'Interstellar' review by Jake Boyle
The build-up for Interstellar feels like it's taken longer than the voyage undergone by its space-faring characters. Any Christopher Nolan film is a cause for excitement, but when it's starring some of the most sought-after actors of the moment and promises to deal with space-travel in a way both scientific and cinematic, it really does become a full-blown event. And most importantly, it shows an emerging pattern of Nolan making stand-alone films titled with an increasingly long, uncommon word beginning with 'I'. I can't wait for him to start work on Immunifacient.
One of Interstellar's best features is its epicness, but it comes at a price. The film's visuals are nothing short of truly beautiful, the ideas presented and explored are fascinating and the grand existential scale of the film's events rendered me speechless. It provokes thoughts and wonderment with equal frequency and is constantly moving from imaginative, interesting point to imaginative, interesting point. Unfortunately, all this grandeur - excellent though it is - leaves little room for character, and often for emotion. Most of the characters seem to exist for purely functional reasons and there's barely any effort to flesh them out beyond this. They're all well-acted, especially by Matthew McConaughey and Mackenzie Foy, but if they weren't involved in a story of such magnitude and weightiness, there'd be no reason at all to care for them. They're as devoid of life as the Earth is imminently to be.
Interestingly, the closest that the film does come to engaging characters are a pair of blockish, featureless robots. Their artificial sense of humour and morality implanted purely out of functionality creates a conflict and complexity far more akin to humanity than any of the actual humans. The dedication to hard science is both impressive and commendable, and it is this which allows the film to make you think seriously about intergalactic travelling, humanity's role in the universe and the physics of singularities whilst still awing you with the outstanding visualisations of all things extraterrestrial. The issue of of weighing your love for those close to you against the benefit of mankind is explored in a heartfelt and intelligent manner, right up until the last 10 minutes, where Nolan seems to have opted out of genuinely addressing the matter in order to provide a temporarily uplifting but ultimately empty conclusion.
Interstellar is an enchanting and fiendishly clever foray into uncharted (or at least barely-charted) territory for cinema. Despite the appealing family drama of the opening act, there's very little interest drummed up in the characters or in the world they inhabit. This is a problem, but not an insurmountable one, and the sheer gargantuan scope of the journey is itself enough to cause investment. While a lot more ponderous and, well, scientific than a lot of mainstream science-fiction aims to be, it hits most of the same markers: beautifully rendered alien worlds, fascination in the discovery and explanation of new concepts and some dryly funny robots. All this done with added sheen, excellent pacing and intellectualism - the sky's the limit.
One of Interstellar's best features is its epicness, but it comes at a price. The film's visuals are nothing short of truly beautiful, the ideas presented and explored are fascinating and the grand existential scale of the film's events rendered me speechless. It provokes thoughts and wonderment with equal frequency and is constantly moving from imaginative, interesting point to imaginative, interesting point. Unfortunately, all this grandeur - excellent though it is - leaves little room for character, and often for emotion. Most of the characters seem to exist for purely functional reasons and there's barely any effort to flesh them out beyond this. They're all well-acted, especially by Matthew McConaughey and Mackenzie Foy, but if they weren't involved in a story of such magnitude and weightiness, there'd be no reason at all to care for them. They're as devoid of life as the Earth is imminently to be.
Interestingly, the closest that the film does come to engaging characters are a pair of blockish, featureless robots. Their artificial sense of humour and morality implanted purely out of functionality creates a conflict and complexity far more akin to humanity than any of the actual humans. The dedication to hard science is both impressive and commendable, and it is this which allows the film to make you think seriously about intergalactic travelling, humanity's role in the universe and the physics of singularities whilst still awing you with the outstanding visualisations of all things extraterrestrial. The issue of of weighing your love for those close to you against the benefit of mankind is explored in a heartfelt and intelligent manner, right up until the last 10 minutes, where Nolan seems to have opted out of genuinely addressing the matter in order to provide a temporarily uplifting but ultimately empty conclusion.
Interstellar is an enchanting and fiendishly clever foray into uncharted (or at least barely-charted) territory for cinema. Despite the appealing family drama of the opening act, there's very little interest drummed up in the characters or in the world they inhabit. This is a problem, but not an insurmountable one, and the sheer gargantuan scope of the journey is itself enough to cause investment. While a lot more ponderous and, well, scientific than a lot of mainstream science-fiction aims to be, it hits most of the same markers: beautifully rendered alien worlds, fascination in the discovery and explanation of new concepts and some dryly funny robots. All this done with added sheen, excellent pacing and intellectualism - the sky's the limit.
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