Film Review: “Interstellar”

Any intrepid voyager through the vast space of science
fiction should recognize the origins and context of Christopher Nolan’s new
movie, “Interstellar.” The picture owes a great deal to all those contemporary
doomsday flicks, along with some special debts to the “Star Trek” series and
the landmark Stanley Kubrick film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”  Its several discussions of the science of space
travel and the prospects for mankind, however, bear some resemblance to
Emerson’s dictum that “the axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics.”

The movie begins with television interviews featuring
ordinary citizens bemoaning the disaster of a modern dust bowl, when an
overpopulated world faces starvation, and some plant disease, only identified
as the Blight, steadily and relentlessly destroys all of Earth’s crops. Because
all governments have run out of money, no solution exists, and most people believe
their children represent the last generation to survive on the planet.

Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a
widowed former NASA pilot who lives on one of the country’s dying farms,
realizing all too well the bleak future of his children. He discovers that a
remnant of NASA’s cadre of scientists runs an underground laboratory, working
on a solution, a probe through a mysterious wormhole apparently created by some
other beings; their chief, Professor Brand (Michael Caine) persuades Cooper to
pilot a craft through the wormhole to find the outposts established by three
previous missions.

Despite the anguished protests of his daughter, Murph (MacKenzie Foy), Cooper
naturally accepts the mission; with three scientists, including Brand’s
daughter (Anne Hathaway), he flies a spaceship to and through the wormhole. When
they land on the first planet outside the solar system, they encounter a world
covered by oceans and the ruins of the earlier probe; on the second, an icy
wasteland, they find a survivor, Dr. Mann (Matt Damon), and a greater danger
than they had anticipated. 

More important, they experience the
reality of Einstein’s theory of relativity, in which the traditional
perceptions of time and space no longer operate — a couple of hours on the
planet for Cooper and Brand amount to 23 years for their partner back on the
ship.  That fact initiates the attempts
to define both a black hole and a wormhole, and problems in reconciling relativity
with quantum mechanics. The Einsteinian concept of
the flexibility of time explains the strange and complicated solution for the
astronauts’ dilemmas, familiar of course to “Star Trek” fans who recall Captain
Kirk ordering “Warp Factor Five” to sail the Enterprise from one galaxy to
another.

In its suggestion of unknown beings who provide a new
opportunity for mankind’s development, “Interstellar” resembles “2001,” but
avoids that movie’s visual fondling of machinery, as well as its chilly,
pretentious mysticism. The crew also employs a robot/computer named TARS, a far
cry from the unctuous HAL; TARS speaks with a certain drollery and resembles a
Cubist sculpture in motion. In its presentation of the relationship between
Cooper and his daughter, it generates some intense emotion within the
discussions of the four-dimensional space-time continuum we all inhabit (you
knew that, didn’t you?) and the possibility of a fifth dimension that
establishes the wonders of time and the mysteries of those vast spaces between
the stars.

Those mysteries come alive in the final meeting between
Cooper and Murph, impersonated by three different
actors in different phases of her life — in addition to MacKenzie
Foy as young Murph, Jessica Chastain performs in the
most important stage, and Ellen Burstyn plays the aged Murph
in a scene that once again underlines the paradoxes of time.  Despite the heroics of the crew and the
miracle of traversing space and transcending chronology, Murph
probably represents the most important character in the picture.

Unfortunately, the movie also employs an insistent musical
score that often virtually smothers the dialogue. With the exception of the
always competent Michael Caine, the actors often also mumble or whisper their
lines, which simply dissipates the serious and potentially fascinating
intellectual content of a most challenging film. Perhaps the most important and
intriguing element of “Interstellar” lies in its reliance on narrative,
character, and meaning instead of special effects and cinematic pyrotechnics — rarely
for a contemporary science fiction film, its content triumphs over its
fireworks.

This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2014.