The McConaissance is over. I am of course referring to the career redemption that started with The Lincoln Lawyer and hit a fever pitch in 2013 with True Detective/Wolf of Wall Street and his Best Actor win for Dallas Buyers Club. Now we just live in a previously unfamiliar era, one where McConaughey reigns the silver screen. It only makes sense that for his next trick McConaughey would tackle a sci-fi epic for the current master of blockbusters, Christopher Nolan.
Earth is actively rejecting human life
in a timeline not too far off from our own. Drought and blight have ravaged the
landscape making it impossible to continue to grow food. Food is scarce and
priorities have been reevaluated in this new landscape. All resources are put
into farming before humanity faces extinction, so extraneous organizations like
NASA has gone underground. A man born into the wrong time, Cooper (Matthew
McConaughey) is never happy settling for what he has, instead
pushing to break barriers.
Years ago Cooper's wife passed leaving him and his
hard-nosed father-in-law (John Lithgow) to raise Murph (played by Mackenzie
Foy, then later by Jessica Chastain) and Tom. Tom is satisfied with following
in the farming business, but science runs strong in Murph's blood. Her
stubbornness eventually leads Cooper right where he thought he'd never get a
chance to go again.
Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and his team, led by his
daughter, Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway), have discovered a wormhole in our
solar system that could potentially lead to other inhabitable worlds. Such a
fortuitous development could lengthen mankind's existence, but it comes at a
great cost. Time is relative when dealing with wormholes; an hour on a planet
in the orbit of a wormhole translates to seven years on Earth. Cooper, as the
pilot of the new crew Endurance, will have to choose between the future of man,
or seeing his children again.
Associations to 2001:
A Space Odyssey and Stanley
Kubrick were made from the moment that Christopher Nolan was attached to Interstellar. Kubrick and Nolan
have been accused of being downright clinical when it comes to treatment of
characters onscreen, with both men earning labels of icy and detached. While
Kubrick never shrugged off those labels, Christopher Nolan is evolving past
his.
On the surface this big-budget sci-fi would appear to
just be about space, but the subject reaches wider than exploration. The heart at the center of Interstellar is time, love and parenthood. Nolan's films have primarily
been a touch cold in the past, but the relationship between Cooper and Murph rewrites
that dynamic entirely. If a new comparison is to be made, Nolan is closest to Steven
Spielberg.
Performances by Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain and
Anne Hathaway are likely to be ignored, because they don't resort to hysterics
or overshadowing other performers. It's a team effort, but I expect at least
Jessica Chastain will receive some consideration at year's end. Also garnering potential
awards talk is the unique score by Hans Zimmer. By ditching the strings and horns,
in favor of the organ, Zimmer creates a sound unlike anything he's done in
years.
Hoyte van Hoytema takes over the reins as cinematographer
under Nolan, who is going without Wally Pfister for the first time since Memento. Starting a working relationship
on a project this ambitious was a risky move for Hoytema, yet it pays off
completely. Interstellar isn't as
darkly tinted as Nolan's previous filmography and the film is much richer for
it visually. Factor in the degree of difficulty (some of the space sequences
involved installing an IMAX camera in the cone of a Learjet) and Hoytema's work
is all the more impressive.
Theoretical physicist Dr. Kip Thorne collaborated with visual
effects supervisor Paul J. Franklin to provide the most accurate representations
of these cosmic phenomenon as possible. Walking out of the theatre, one
couldn't help but feel like audience members in 1968 who had just experienced A Space Odyssey. Sequences involving the
wormhole are so spectacular you won't believe your eyes.
Perhaps it's too early to say this, but Christopher Nolan
may have met Kubrick in creating a lasting sci-fi that's ambitious and
thought-provoking. Interstellar
is what movies should aspire to be. An experience that can't be replicated
anywhere but inside of a theatre. If you really love movies, you'd be doing
yourself a disservice by not seeing it.