and “clinical”, but at the same
time, they lack the offbeat sensibility needed to be embraced by the arthouse
crowd or the high-minded prestige of Oscar or critic bait; spiritually, he’s
closer to Steven Spielberg or James Cameron than Paul Thomas Anderson, David
Fincher or even Kubrick. More than anything else, Interstellar highlights the struggle between thinking and feeling,
and the ultimate triumph of the latter, as a key thematic through line in
Nolan’s career.
That, and white dude leads, unfortunately a convention in
Hollywood instead of an anomaly
This isn’t to say that his reputation of making cerebral, mind-bending
movies is unfounded, but I think it distracts from deeper, more compelling
conversations when everyone fixates on twists and plot logic (trust me when I
say the world really doesn’t need that listicle you’re thinking of making about
Interstellar’s science). For all his obsessions
with nonlinear structures and playing with time, Nolan often uses fairly
straightforward storylines that can be roughly divided into three acts, even if
those divisions are shaped more by character arcs than narrative beats: a man
wants to find and punish his wife’s killer, a veteran homicide detective must
solve one last case, a thief has to pull off one last heist before he can see
his children again. What’s notable about these stories is that the supposed
goal of each eventually turns out to be insubstantial, or at least secondary to
whatever the characters went through in order to succeed, if they in fact
succeed at all. Though he obviously doesn’t have David Lynch’s surrealist bent,
Nolan is similarly less interested in crafting a unique, airtight plot than in
using the plot as a vehicle for exploring ideas, especially those related to
human psychology and subjectivity.
Whether it’s Memento’s Leonard Shelby diligently
taking notes to compensate for his faulty memory or Dom Cobb incessantly
spinning a weighted top to distinguish between reality and dream in Inception, Nolan’s protagonists become
trapped in mazes of logic, typically ones of their own making. They create
routines and methodical, self-justifying narratives as a means of avoiding past
trauma or repressing the emotions that really drive their actions. In Following, the Young Man develops a set
of rules to govern his strange habit of following random strangers he sees in
London, which is supposedly how he finds inspiration for his writing, as if to
convince himself that he’s not being ethically shady or to distract himself
from his intense loneliness. Later, when Cobb (no relation to Inception’s Dom Cobb) claims he robs
people and invades their homes to force them to realize what they had and to
re-examine their lives, the Young Man easily accepts this pseudo-existential
reasoning, and it’s only when he learns Cobb was framing him for a murder that
he comes to terms with his mistakes and criminal behavior. Ostensibly, Borden’s
and Angier’s professional rivalry in The
Prestige is fueled by a mutual desire to perfect their craft as magicians,
but in reality, it’s based in jealousy, pride and an escalating lust for
vengeance. In the Batman films, Bruce Wayne doesn’t take on the Caped
Crusader’s persona merely because he wants to save Gotham City (after all,
there are probably ways of doing that that don’t involve wearing a bat-like
suit and assaulting petty criminals at night), but rather because he still
struggles with childhood fears and the loss of his parents. His efforts to keep
Rachel Dawes out of his life to protect her prove futile, and his
ends-justify-the-means approach to justice morally compromises him,
undercutting his ability to be the symbol of hope and heroism that he strives
toward. There’s also Harvey Dent, whose grief and despair following Rachel’s
death sends him on a murder spree that he structures around a coin toss, and The Dark Knight Rises’ Bane and Talia
al-Ghul, who demonstrate how political rhetoric can be used to further
personal, emotion-based goals.
In Christopher Nolan’s world,
logic, science, ideology and any other concepts that claim to be centered in
cold, objective fact or suggest the existence of a single, definitive truth are
not only misleading but dangerous. They’re deceiving, tools that are easily
distorted, manipulated and exploited. Only by confronting the emotions shaping
their thoughts and guiding their actions, and embracing the catharsis that
arises from that epiphany, can characters hope to break the cycle and become
free of the psychological prisons holding them back. For example, Borden can
only reunite with his daughter once he recognizes how his commitment to work
and the rivalry devastated the women in his life, just as Dom Cobb must let go
of the specter of his dead wife before he can return home. Bruce Wayne has to
face his fears and relearn the meaning of true sacrifice and the value of human
life, including his own, before he can find peace. In Interstellar, humanity’s desire to survive is driven more by love
and relationships than by evolution or primal instincts, and Cooper and Anne
Hathaway’s Brand succeed by trusting their gut instead of relying on data and
numbers. Conversely, Leonard Shelby in Memento
refuses to believe that his entire revenge quest, the mission he has
constructed his life around is a lie he’s told himself; he’s doomed to repeat
the same mistakes in a life of psychological torment and dissatisfaction. The
mind is weak and malleable, while the heart is strong and constant and, most
importantly, always in control.
By giving emotion primacy over
reason, Nolan subtly undermines conventional ways of understanding stories,
which assume a linear progression of events, attempt to impose a sense of order
and treat the internal as a reaction to the external rather than the other way
around. Just as equating logic and rigid formulas with impartiality spells
trouble for his characters, viewers can easily become consumed by examinations
of plot minutia in Nolan’s movies at the expense of taking in the larger
picture. That’s not to say it’s an entirely pointless endeavor, as I’d never
suggest that there’s only one “right” way to approach and interpret a text, but
rather, contrary to what appears to be popular opinion, these films aren’t
puzzle boxes that need to be taken apart and solved. While the plot twists are
important for framing and contextualizing the stories and characters, they’re
never the point or end goal in and of themselves. This is why Memento never actually reveals the
identity of Leonard’s wife’s killer, even leaving some uncertainty as to how
honest Teddy is being with him in the final scene, and why The Dark Knight Rises works as an emotionally satisfying finale to
the Batman trilogy, despite the unnecessarily convoluted plot and sloppy,
problematic politics. As Nolan himself has said, the ambiguous ending of Inception isn’t significant because it
causes us to question everything that came before, but instead because Dom Cobb
walks away from the totem – he has finally learned to not care. The content of
Cooper’s message to Murph in the refreshingly explosion-free climax of Interstellar matters much less than the
fact that he’s sending her a message, reinforcing the strong bond that exists
between them. Boasting circular structures that often loop back around and fold
in on themselves, Nolan’s films devalue tying up all loose ends, the idea that
plots need to be completely, internally consistent and to come to a clear
conclusion, in favor of emotional closure.
Aside from the endless arguments
over possible plot holes and arguments about the arguments over plot holes, one
of the more prominent conversations I’ve noticed about Interstellar, at least among the critics I follow on Twitter, is a debate over why
his work brings out a particularly vitriolic, often misogynist strain of fan
backlash to negative comments or reviews. Now, in case you haven’t already
figured it out, I consider myself a pretty diehard Christopher Nolan fan, but I
can’t – and don’t especially want to try to – explain why this happens except
to say that I think it has very little to do with his movies or him as a
director or person. What baffles me most is that, for all the crediting of his
Batman trilogy as responsible for the recent prevalence of grim-is-better
blockbusters, Nolan actually engages in the kind of storytelling – e.g. “soft”
science fiction as opposed to “hard” sci-fi, belief in the power of love
and positive emotions – that I imagine sexist Internet geeks normally regard with
derision. Beneath the muted colors and noir tropes, Nolan’s films affirm the
validity of feelings and the sway they hold over an individual’s actions and
worldview. Interstellar is simply the
humanist core at the center of his career writ large, and it showcases cinema’s
capacity to inspire audiences to both think and feel, to understand and wonder.
To dream.
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