'Interstellar' Shoots For Moon, Lands Among Stars

By Jake Choi Staff Writer

With a complex narrative that represents its giant scale, "Interstellar" is Christopher Nolan's most ambitious work. It's maybe a little too ambitious.

"Interstellar" stars Matthew McConaughey as Cooper, an ex-NASA pilot turned farmer. In the near future, Earth runs out of resources and is no longer able to sustain human life. Climate change has led to constant dust storms and society has reverted to farming corn because of limited food supply. After Cooper and his daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy), nicknamed Murph, decode a message from a seemingly higher intelligence from outer space, they find a secret NASA base. Learning that he is needed to pilot NASA's spacecraft, Cooper accepts the  mission to go through a wormhole near Saturn to travel to different galaxies and find an inhabitable planet for mankind to live.

I felt the full experience of the countdown until liftoff and when the characters are in space, it reminded me of how miniscule one is relative to the vastness of space. One thing that I noticed is that "Interstellar" is easily the most visually impressive work I've seen this year. With visual effects that match those of Alfonso Cuarón's "Gravity," the film features mindbending sequences where the characters go across galaxies and dimensional planes. To Nolan's credit, he creates a fully immersive setting in which the viewer feels what the characters feel, allowing the risk and tension of their mission to resonate within us. The viewers feel like a part of what they are watching.

One thing to note about Nolan's films is their consistency. Because of the successes of his previous films, it's no surprise that "Interstellar" had many people anticipating its release. He has the ability to make farfetched and outlandish elements into a realistic, high-stakes story. However, despite his films reputation for being a little too mechanical and cold for the average movie-goer, this is Nolan's most emotional and personal film despite its massive scope. An example of this is the relationship between Cooper and Murph. McConaughey is outstanding in his performance and when he has to leave his family on Earth to save them, it is a highly emotional, heartbreaking moment.

In terms of emotionally impressive performances, special attention should go to Foy and Jessica Chastain playing child and future Murph, respectively. Because a lot of the movie is in deep space where gravity from black holes distorts time, time dilation makes Murph grow from a young girl to a grown woman throughout the movie. However, Chastain is just right for the role, able to show the audience the physical and emotional growth of a protagonist resentful of her father who left her family but, at the same, desperately wanting Cooper to safely return home. The time that Cooper spends away from Earth takes a huge emotional toll on him because the movie isn't just about saving the world; it's about the love in a father-daughter relationship spanning light-years and the importance of being there for your family.

Even with all these positives, "Interstellar" is far from perfect. Because the movie deals with so much science, there are many times in the movie where exposition explaining time dilation and wormholes clouds and blocks the flow of the story. In fact, if one thinks "Inception" is complicated, "Interstellar" will be even more challenging. The viewers must have a complete suspension of disbelief, especially for the revelation at the end of the movie. This would be fine, except for the fact that "Interstellar" is nearly a three hour long movie, so one has to be totally committed to watching it. The long runtime is actually a flaw in the movie, with subplots being messy with the overall objective of saving Earth. It interferes with the story's progression and becomes intrusive.

The biggest problem of "Interstellar" is its pacing: the first half hour of the movie is slow and when the astronauts go to space, it takes a while to get exciting. When action does occur and the plot does progress, the movie becomes breathtaking but, after these scenes are over, the excitement goes from high to low too quickly. The dialogue that leads to the exciting moments is often dull and convoluted. It's understandably difficult to explain the physics in the movie but it would have been better if it was showing, not telling, so that audience members know what the heck they're talking about in the movie when they're explaining quantum mechanics in space.

Despite being a strength, some emotional parts in "Interstellar" are also a weakness. There is a scene where a character says "love is the one thing that transcends time and space," which is good and all, but it also comes off as a little sappy and overreaching. The words are inspiring for sure, but they are not convincing dialogue that trained scientists would normally say. The emotional moments between Cooper and Murph mostly work but, when it comes to characters, most of the supporting characters are forgettable. I regret to say that although Anne Hathaway fulfilled her role as Amelia, her character is rather generic and unexplored in regards to her past and background, so her emotional moments do not hit as hard and they often seem superfluous.

Overall, "Interstellar" shows Nolan's attempts to break through barriers and norms. It isn't a standard formulaic storyline of space traveling that we've seen before; he is reaching into new dimensions of filmmaking and cinema. Nolan says that "Interstellar" is filled with inspiration from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," but one can clearly see Nolan's own personal flair. Even with the flaws of the movie, one must respect his ambition for such a grand, complex project and it makes the movie's mistakes more acceptable because we can clearly see he's trying new things. This kind of courage to do so is commendable in filmmaking. It makes movie-goers excited for his next movie to come out because it shows that Nolan is not limited to only genre and style. Irrefutably, "Interstellar" is the pinnacle of the movie-going experience. It's a visual, emotional and intellectual thrill-ride that depicts space with a sense of wonder that we have lost in modern times. Even with its flaws, it's a film that you must watch in the theater to truly understand the lightspeed, inter-dimensional journey you're about to embark on. I think that counts for something today.

– By Jake Choi, Staff Writer

---