INTERSTELLAR – 70 mm IMAX B
USA Great Britain (169 mi) 2014 ‘Scope d: Christopher Nolan Official site
USA Great Britain (169 mi) 2014 ‘Scope d: Christopher Nolan Official site
This is William
Benteen, who officiates on a disintegrating outpost in space. The people are a remnant society who left the
Earth looking for a Millennium, a place without war, without jeopardy, without
fear, and what they found was a lonely, barren place whose only industry was
survival. And this is what they’ve done
for three decades: survive; until the memory of the Earth they came from has
become an indistinct and shadowed recollection of another time and another
place. One month ago a signal from Earth
announced that a ship would be coming to pick them up and take them home. In just a moment we’ll hear more of that
ship, more of that home, and what it takes out of mind and body to reach
it. This is the Twilight Zone.
—Rod Serling’s opening narration for On Thursday We Leave for Home, an episode of The Twilight Zone that originally aired May 2, 1963
Not everybody can work with a $165 million dollar
budget. Christopher Nolan, however, who
started with the low budget indie films FOLLOWING (1998), made for just $6000
dollars, and MEMENTO (2000), made for $9 million, quickly entered the Hollywood
big leagues with blockbuster budgets for THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) for $185
million, INCEPTION (2010) for $160 million, and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012) for
$250 million, so really we’re talking about a guy whose films have grossed over
$3.5 billion dollars. If one looked at
the word “excessive” in the dictionary, there is likely to be a photo of
Christopher Nolan. To his credit,
however, is his commitment to shooting on film instead of digital, along with
his refusal to join the 3D bandwagon, where those theaters equipped with either
35 mm or 70 mm projectors were the first to screen the film, in some cases
weeks before the mainstream digital theaters, getting a jump on the paying
customers. IMAX supposedly did 30% of
the opening weekend business though they comprise a much smaller number of
theaters. While his films always do well
commercially, making him one of the more influential directors working today, he
is perhaps best known as a skilled technician, where he often impresses with
his technical inventiveness and visual flair, but is often lacking in his
ability to generate memorable performances, where his characters often have a
disconnect with the audience, failing to generate warmth or intimacy, often
dwarfed by a more gloomy larger canvas, earning him a reputation as a “cold”
and sterile director that likes to make philosophical puzzle pictures. In mounting a sweeping outer space epic, one
steeped in the minutia of scientific research, where one expects visual
largesse on a grand scale, he certainly delivers a spectacular adventure,
especially when seen on an IMAX screen, but what’s most surprising is his insistent
focus on the human element, something altogether missing from his other
pictures, reaching out, perhaps to an even wider audience, as if he’s attempting
to respond to his critics. Perhaps
impressed by the overwhelming response to Gravity –
3D (2013), winner of 7 Academy Awards, including Best Direction and
Cinematography, yet it’s mostly a smaller film at only 90-minutes that
accentuates the interior thoughts of one of the characters, so Nolan tries to
do much the same without sacrificing the grandiosity of the visual design,
though both have mixed results with their efforts.
Like Nolan’s other works, however, the film is highly
uneven, reaching the upper realms of spectacle, but also the preposterous,
where there are many scenes that are unintentionally amusing, where the viewer
is literally laughing at the ridiculousness of the movie. Part of the reason for this is how serious
the film takes itself, wrapped in a jumble of scientific theory and
explanation, with occasional extraordinary moments, but overall it comes across
as cheesy as a high tech Star Trek
adventure, where the captain of the mission displays a reckless cowboy
mentality, where the journey to explore new worlds was the setting for taking
giant risks, often jeopardizing the lives of the crew, but in the fiction of a
television series or the movies the gamble always pays off. This mentality represents a comic book
military mindset of America as the master of the universe, an extremely macho
approach where women are reduced to secondary characters when it comes to the
action sequences, as the men had to fight out their differences on an
interplanetary stage. This couldn’t be better
illustrated than an extended sequence on a remote frozen planet where the two
men in charge, both in full-body space suits, actually grapple for control of
the entire mission, fighting like kids a zillion miles from home, where the
future of the earth depends upon the outcome.
It’s a laughable moment featuring two big-named Hollywood stars, where
despite all the scientific mumbo jumbo, it comes down to the childish antics of
children to decide the outcome of the human race. Of course it’s not filmed for humor, but
remains dead serious throughout, but it’s moments like this where the audience
literally disassociates itself from what’s happening onscreen, attributable to
the juvenile writing team of Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan. Written by men, glorifying the heroic feats
of men, these are like mini war movies where you can count on one side always
winning, and that would be the side that represents “truth, justice, and the
American way,” an extension of the typical American mindset that we’re the
center of the universe and everything has to revolve around us, where the American
flag is firmly planted in every planetary outpost. It’s a very selfish and reckless point of
view that we transport around the world through movies, as if that’s our
foreign policy, and it doesn’t exactly play so well with others. What this film also has in common with Gravity –
3D, besides both being written exclusively by men, is accentuating the
emotionalism of scientifically trained women, where despite all their rigorous
training, their character breaks down in a panic at the moment of truth,
exactly the opposite of the behavior of the men, and while this may be more
dramatically opportunistic, it’s also blatantly sexist.
What we discover from the outset is we’re already living in
an apocalyptic phase, where much of the earth has already been lost to blight
and disease, where it’s become a wave of perennial dust storms leaving only a
few survivors left in the American heartland that actually resembles the look
of Kansas in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939).
What few farms are left seem to be dwindling, where the question of
repopulating the earth is everpresent.
There is a generational gap between the old ones who remember the world
as it was, and the new kids that only understand the present, where living
under the current circumstances is all they know. We see the world through the eyes of Cooper,
Matthew McConaughey, a former NASA trained pilot who just lost his wife, and is
living with her father (John Lithgow) while raising his two kids, 15-year old
Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and his younger sister, 10-year old Murph (Mackenzie
Foy). Tom is acclimated to being a
farmer, realizing its worth in this new world, while Murph is more like her
father, where both are dreamers that wonder about what lies beyond, filled with
curiosity about things they can’t understand.
Knowledge has taken a back seat to practicality in this tiny corner of
the earth, where there’s some question whether or not they will survive, where
Murph is amusingly reprimanded at school for still believing what her father
taught her, as students are now taught the Apollo moon mission was a hoax
designed to bankrupt the Soviet Union, an intriguing hint of a society that
mistrusts science, where Cooper laments, “We used to look up at the sky and
wonder about our place in the stars, now we just look down and wonder about our
place in the dirt.” Foy’s energy is terrific
and one of the best aspects of the film, where she introduces a theory that her
room is infiltrated by ghosts, as she believes they are trying to communicate
with her. Of course no one takes her
seriously except her Dad who is well versed in science, suggesting she collect
sufficient data to prove her case, so she jots down notes and keeps a notebook. After one particularly potent storm, her room
takes on a mysterious look where all the sand has landed in a recognizable
pattern on the floor. Dad’s expertise
figures out this is a binary message of earth’s coordinates, listing a
particular location not far away. When
he sets out on his own, Murph has stowed away in his truck, where they discover
a secret facility surrounded by protective wire. As he inquires further, he discovers an
underground world completely separate from the rest of the earth. Incredulously, this is the remnants of NASA, living
undetected on what amounts to an underground science station. Yes, it gets a but tricky if you try to
understand how they build and finance rocket launches when the rest of the
earth has retreated several hundred years into an agrarian society. Like a moth led to a flame, NASA immediately
introduces Cooper as their pilot on their next space launch. Go figure.
Michael Caine plays Professor Brand, the leading mind behind
continued NASA space exploration, where the theory is earth is a dying planet,
where they need to find a new planet that can sustain human life, eventually
transporting the remaining people on earth to that planet where they can
repopulate. While it may seem
impossible, they discover a wormhole near Saturn that allows them a glimpse
into another solar system where several planets look “promising,” though they
need exploration and hard corps scientific data to begin such a massive
transport. To Cooper’s surprise, they
have already sent astronauts Miller, Edmunds, and Mann to explore the three
most potentially habitable planets, where they remain stranded and need Cooper
to pilot an experimental mission to investigate, retrieve the men and their
data, and return to earth for the next phase.
Joining Cooper on the mission is Brand’s daughter Amelia (Anne
Hathaway), a trained biologist, Romilly (David Gyasi), a physicist, Doyle (Wes
Bentley), a geographer, and two artificially intelligent robots, TARS and
CASE. Saying goodbye to his family is
difficult, especially Murph, who feels he is abandoning them, leaving them to
die on earth, though he promises to return, giving her a matching watch,
informing her that when he does return, based on time differentials in space
travel, they may be about the same age.
And with that, they blast off into a spectacular space adventure, filled
with thrills and chills and unexpected turns in the road, much of which must be
improvised on the spot, yet Cooper’s cool head prevails, guiding them into the
unknown with the macho confidence of a fighter pilot. After watching all the razzle dazzle of this
film, and there is plenty, the key to understanding it all is not a prolific
understanding of science, but to remember that Matthew McConaughey earlier in
his career was “trained” as a skilled NASA pilot. As he was engineering unheard of maneuvers on
the fly, putting various space vessels through a complicated series of
adrenaline-racing obstacle tests, each one more life threatening than the last,
where it’s impossible to believe that any of this could really happen, it’s
important to remember that he was “trained” for this mission. This amusing thought will carry you all the
way through, where he is William Shatner’s equal in the cojones department,
where both are always called upon to perform miracles in saving their crew from
almost certain death. Unlike Shatner,
however, McConaughey has a family to return to, where that solid connection is
the life force of the movie.
Perhaps the scene of the film happens relatively early,
after visiting the first planet, which had to be quick, as each hour on the
surface represents seven years on Earth, taking an exploratory team in a
shuttle craft while Romilly remained on the space craft, turning into a
disaster, not only losing precious time, but one of their crew members, all
happening in an instant, yet they return to Romilly 23-years later, where they
have to regroup, recalibrate what’s possible, and push ahead with their
mission. It’s here that the crew members
have some sobering down time to view the messages sent from earth, where Cooper
receives heartfelt messages from his son, who has grown into a man, and hears
about the life he left behind, where Murph is still too angry to speak to him,
a painful reminder of the true cost of this mission, and a tearful moment that
connects a lone man to the family he’s trying to save. Because it’s been so long without any word
from him, they’ve all abandoned hope that he’s still alive or even capable of
receiving these messages, which come to a sudden stop. It’s in the somber reflections of this moment
that we realize what Nolan is really trying to do, where all the visual
grandeur and elaborate special effects hides the film’s true intent, which is
to tell a simple love story about a man and the family he left behind, filled
with all his regrets and painful reminders of what he’s missing as he’s gallivanting
through unknown intergalactic realms, yet his mission is not over until he
returns safely back home. Jessica
Chastain becomes the adult version of Murph, eventually taking over after the
death of Professor Brand, where it seems like she’s the only person left on
earth that still believes in Cooper’s unlikely return. Of course, on the other side of it, Cooper is
faced with insurmountable obstacles and continual disappointments through
unforeseen technical difficulties and inhospitable planets, becoming a sci-fi,
mind-altering version of No Exit for
awhile where he thinks he’s reached the 5th dimension while still stuck in the
3rd dimension, recalling the intricate visual architecture of INCEPTION (2010),
floundering in a fractured, in-between existence where he has to solve the
scientific riddle of how to make the missing connection, where there is plenty
from this film that will remind viewers of Kubrick’s 2001:
A Space Odyssey (1968), also shot in 70 mm, or Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). If there’s a stark image that comes from this
film it’s the thought of individuals marooned on a lonely planet, awaiting the
near hopeless dream that someone will come to rescue them, a reference to an
early 1963 Twilight Zone episode, On Thursday We Leave for Home, The
Twilight Zone S04E16 On Thursday We ... - YouTube (52:12). This existential void of loneliness is
countered by the strength of family connections, where it feels altogether
improbable and downright sappy to introduce love into the middle of a giant sci-fi
epic, as if that is the magical connecting piece that binds us all together, as
otherwise we’re left adrift, stranded in utter isolation, imprisoned by our own
futile limitations.
