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Love him or hate him, when director Christopher Nolan releases a new film, movie lovers pay attention. The buzz seems to get bigger with each new release, as fans eagerly anticipate the mind-bending surprises to come. But, for Nolan’s sci-fi epic, Interstellar, the twists and turns take a backseat to the drama.
Interstellar begins in the near future, in a dying world where people are focused simply on their own survival. Once a promising engineer, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is now working the dusty fields, growing the last remaining crop: corn. But strange disturbances in his daughter’s bedroom lead him to a hidden government facility, where NASA is secretly working on a mission to find the human race a new home.
Driven by his love for his children—and his need to ensure their survival—Cooper agrees to pilot the Lazarus mission, which will send him and his crew through a worm hole into a distant galaxy. But as his mission continues and years pass on Earth, his children question his decision as they begin to doubt his return.
Interstellar isn’t the typical sci-fi thriller. While most tend to focus on the cool technical details and the outer-space adventures, Interstellar tells a surprisingly emotional, character-driven story. And—especially for those of us with children—it’s a gut-wrenching drama that sometimes hits a little too close to home. After all, as our climate continues to change, it’s all too easy to imagine this kind of reality for our children and grandchildren.
Cooper is faced with an impossible choice: to stay home and be a part of his children’s lives or to risk his relationship with his children and use his abilities and experience to try to save their future. The rest of the film, then, rests on his decision. Everything he does—every choice he makes—is done with his children in mind. And the urgency and desperation that he feels gives the film surprising emotional depth.
McConaughey has definitely had an interesting career—from ‘90s slacker to Oscar winner. And the father of three is perfect for the role, giving Cooper the right mix of laid-back humor, confidence, determination, and deep, unwavering love for his kids. He’s a likable character—the kind of guy that you’d want to join on the front porch for a beer. And as he experiences the occasional successes and frequent failures of his mission, you’ll feel each one along with him.
But Interstellar is also a different kind of film for Nolan. It doesn’t have the same dark, gritty action as his Dark Knight films, nor does it have the same twisting, turning, fast-moving brilliance of Inception. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its share of action and mind-bending twists. The discussions about relativity and worm holes and gravitational inconsistencies will definitely keep you on your toes—but, in a nearly three-hour movie, that’s a surprisingly small part of the story. And it simply isn’t the point.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the film is that it just isn’t much fun. Even Nolan’s darkest films tend to have a certain playful quality to them—something to keep audiences grinning at the clever (and sometimes wicked) fun of it all. But while Interstellar is big and bold and sometimes strikingly beautiful, it’s also quite heavy and grim—and one sarcastic robot just can’t make up for it. It’s definitely an impressive—and often heartfelt—film, but it doesn’t have the same energy of his earlier films.
With each new release, Nolan seems to go bolder and grander. Interstellar is certainly epic. It’s thought-provoking and surprisingly dramatic, too. But fans might find themselves missing the underlying playfulness of some of their favorite Nolan films.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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