I HAVE RETURNED.
It’s been a while folks. I’ll call it sabbatical. I have returned because my good friend suggested that Interstellar deserved a review if anything did. I agreed. So here we go:
I'd like to begin by sharing a bit from a friend. When it first finished, he said to me that he hadn't thought, after Inception, that Christopher Nolan could get more "outrageous." I think that is absolutely the right word for it. He did something That seamlessly revolutionized the way movies will be done from here on out. And next year, every movie will be trying to copy it, but they will all look pale beside it. I think that's a good place to start.
I'd like to begin by sharing a bit from a friend. When it first finished, he said to me that he hadn't thought, after Inception, that Christopher Nolan could get more "outrageous." I think that is absolutely the right word for it. He did something That seamlessly revolutionized the way movies will be done from here on out. And next year, every movie will be trying to copy it, but they will all look pale beside it. I think that's a good place to start.
I’ll begin from the back, because that was key. Wonder is a 9.75. I’ll begin by giving the positives, which are numerous. The music from Hans Zimmer is magnificent as always. I’ll come back to questions of music when I get to negatives, but my limited musical knowledge can say this: Hans Zimmer seems to be able to use music to lead us inexorably to his emotional waypoints and to time it second-perfect with the visuals.
Beyond music, the visuals are perfect. In space, they are glorious, on other planets, they are harrowing, in fifth-dimensional space, they are unique and mythic, but the most masterful stuff may be the way they create the future earth and set the characters in relation to these backdrops.
The negatives are all in the area I would call sound-mixing, possibly for lack of a better term. There are two possibilities here. One is that Nolan has again created a work of genius that mixes the audio from two scenes at a deafening volume and finds a way to make the dialogue still mostly intelligible. That has never been done in this way before, to my knowledge, but my hunch is that the latter is true. In the attempt to create something new and exciting, I think, Nolan has stepped over an invisible line from genius to quackery. It is a subtle thing at times and not every scene like this (there seems to have been a number) fails, but it is often enough a distraction that disables a full view of the film that I wish he hadn’t done it. For that he loses his perfect wonder score in my eyes.
Now to wisdom. Like with wonder, the score is very high because Nolan knows what he’s doing. He knows just how to spin good ideas into narrative. His first major idea, which I did not expect and I hope doesn’t spoil anyone’s enjoyment of the movie, is that of the pursuit of excellence. In his characters voices it sounds more like, “Don’t allow yourself to be bound to what is seen as necessary, but aim for the stars in terms of doing what excites you.” This lesson is, I think, a very important one for a world dominated by the rush to promote sciences and things that are seen as practical over the arts and philosophy, which are often seen as inconsequential in comparison. Nolan’s character’s are scientists, but their interests are seen as extraneous in a world that needs food, but they see the necessity of looking beyond the immediate to the important issues that define humanity. This completely worth +.25 or more to me.
The second idea is possibly even more important and makes up most of the remaining .5 addition. I’m about to head into territory that could be a spoiler.
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I’ll go ahead and go all out since the spoiler concerned have been shooed away. I think the consistent eschewing of the evil-robot motif for the evil-human version is genius. Characters like Mann, played by Matt Damon, and Michael Caine’s character, who both spin deep falsehoods that condemn others to fates they would never have chosen, are near-perfect exemplars of the power and idiocy of human hypocrisy. They both see themselves as superior for having taken it upon themselves to act for the survival of the human race, but they fail to see the blinding selfishness in their own decisions as well as their short-sightedness.
While I’m at it, I could trace the further development of that first idea in Caine’s lie to Murph and the way she fights through the assumption that it’s hopeless. Throughout the movie, the fight between idealism and practicality finds the idealist the success and the practical man the fool. I think this reversal of how our society often thinks of things is insightful and at times produces great moments of comedy.
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The rest of the +.75 on top of the 9 is made up by Anne Hathaway’s somewhat corny scene where she tries to convince us that love is quantifiable. It’s corny, but paradoxically somewhat accurate.
On to wit, at last. This was strangely the hardest category for this film. In the past, Nolan has at times struggled here. He gets great actors to work with him and they never really underperform with him, but there are just little structural problems. Here the issues are with pacing and dialogue. As far as pacing goes, he does some brilliant work, with the space shuttle launch, etc., but the development of these long relationship plots falters at times. It skips things sometimes, mostly because this could easily been a mini-series and has a lot to get through in the time allotted. But McConaughey and his daughter, as well as said daughter (hereafter Murph) and her brother’s relationship. So many little relationships develop, but none of them seem very deep in the end. I won’t head into spoiler territory again, but the final scene with McConaughey and Murph is really disappointing and trivializing of interpersonal relationships, reminding me damningly of the break-up scene in Her.
For this reason, some of the dialogue feels really forced or unnecessarily terse. And some jumps are made (e.g. “You’re my ghost”) that are somewhat hard to feel good about.
At this point I feel like we land at an even 9. The extra .25 is about acting, but with this kind of all-star cast, it should be more. Everyone is good. Michael Caine, Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, various other surprise guests, but no one is outstanding. That is really a darn shame. The best performances are McConaughey and the guest who goes to play Dr. Mann.
I think that finds us where we end. A 28.75 is no mean feat, especially for a movie with really visible flaws. It puts it directly in the top 25, which I really will rewatch and rerate and review for you, someday. Be well and watch good movies.
P.S. If you’ve not already watched Shooter (2007) and you’re wondering if you should, I don’t recommend it. It might have been a four star, but Interstellar has not left me in the mood to finish inferior films.
