Interstellar

It’s fitting, perhaps, that Christopher Nolan’s picture about mankind stepping into the unknown is also a step up for him as a filmmaker. Don’t get me wrong. He already was very good before, both technically impressive and exhilarating in his direction, and highly intellectual in his screenwriting. He’s made at least one great film (The Dark Knight), and no bad ones. But up to this point, they’ve mostly been breakneck-speed cinematic freight trains, their tone ranging from tense to frantic. 

Interstellar has the amazing, imaginative visuals and masterfully crafted exciting sequences that Nolan always delivers. What sets it apart, however, is that the director slows things down. Whereas all his previous films left little room for anything that wasn’t a necessary part of the whole, here, Nolan takes time for little things. Things like long shots to just sit back and take in the beauty of what’s onscreen, or small plot details that say so much about the future he put on film. More so, taking it slow allows for scenes of mood and atmosphere (even though it’s in space), and the characters to showcase feelings not of the adrenaline-fueled variety. That’s the most important thing, as it gives such an ambitious, broad space epic an emotional intimacy.

The film takes place in a future that’s unspecified but doesn’t look too far off from right now. Earth has a dire food shortage and, in the corner of American farm country where most of the earthbound action takes place, things look like the Dust Bowl. Through a series of strange events (which I won’t describe so as not to spoil a single thing), failed astronaut-turned-farmer Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) discovers that NASA, thought to have been disbanded years before, is working in secret on a mission to save humanity. A wormhole appeared near Saturn a half-century prior, and the plan is to send astronauts through it to find a new planet for mankind to colonize. And Cooper is chosen to lead the mission.

The picture is quite a meticulous, impressively constructed vision. The ambiguity of just how close this future is to our present gives it a frightening prescience; with all the talk of catastrophic climate upheaval, what's onscreen seems like a very real possibility of where we're headed. Several small lines and throwaway details hint at a fully developed world with fascinating, and alarming, implications. Once things leave Earth, the technology and science in the film have a strong authenticity. More than just adding realism, it makes everything seem plausible when the plot travels to places beyond our scientific understanding, even if the results seem a little more fiction than science. Strictly scientific or speculative, though, everything that happens is interesting and riveting, and brought to life with incredible effects. And regular Nolan collaborator Han Zimmer’s score is a great one, capturing the vastness of the void of space in a beautiful musical tapestry. The movie elicits comparison to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and while it’s not as open-ended or ambiguous as Stanley Kubrick’s picture, the visual awe and sense of wonderment are comparable.

There’s even one crucial element where it bests Kubrick’s film: humanity. The cast includes veterans like John Lithgow and Nolan favorite Michael Caine as well as current stars like Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, all of them very good. McConaughey is the one that shines, however, arguably giving the strongest performance yet in his recent hot streak of great roles. As Cooper, he embodies the charismatic All-American hero archetype of movie astronauts, a characterization that seems to be by design. But in more private moments, he’s not a melancholy sci-fi protagonist who waxes poetic in strenuously written monologues. His emotions are the plain, real type emblematic of a father’s love. He breaks down and cries from missing his daughter (played by Mackenzie Foy as a child, Chastain as an adult), and it feels real, not scripted. Plotting at the familial level goes beyond just giving the hero motivation and adds a desperate urgency to the characters’ mission. In comic book sci-fi, we‘re always sure the heroes will prevail even if they seem down and out early in the story. In Interstellar, every mistake, every setback, every wasted second could mean the end of the human race, and with it the ones we love. And yet framing it this way reveals an irony about our species, which the movie makes sure to point out at one point.

Nolan’s films are never short, and this one is his longest yet at almost three hours. Yet, it never drags or loses its grip on the audience, and never ceases to fascinate with its ideas or stun with its visuals. If anything, it could be even longer; it could be extended to four hours or even multiple movies, further exploring the future bits we only see in the background and elaborating on a few fast-moving subplots, and it wouldn’t be boring. But while all that is what makes it great science fiction—probably the best pure sci-fi production since Blade Runner—it's the affecting narrative strength at the human level that makes it a truly great film.