Particularly fitting for a film which turns over themes of
exploration, unearthing untrodden ground, and pushing the boundaries of human
expectation, Christopher Nolan’s ninth film Interstellar goes where no brave soul has gone
before. Nolan and ‘ambition’ go hand in hand, and this is certainly his
most ambitious film to date: and maybe, just maybe, he’s gone too far this
time.
Nolan, better than almost anyone still in the business, knows how to
bring it when it comes to the blockbuster game: he does ‘big’ in his own very
unique, hand-crafted way. In short, you never really know what you’re getting
yourself in for, but boy do you know its going to be good. Memento combined gritty
film–making with mind-numbing twists, Inception practically defined the word 'mindfuck', and his Dark Knight Trilogy rewrote the rule
book on how to make a superhero film. Sci-fi, therefore, was the next obvious
choice for the man who’s done everything.
Interstellar has science fiction stamped all over
it: set up by a well-established background of a dying earth desperately
reaching out for salvation, Nolan marvels in the majesty and ambition gifted by
his deep space locations, both inside and outside of the spaceship. What is
more, the Nolan brothers writing team have clearly invested a considerable
amount of time in analyzing the science and physics behind the possibilities of
space travel between dimensions, and are more than happy to show this off in
the actual film. Nolan revisits themes of time which appeared at the forefront
of Inception: without giving much away, we learn that, due
to the way a black hole can sap energy, time on one planet could be vastly
different to that in reality. It is for this reason that the urgency of the
mission feels so pressing, especially in the one instance when 1 hour is
equivalent to about 7 years on earth. While competently introducing new themes,
it is very clear where Nolan takes inspiration for a considerable chunk of the
film: while 2001 is an obvious reference point, I’d like to see it as a
loving homage rather than idea theft, successfully capturing the brilliance of
Kubrick’s film while arguably achieving the depth which Kubrick perhaps lost in
style. 
What is worrying about a film on this scale, meanwhile, is that style
overcompensates for a lack of substance, and that the characters can get
flushed out into the voids of deep space. Not true here, however, since Nolan
is a director who knows how to get actors at their very best. Channeling some
of the desperation of DiCaprio’s Cobb in Inception, and the blind compulsion
of Guy Pearce in Memento, Matthew McConnaughey, as we have become accustomed to,
brings his absolute A-game. His likeable albeit pretty flawed protagonist
Cooper channels all of the energy of a man who is grounded on earth but who’s
head is up among the stars. An immensely powerful father-daughter story
replaces what could easily have been a simple romance dynamic, and we are all
the more grateful for it. Not only this, but Cooper’s relationship with his
daughter (played with equal charm by Mackenzie Foy and Jessica Chastain)
becomes integral to the actual physics of the mission. Love, as we are often
reminded, is the one dimension which physics can’t understand or evaluate. 
But this is not just the Nolan and McConnaughey show: on the
contrary, Interstellar, just like the Endurance space shuttle, is packed
full of the brightest minds in the business. Anne Hathaway brings genuine spark
and drive to the on screen action, without any of the underlying sexualisation
of Alien’s
Ripley, and is offered am intriguing plot-thread separate to that of
McConnaughey’s, albeit cleverly intertwined. Visually, the film is perfected by
first time collaborator Hoyte van Hoytema, whose visions of deep space are terrifying
and beautiful in equal measure, while the acid-trippy journey through the black
hole channels 2001’s final sequence while becoming increasingly disturbing. The
film, meanwhile, would be incomplete without Han Zimmer’s ever-ingenious score,
a perfectly symphonic piece which includes a chillingly eerie organ, and the
majestic strings reminiscent of Wagner’s Also
Sprach Zarathustra.
On a project of this scale, there are inevitably going to be some
cracks in the vessel. The influence of Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece were always
going to, and inevitably do, overshadow the critical achievement of the film:
the humanised robots, the string instrument score, and the cold white spaceship
is almost too much for a devoted Kubrick fan. When it comes to the science,
meanwhile, it may seem that the Nolans have bitten off slightly more than they
can chew: the science of blackholes and wormholes is immensely complicated, and
it at times felt like the effort of the audience was focused too hard on
understanding these mindfucks rather than enjoying what was an exquisitely
created production. 
But with Nolan, of all people, we cannot condemn for being too
ambitious. Indeed, it is for this very reason that we anticipate his films with
such intrigue, and know that the price of the ticket is not going to be for
something of the ordinary: with the science, it might sometimes be better to
sit back and accept that you won’t understand everything. And with Interstellar,
the perfection of every other element outweighs this prospect of
misunderstanding in every way. It seems that, despite being flawed just as
Kubrick’s was, Nolan’s Interstellar may just be the true successor to 2001: A Space Odyssey,
and has perhaps even surpassed it. 