Interstellar is Truly Stellar

Interstellar

by Jay Pinder

Christopher Nolan’s latest film featuring Matthew Mcconaughey is finally here, and it’s….good. Though it doesn’t quite raise the bar of thought provoking, as well as inception, it succeeds at being a great film that makes you think.

This film sets itself in the no too distant future, with a barren earth only able to sustain the population by growing corn. The beginning of the film focuses on the degradation of man kind in extreme times of peril and collapse. Cooper, Mcconaughey, is a retired astronaut and engineer making his family wages in the overly needed and common career of farming. Cooper stands out amongst the population as a free thinking intelligent man, while the rest of the world has devolved in thinking and fallen into conspiracy over facts. Being a struggling father of two, he spends his time and gifts in helping the other farmers with their combines. Cooper then is faced with an anomaly in his daughter’s room that leads him to the now secret organization of N.A.S.A.

The next part of the film starts the main theme and action of the entire story on perseverance, also the name of the ship they are flying. Cooper is asked to leave his family to help save the human race, by either finding a new habitable planet for the inhabitants of earth or restarting the human race with a cocktail of DNA to spread about the new planets. They are lead through a worm hole, to get near such possible planets, by an unknown force. This forces the characters and the audience to pit science against faith in a higher power, or at least inquire the thought.

Through the film Cooper and his crew must make hard decisions, pitting seeing their loved ones again vs. saving the human race. Because of the relativity of time they may sacrifice years for just a short visit to certain worlds, meaning they may give up seeing their loved ones ever again. This film raised the stakes multiple times using the preciousness of love, and time to elevate the circumstances and add tension. One may say that this film incredibly tops the tension of the recently awarded and praised film Gravity.

Despite its incredible story telling, the film doesn’t succeed in all aspects. Not many of the performances are incredible, and the serious tone of the film can, at times, be a little too ridiculous. At one time it may seem that Christopher Nolan is stating that the 5th dimension could be love, which is a hard line to take seriously in a film so rooted in science. The robot in the film is also a little hard to take seriously, when it is supposed to be serious, due to its odd structure and nature. The creators combine a normal mans voice with an odd almost rubik’s cube like structure.

Though the oddities are a little hard to overcome in this film it succeeds in making you think, and in taking you on a thrill ride. The intensity in this film is to be marveled. If you are prone to motion sickness, especially in films such as gravity, this film may not be for you, but if you are a up for a little thought provoking action packed fun I recommend seeing this in theaters for the visuals alone.