Last year around this time, I decided to watch Interstellar, basically for the first time. I saw it in theaters when it came out, but I saw it with a friend, who was distracted by their phone, because one of their family members was in the hospital, so I was distracted too, and Interstellar is not a movie you want to be distracted during. For some reason I left the theaters with the impression that I did not like it (probably because the distractions), but after watching Oppenheimer last year, I wanted to revisit it, and thankfully, it was streaming somewhere. I was immediately captivated and completely drawn into the story. So a year later, when I saw that it was in IMAX I had to go and see it.
Interstellar is the story of Cooper and his family. Cooper’s wife died leaving him with two kids and farm. He does his best to take care of them, but in the dust bowl like conditions, it is becoming increasingly harder, and there is worry about the viability of continuing to live on Earth, so when Cooper and his daughter Murph translate a secret message, and it brings them to a secret NASA base with a grandiose opportunity, he accepts it. The catch is that he is now an interplanetary traveler, and he must leave his family behind for an undetermined amount of time, but he knows it will be years.
Once in space, Cooper and the crew have a list of planets to visit to see if they can sustain human life. The first planet they visit has a much stronger gravitational pull than Earth, and that makes time occur slower than on Earth, and when a mistake occurs, they end up losing the equivalent of 23 Earth years, even though it was only about an hour on the planet, so when Cooper gets back on board the ship, his children are all grown up, and there is some resentment being held, especially by his daughter Murph, but she followed in his footsteps and was also working for NASA. The next planet they visited was frozen, and uninhabitable. So Cooper decides to enter a black hole to gain gravitational data to help create a space ship that can be launched from Earth that can hold a large portion of the population that his daughter has been working on, and his partner, Brand, goes on to see if the third planet is colonizable.
There is a ton of science in this, but what makes this movie so great is the emotional core. When I watched it a year ago, I was not expecting to be bawling my eyes out. That rarely happens to me in a movie let alone a sci-fi movie, but there were multiple times throughout the film, where I could not help but shed some tears. The whole story revolves around Cooper and his relationship with his kids, specifically Murph. So towards the beginning of the movie, when he is leaving home for the last time, and Murph refuses to talk to him, because she does not know when he will be back, it was heartbreaking, but what really got me was when he was driving away kicking up dust, and Murph came running out of the house too late.
The part that got me the most though was when Cooper got back on the ship, and he realized that he had missed 23 years of his kids’ lives, and that they were full fledged adults now. I do not know what it is about that idea that just breaks my heart every time, but the tears just start to flood at this point. I do not even have a kid to project this fake fear onto. I do think part of it comes from the fact that I lost my mom when I was 13, and she did not get the chance to see me grow up, so that is probably the part where it hits me. Either way seeing the heartbreak on McConaughey’s face really got to me.
The finale is also emotional. Cooper pops out of the black hole, and although it is many years later, his daughter is still alive despite being very old, and they are united for the first time in like 80 years, so the tears come one last time, and she lets him go. She tells him to go off and explore, and that no parent should be there to watch their child die. Do what you were put here to do, so he goes and joins Brand on the new planet.
The score also plays a key role in the film, being as incredible as it is. Hans Zimmer is the greatest composer to ever make movie scores, and this is some of his finest work. I do not often listen to just movie scores, but this is one of them. I am literally listening to it as I type this. It just does such a good job of matching the tempo of the movie and creating that sense of wonder when it is needed. Many of Nolan’s movies involve time, and as the run time goes, it feels like the tempo of the music increases to match the importance of the events in a way that is just perfection. The combination of the strings and the organ is incredible. (I suggest listening to “Mountains” from the score.)
The super star cast also helps. Mathew McConaughey is an absolute star in this. When I imagine a space explorer, McConaughey is not the image that my mind would conjure, but he played this role perfectly. I think the movie is as powerful as it is due to his performance. Also, I always forget that Timothee Chalamet is in this too. Plus there is Jessica Chastain playing Cooper’s daughter once she becomes an adult, and Anne Hathaway plays a key role.
My least favorite part of the movie comes from the Matt Damon Matthew McConaughey conflict. It feels a little too forced, like Nolan needed to put a literal villain in instead of just having time and the environment be the villain. I think the whole idea of time was powerful enough that Damon and McConaughey did not need to fight on the ice, but that is just picking knits.
But to continue the praise, the visuals in this are unparalleled. This movie came out ten years ago, and it looks better than basically every movie that has come out since then, with very few exceptions. They find ways to make visuals of celestial bodies that made my jaw drop. I love when they are flying close to Saturn, it is just beautiful, and when they are trying to dock their ship to spinning station, it was just one of the most intense and well-crafted scenes I have seen, and it all feels real. Like when you are watching it, it would be believable that Nolan went up and just shot himself into a black hole to get the shot. I was amazed throughout. Even in the non-space scenes I was impressed. The cornfield chase in the beginning, when the whole family is together, and everyone is playing a role so that Cooper can take control of the drone is amazing. It pairs all the best parts of the movie together in one. The score is perfect for the scene, the chase gets your heart pounding and seeing them all work together so well as a family is an emotional joy, that sets the stage for the heart break that is coming when Cooper leaves, so it is just a great way to get the audience to buy into the story.
Another great theme in the movie was that people were meant to be explorers. Cooper was so willing to go on the adventure for two reasons. One he wanted to ensure the future safety of his children, and he had an adventurers’ soul. Cooper describes humans as being explorers not caretakers, that we were meant to be pioneers, not sedentary, but people seem to have lost that way. They spend more time just examining where they are instead of trying to get somewhere new and better. He felt trapped being a farmer, and he wanted so badly to get out and feel free again.
Interstellar is 2 hours and 50 minutes long, but it does not feel anywhere near its runtime. I saw two films in theaters this week that were a little over two hours, and they both felt twice as long as Interstellar despite being almost an hour less. I was locked in the whole time, and seeing the visuals on the IMAX screen was quite an experience, but my favorite part is the power of the speakers. I always enjoy when a movie is so loud in the IMAX that it feels like my whole body is vibrating, and this movie did that multiple times, and I loved it! If you have never seen Interstellar, I obviously recommend it. 5 STARS!!!
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