Review of Interstellar (2014) by Chip B — 14 Aug 2016

This is one of the first reviews that I'm posting on this so forgive me if it's a bit clunky.

After seeing Interstellar in the gorgeous 70mm format at the theaters over a year ago, I came out stunned and overwhelmed by the experience. It made me question a lot of the film's themes and whether or not they fit in with what Nolan is trying to accomplish. I've read many articles, books, and watched many films in similar genres and found that Interstellar cannot be compared to any of those movies because the film really dives into the hard science part. I've seen people rip apart the science in this movie but you have to really understand that it is still a movie. It still gets points for trying to bring you into the fold. Not everyone knows or has read the hardcore scientific theories that it perpetuates. The film makes the science relatable and opens up interest for those who haven't yet grasped the importance of the exploring the final frontier.

It brings about many crucial questions about deep space travel and scientific theories that are mathematically sound but have yet to be proven on a field test. It is questionable whether we would be able to go as far as Cooper has gone in even the next 100 years but one does hold out hope. The film is not perfect but then again, in my opinion, no film ever is. There are certain dramatic liberties taken for entertainment value and I wouldn't penalize the film for taking that route. It needs it for the human value. After all, the perception of the human mind in space is subjective. Seeing is not always believing and there's no way of telling whether Cooper may have actually made it through the blackhole at all. It could have all been imagined or perceived as a dying dream for him. It is even possible that the mission to rescue a dying Earth was doomed from the beginning and that all of the astronauts aboard Endurance are all traveling in limbo. Still, in this film, you do have to suspend disbelief. It wants you to believe that somehow, in the apocalyptic future where there is no economy or scarce resources, that NASA has managed to scrap together whatever they had and advance their technology for interstellar travel. The whole mission that Endurance takes is extremely risky, if not seemingly impossible. Every aspect of it is crucial to the survival of the crew as is the reality for all existing NASA missions manned or unmanned. The mission in the film had a lot of setbacks as expected and it had a very optimistic ending that was confusing at first but made sense. Cooper communicating with his daughter through the Tesseract threw me off of for a while but then it made me question the idea of existence and consciousness and how they correlate. There is a connection between philosophy and science here. Cooper, in a way, had been able to contact his daughter as a 5th dimensional being because time is a 4th dimension concept. He has transcended spacetime itself. It is something that we can't yet grasp on this scale and this film does an amazing job of visualizing it.

Scientific accuracies aside, Interstellar is a beautiful film with visuals that remind of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Those 2 films cannot be compared though. I've seen and read too many reviews that tried to link the 2. They both have entirely different purposes. Interstellar is a film about love, survival, humanity, and pushing the depths of where man can go. 2001: A Space Odyssey is about human evolution, technology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial life. Kubrick and Nolan are brilliant directors in their own right coming from different generations of filmmakers making a comparison silly. Kubrick is forever cemented as a legend while Nolan has already created some modern cinematic classics himself including Memento and Inception.

Interstellar deserves to be recognized for its visual accomplishments as well as its push for a more scientific society that we all need to be for the survival of humanity. It is a rare kind of film that gives you hope given the state of humanity today between all of the wars, deception, greed, and manipulation in our world.