Interstellar (2014) Review

Avid readers of my blog have probably already picked up on my little obsession with directors. Yes, I am a mostly devoted follower of the auteur theory, the idea that a film just like a book can be traced back to a single driving force, its author for books, and, normally, its director for movies. And yes, I am also aware that making movies is a collaborative process that involves dozens if not hundreds of people, covering everything from writers, producers, actors, cinematographers, gaffers, everything. Nonetheless, you cannot watch a movie by, say, Wes Anderson or David Lynch and not agree that there are plenty of common visual and stylistic elements that are consistent across their bodies of work. Now you're probably asking yourself, where the heck am I going with this lengthy intro? I am not trying to write an outline for a critical analysis of the auteur theory, instead am I trying to make it clear from the beginning that I am blaming the ultimate failure of Interstellar on its director, Cristopher Nolan.

Mr. Nolan has, over the last decade and a half, become a major player in Hollywood, handling franchise fare such as his Dark Knight trilogy just as assuredly as ambitious new properties such as Inception. Coupled with the incredible financial success his films have achieved, he is now in a position where he can take on his own materials backed by major studios without much interference from above. Calling this status enviable would be an understatement, in fact it is nothing short of a miracle in the business-driven world of movies. So right off the bat I applaud Mr. Nolan's willingness to stick to his guns and bring yet another original script to the big screen.

Interstellar is nothing if not desperately ambitious. It tries to paint the future of mankind in a plausible way, incorporating believable science and possible extensions to it, and grounding everything in a deep, character-driven family drama. It boasts a vast amount of great actors, multiple Oscar nominees and winners in the form of Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine and Jessica Chastain. And to harken back to my intro about the auteur theory, Nolan sticks to some of his regular players, with Hathaway returning after The Dark Knight Rises and Caine being on his sixth Nolan duty. And before you ask, of course there is a bombastic Hans Zimmer score accompanying the spectacle, just like in some of Nolan's other films.

The film starts its story with the Earth dying, with people being unable to produce enough food to supply the demand and mankind's attempt to reach out to the stars to find new worlds to inhabit. Conveniently enough a wormhole appears new Saturn, allowing spaceships to pass through to another galaxy that might be the last hope for the people of planet Earth. That's where Matthew McConaughey comes into play as a former NASA test pilot who mans a spaceship to explore these new worlds. So far, so grand. He also has to deal with leaving his two children behind, something that especially his daughter doesn't take lightly, given that due to it being a possible suicide mission he might never return.

And then everything starts going off the rails. As soon as McConaughey's spaceship has left Earth, things take a turn for the worse for the movie. What Interstellar so badly wants is to be taken seriously, and nowhere is that more obvious than onboard the ship when the film all of a sudden turns into a dry and half-assed space lecture, trying to explain everything about wormholes, gravity, relativity and black holes in the form of explanatory dialogue between McConaughey (who up until that point does a good job), Hathaway (who's consistently terrible in this film) and Wes Bentley. Was it really necessary to include these endless dialogue scenes of unasked-for exposition when the film at a later point decides to throw it overboard anyways? We don't need half an hour of that, if the introduction of five-dimensional beings render it entirely useless and give Interstellar a free-for-all for ridiculous story developments.

Oh boy, would I love to get into spoiler territory here to get my frustration out of the way but instead I am just going to give you some questions that kept popping up for me, that should make sense if you have seen the film:

How can it be so random that McConaughey stumbles into the whole mission? What is Topher Grace's purpose for being in the film? Why is Casey Affleck all of a sudden so evil? Why does Jessica Chastain figuring out the equation have such a big impact? Why, from one day to another, is the lung disease so threatening? Why do we need Anne Hathaway's love interest that we never get to see? Is it time for Michael Caine to retire from acting?

What really ticked me off though was the fact that Interstellar is stealing so much from other films. You cannot tell me that travelling through the wormhole wasn't taken straight from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. And Matt Damon's character is more than reminiscent of Mark Strong in Danny Boyle's Sunshine. And for the spinny docking scene (you'll know what I mean) someone clearly has taken some cues from Gravity. But the best stolen scene is probably the wormhole explanation with a piece of paper, taken directly from Event Horizon. So, believe it or not, here is Christopher Nolan is stealing from Paul W.S. Anderson, responsible for such "classics" as Mortal Kombat, Alien vs. Predator and some of the Resident Evil movies.

So, to bring it full circle, I do blame Christopher Nolan for all those shortcomings given his full creative control over the film, with him being the director and co-writer. There's simply too many story threads that are left dangling and too many ridiculous plot developments for Interstellar to be a satisfying experience. It wants to be everything, a grand space opera, an enlightening science lecture and a heartfelt drama (oddly enough, given Nolan's reputation for awe-inspiring visuals, the smaller scenes between McConaughey and his daughter are the best part of Interstellar). If there has ever been a film that just wants to have its cake and eat it too, it's this one. And while it's at it, it's making a whole big mess. Where a film like Inception was grand, ambitious, and also quite a bit gaga, it still kept the audience engaged and engrossed. Interstellar on the other hand just goes off the rocker at once, never getting any of its countless elements fully right, only succeeding in creating watcher's frustration. Less really would have been more here.