My (Initial) Thoughts On ‘Interstellar’

Even if you’ve been hiding at the bottom of a Moon crater for the last 6 months, chances are you would still have heard of Interstellar. The latest film from big-budget auteur Christopher Nolan is, without doubt, the cinematic event of the year. Just where would the man who had already breathed new life into the Superhero genre & reinvented the Summer Blockbuster look to go next? The answer, perhaps inevitably, was to the stars.

As with all of Nolan’s previous films, I found myself overwhelmed as the credits began to roll on his bladder-busting ballet of space & time. It is, literally, the best film I have ever seen. It is not, however, one of the best films I have ever watched.

For the first 45 minutes or so, Interstellar remains rooted to the launching pad, with the engines spluttering as they struggle to come to life. The script, written by Nolan & his brother Jonathan, fails to find a balance between developing the core characters and building the foundations of the narrative. The dialogue clumsily stumbles between the sentimental ramblings of Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper, and overly complicated scene setting that’s delivered by Michael Caine’s one-dimensional professor of exposition. There’s certainly more strength to be found in the more muted scenes between Cooper and his kids (with young actors Mackenzie Foy & Timothée Chalamet both delivering naturally assured performances), but Nolan’s need to drive his quite convoluted narrative forward causes the effectiveness of such scenes to quickly become undone.

Lets thank our lucky stars then that once Copper’s shuttle clears the launch pad, Nolan’s film soars to a much greater height. Driving the ship are the astonishing visuals, which beg to be seen, as Nolan intended, on the biggest Imax screen you can find. The director has always been a man of great ambition, but this is definitely the most visually audacious film he has ever committed to celluloid. Hoyte Van Hoytema’s camera sweeps over the Icelandic landscape that doubles for a far off planet with awe, forcing your eyes to open as wide as possible in astonishment at this otherworldly setting.

It is against the blank canvas of Space however, that Nolan paints his masterpiece. Here the director fervently tries and effortlessly succeeds in evoking the visual majesty of Kubrick’s 2001. Cooper’s ship, the ‘Endurance’, glides through space accompanied to Hans Zimmer’s score as if it’s dancing an interplanetary foxtrot, cruising past black holes and event horizons with grace and flair.

Unfortunately Nolan and his brother can’t help but make a meal of the narrative. All the ingredients are certainly there, but the presentation is messy. There are far more plot holes than wormholes here. Particularly in the film’s final reel, which appears to eventually collapse under its own weight as Nolan searches for his conclusion.

Even in its narratively weakest moments though, the gravitational pull of Nolan’s vision can’t help but suck you in. But the overwhelming thought that initially swirled through my mind following Interstellar was that it could have been light years better.