Oh boy. Christopher Nolan you magnificent, complicated, and deep pocketed sonofabitch, you've done it again. You've managed to astound, confuse, and inspire me once more with your boundary pushing, genre defining, works of art. And this time you've taken your wild imagination and jaw dropping spectacle into space, and all I have to say to that is... thank you.
I'm weary of going too deep in this review, partly because of the spoilery nature of this and all other Nolan films, and partly because I'm still trying to wrap my head around what I just spent three hours watching. I may do an Interstellar review 2.0 after a much warranted second viewing of the film, but for now what I will say is that this movie is fantastic. There are a very few people in the world who could pull something of this magnitude off, and I'm once again blown away at what Mr. Nolan is capable of accomplishing. Interstellar is one of the biggest technical achievements in post turn-of-the-century filmmaking and it's one of the most impressive visual spectacles I've ever witnessed on the big screen. It also helps when you view this achievement in the glory of 15 proof 70mm film, the format Nolan would have wanted me and all the rest of his millions and millions of viewers to see it in. And quite frankly, there's a reason for that. Interstellar takes place in the near future when the Earth's food supply has run out, and the world is plagued by famine and dust storms. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a pilot turned farmer who is enlisted by whats left of NASA to embark on a mission through a wormhole that could provide the key to saving the human race. Obviously, the stakes are pretty high and it's best that I don't say anything more than that, because the less you know going into this film the better, and that's a fact.
Interstellar sets out to accomplish what sci-fi masterpieces like 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Blade Runner accomplished in pairing these themes of space and time with the human condition. I've yet to decide whether it pulls this off in the way the aforementioned films do, but that's something I'll decide after a second watch. What really is amazing is just how much Nolan is attempting to tackle here with Interstellar. It's not just a story about intergalactic travel, time travel, and quantum physics. It's a story about the willpower of the human race and what we can accomplish through love and perseverance. It sounds a little melodramatic, which Interstellar is, but in an age where the human race continues to deplete our planet of its resources, making Interstellar frighteningly relevant, its melodrama that hits home. Interstellar didn't make me cry. It didn't make me cheer. But it did make me feel. It instills inspiration and pride over what we as humans are capable of. From a meta standpoint it's already inspiring to see what the film itself pulls off on the technical scale, which I think makes the fictional accomplishments of the characters within the film feel all the more impeccable and amazing. Interstellar reminds us how much of a fight the human race is capable of putting up. It reminds us that we will "not go gentle into that good night." In years to come when real famine and real drought plague the real human race, it will be time to look back to Interstellar to remind ourselves that we don't have to lay down and surrender to mother nature's wrath that we brought upon ourselves. I don't know if Interstellar is a masterpiece, but what I do know is that in one weekend it has already earned a spot in history as one of filmmaking's biggest achievements.
I'm weary of going too deep in this review, partly because of the spoilery nature of this and all other Nolan films, and partly because I'm still trying to wrap my head around what I just spent three hours watching. I may do an Interstellar review 2.0 after a much warranted second viewing of the film, but for now what I will say is that this movie is fantastic. There are a very few people in the world who could pull something of this magnitude off, and I'm once again blown away at what Mr. Nolan is capable of accomplishing. Interstellar is one of the biggest technical achievements in post turn-of-the-century filmmaking and it's one of the most impressive visual spectacles I've ever witnessed on the big screen. It also helps when you view this achievement in the glory of 15 proof 70mm film, the format Nolan would have wanted me and all the rest of his millions and millions of viewers to see it in. And quite frankly, there's a reason for that. Interstellar takes place in the near future when the Earth's food supply has run out, and the world is plagued by famine and dust storms. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a pilot turned farmer who is enlisted by whats left of NASA to embark on a mission through a wormhole that could provide the key to saving the human race. Obviously, the stakes are pretty high and it's best that I don't say anything more than that, because the less you know going into this film the better, and that's a fact.
Interstellar sets out to accomplish what sci-fi masterpieces like 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Blade Runner accomplished in pairing these themes of space and time with the human condition. I've yet to decide whether it pulls this off in the way the aforementioned films do, but that's something I'll decide after a second watch. What really is amazing is just how much Nolan is attempting to tackle here with Interstellar. It's not just a story about intergalactic travel, time travel, and quantum physics. It's a story about the willpower of the human race and what we can accomplish through love and perseverance. It sounds a little melodramatic, which Interstellar is, but in an age where the human race continues to deplete our planet of its resources, making Interstellar frighteningly relevant, its melodrama that hits home. Interstellar didn't make me cry. It didn't make me cheer. But it did make me feel. It instills inspiration and pride over what we as humans are capable of. From a meta standpoint it's already inspiring to see what the film itself pulls off on the technical scale, which I think makes the fictional accomplishments of the characters within the film feel all the more impeccable and amazing. Interstellar reminds us how much of a fight the human race is capable of putting up. It reminds us that we will "not go gentle into that good night." In years to come when real famine and real drought plague the real human race, it will be time to look back to Interstellar to remind ourselves that we don't have to lay down and surrender to mother nature's wrath that we brought upon ourselves. I don't know if Interstellar is a masterpiece, but what I do know is that in one weekend it has already earned a spot in history as one of filmmaking's biggest achievements.