COURTESY OF IMDB
In a world where three-minute YouTube videos dominate our attention spans, Christopher Nolan scoffs. In Interstellar, his 9th feature film, he attempts to not only dazzle audiences with visual effects like I’ve never seen before, but attempts to infuse ambition back in his audience. Does he pull it off? Like the plot of Interstellar, it’s complicated.
The film starts off in a futuristic Earth, but the only thing futuristic about it is the year. Earth, as Matthew McConaughey’s character, Cooper, so eloquently puts it, “is a treasure, but it’s been telling us to leave for a while now.” It’s an environmental disaster. The crops in the country are failing. There is barely any mention of cities, but we can assume they are struggling just the same, especially since the air is running out of oxygen due to blight sucking it all up. Lucky for the human race, we have Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and science to save the day.
Through an array of theoretical physics principles and anomalies I can’t even begin to explain (I’m a film studies and English writing major, currently passing my Q course by the skin of my teeth), they travel through a wormhole, put there by the mysterious “they”, into a solar system with three potential new homes. This is extremely problematic for Cooper, who must decide between leaving in an attempt to save humanity, and staying with his children. You can guess what he decides (the movie might have been much shorter had he decided to stay).
I don’t actually want to get into the plot too much, because quite frankly, it takes too long. All you really need to know is that it’s full of science, emotion, and exposition. If you pay attention, you will be able to follow along. If you don’t you’ll be lost and it’ll be very difficult to find your way back.
What you won’t miss, because it’s impossible to miss, are the breathtaking visuals. As reluctant as Nolan was to accept digital projection, we as audiences benefit from his decision greatly. Interstellar’s true ambition doesn’t lie in its content or plot, but rather in its filmmaking. No other film I have seen, from beginning to end, has left me in awe of what I was experiencing. If you take film as being the most aggressive art form, meaning it engages multiple senses at once, and not one at a time like music or a painting might, it’s one of the best films I’ve seen. The speed things move at, combined with the vivid imagery of things never seen before – like, oh say, a wormhole – make Interstellar a cinematic experience you’ll never forget. This is especially true if you see it in the IMAX format. Folks, I beg you to see it in the IMAX. You’ll not experience anything like it; until, maybe, Christopher Nolan’s next film.
At the end of the day, Interstellar deserves to be seen the way it was intended, because it earns it. It’s plotline has issues, and believe me it’s not a perfect film in any sense.
But it strives for it, just like the characters in the film trying to save the world. Let the minor flaws go and just admire the artist mastering his art, and take his ambition to heart. Nolan does, and he didn’t make the best science fiction film of all time, but his will brings it into the team photo. Here’s to making ambition cool again.