And so, one of the most highly anticipated, eagerly awaited event movies of the year has been released, and so I caught Christopher Nolan's deep space Sci-Fi epic 'INTERSTELLAR' earlier this week with a bunch of movie buddies as my local big screen multiplex. I emphasise 'big screen' because you need to see this film on the biggest big screen you can to be truly inspired by the vastness of the images portrayed as the brothers Nolan (Christopher wrote the screenplay with brother Jonathan) take us into the deepest recesses of space where no man has gone before!
This is an adventurous, epic story that visually is stunning and well crafted. Made for US$165M and running for ten minutes shy of three hours, the pace of the film sucks you in and the before you know it the end credits are rolling. The story takes place in a near future Earth when mankind is looking down the barrel of extinction - the soil we have toiled for millennia is turning to dust and is wind-blown in every direction in storms that blow hard and frequently. All but corn now can be grown in these harshest of conditions, and soon we learn even corn will perish - within the next generation the Scientists tell us...and this will mark the end for humankind. Living on a farm growing corn for as far as the eye can see is Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) with his two children Murph and Tom (Mackenzie Foy and Timothee Chalamet) and father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow). Cooper's wife died a few years back we are told. Cooper is eking out an existence on his dust bowl farm, and he is a former astronaut with NASA but flew his last voyage more than ten years ago - that space agency now decommissioned because the expense could not be justified when all we can grow is corn and mankind is destined to die out.
Cooper has his feet firmly planted on the ground but his eyes and mind are looking ever upward - knowing that mankind's future lies beyond our own planet. He is an everyman and someone we can relate to immediately - there are no heroics or histrionics here to dwell on, McConaughey gives a solid believable performance. One evening by chance he and Murph stumble across a restricted site in the middle of nowhere, and this is where his life and mankind's possible salvation change for ever. Enclosed in this remote underground bunker remain the last vestiges of NASA operating covertly with a series of ships and a space station under construction, whose mission is to explore distant worlds that are capable of sustaining the human race of the future. Overseen by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) with his daughter Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) we learn that a wormhole has opened close to Saturn and this is the possible gateway for mankinds future. Several ships have already been dispatched to explore, but signals are weak now in coming back and there are fears for the safety of those gone previously.
And so quickly Cooper is enlisted to captain the last voyage to distant far away planets given his previous life as an astronaut, but there is a catch of course. The wormhole is located off Saturn - a two year journey to get there, and then what's beyond the worm hole is anybody's guess! Furthermore, time passes far more quickly on Earth than it does in deep space, and so when Cooper eventually returns home it may be too late for mankind anyway. Bidding his children farewell (aged 10 and 15) he says to Murph that when he does come back they will probably both be the same age! Little does he know! She is distraught, and so Cooper leaves on bad terms, not knowing if he will ever see his daughter again.
And so Cooper departs with a crew of three others aboard the 'Ranger' to hook up with space station 'Endurance' floating above the Earth's atmosphere (a circular formation long-haul deep space pedestrian practical people carrier that resembles nothing like the stark clinical ship as seen in Kubricks' '2001: A Space Odyssey') - Amelia Brand (a biologist), Romilly (a physicist played by David Gyasi), Doyle (a geographer played by Wes Bentley) and two A.I. Robots - TARS and CASE accompanying him. As Endurance hurtles towards Saturn we see Nolan's first stunning visuals of space and what is contained therein. The approach to Saturn sees Endurance as a pin-prick gliding by the vast rings of this distant planet, with the approaching spherical wormhole in the distance through which they must travel into the unknown.
The visuals are rendered beautifully, as Saturn is left behind and Endurance is buffeted through the wormhole to emerge battered but intact though the other side. New galaxies are revealed as giant planets and constellations come into view, and it is amidst these that three have been identified that could be habitable for humans and to which the previous ships have thus far ventured and from which signals have been/are being received. And so the journey against time continues as we discover that gravitational pull from these planets causes time dilation, and so for every hour that passes for them now, seven years passes back on Earth - and time is quickly running out for humanity.
In the video clips sent back and forth we see Murph and Tom growing up (Jessica Chastain plays the now older middle-aged Murph, and Casey Affleck the older Tom), but Cooper has hardly aged at all. Murph is now working for Professor Brand, and Tom is married and has a child and still lives on the farm growing an ever depleting corn crop. Donald has since passed way. As one by one The Endurance and The Ranger visit the three planets so local issues, trials and tribulations confront them - often with dangerous consequences that result in a rethink of the time they have left, compromising situations and lateral thinking by the remaining crew. There are no aliens or otherworldly creatures in this film to stand in the way of our intrepid explorers - the challenges are of natural or human conditions to which they must respond, react and regroup quickly.
Without giving too much more away suffice to say Cooper is eventually rescued against all the odds, but as he floats semi-conscious in space for him only hours have passed, but on Earth another three or four decades have moved on so allowing for the development of the technology to enable his rescue ultimately. As the final chapter plays out Cooper comes round on a new space station and Murph is being flow in - she is now in her eighties (played by Ellen Burstyn) and on her death bed with her extended family around her. Cooper is still as young looking as the day he left, but in reality he is 120+ years old. In her final words to him, she tells Cooper to go in search for Brand who is stranded on one of the planets that was deemed habitable, and so he does!
Nolan has crafted a fine film, visually very impressive with a story that is grounded in as much fact as the expert theorists will have us believe (a notion that the Nolan's were keen to preserve to ensure the scientific integrity of the film and it's subject matter). This almost plays out as a lesson in science - in Einstein's 'Theory of Relativity', in Stephen Hawking's musings and the writings of Carl Sagan. The acting is spot on and special mention must go to McConaughey's Cooper as the understated, grounded, emotional optimistic explorer that he is. Whilst a Science Fiction film in the broader sense this is an emotional human drama at its heart exploring the life changing decisions we make when confronted with extraordinary circumstances - here at home, and in the far reaches of space.See this soon, on a very big screen and soak in the spectacle of space, the science, the human drama, the emotion and the energy that Christopher and Jonathan Nolan have crafted. Easily, one of the must-see films of the year.
-Steve, at Odeon Online-
