Interstellar (2014): The Farther One Travels ...

The new mega-movie from writer/director Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception) is every bit as ambitious as his earlier projects, if not more so. It is populated by a raft of movie stars, including some of our best – Matthew McConaughey,  Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine – doing surprisingly good work, particularly for a film of this genre. It’s that rare sci-fi epic with heart.

There’s no ear deafening grand finale battle, no eye-popping CGI armies or fantastical monsters or aliens; no superheroes, and no gratuitous sex.  Rather, this is a space story with human dimensions, grounded here on earth, with some actual characters and emotional repercussions.  Don’t get me wrong – Nolan takes us on a journey into interstellar space (thus the title) and to other worlds, and we do spend nearly half the picture on spacecraft, as well as grappling with theories of cosmology, relativity and the space-time continuum. The science will not all make a lot of sense to the typical moviegoer (nor, apparently to some critical scientists),  but the movie is constructed with precision, with detailed and involving cinematography (by Hoyte Van Hoytema [The Fighter, Her]), and, when called for, with the stunning vistas we’ve come to expect from a space epic. As such, it deserves to be seen on the big screen (unless you’ve got a pretty big screen at home, along with decent home theater sound). And to its credit the special effects do not overwhelm our senses or the underlying human story.

Interstellar strives to blend the epic with a human-scale drama, and mostly succeeds. Some of the

characters are typical sci-fi one-dimensional types, but the leads are developed people, with souls that touch us a bit. Essentially, the story is presented in three parts, the first of which takes place in the American heartland, with a family on a windswept farm somewhere on the American plains sometime in the near future. Climate change has created conditions of severe weather and extreme draught; terrible dust storms abound; few crops survive; and the world’s population has been decimated. Only corn still grows here, and how long this crop will last is an open question. Schools teach only those skills necessary for farming, to the exclusion - and in some cases the denial - of anything else.

Cooper (McConaughey), a former test pilot, is now a farmer, living on an old homestead, with his two kids and his father-in-law, Donald (a nicely grizzled, yet benevolent John Lithgow). Cooper has McConaughey’s laid-back, easy-going drawl and a good-old-boy appearance, but he is a bright analytical guy, who aspired to more than life as a dirt farmer. His daughter Murph shares his curiosity, intelligence and yearning, and the two of them have a palpably loving, intellectual and emotional connection – which becomes the human cornerstone of the story. Ten-year-old Murph is endearingly played by lovely Mackenzie Foy – a child actress to keep an eye on.

Murph notices some strange, ghostly things happening at the dusty homestead, and their investigation eventually leads her and Cooper to discover a NASA base, secretly (and improbably) located down a dusty private road not far away. Therein lurks Professor Brand (Caine) a brilliant scientist, who is readying a secret mission aimed at finding a new habitable planet for the human race. There’s no time to lose, because the earth’s hospitality is coming to a rapid close, and round-trip travel to distant galaxies will take a lot of time. The good news is that an inter-galactic “wormhole” has been discovered near Saturn, which may lead to a potentially suitable destination.  Brand believes the wormhole must have been set there for us by an alien civilization. (A wormhole is a shortcut between galaxies, caused by bending the space-time continuum – a complicated notion that is explained briefly and sort-of understandably in the film.)

To Dr. Brand, it’s tantamount to fate – if scientists believed in that sort of thing -  that Cooper has found the NASA base, because Cooper was the best pilot ever, and his participation will enhance the chances for the mission’s success. Cooper is mightily tempted, but for the fact that intergalactic  travel, even with the wormhole, means leaving Murph and his family for several years (if all goes well).  He’s prepared to decline, until Dr. Brand and his scientist/astronaut daughter, Amelia (Anne Hathaway), remind Cooper that the survival of the human race depends on this.  He HAS to go.

So begins the second act of Interstellar, which chronicles the space journey of Cooper, Amelia and crew, its drama, its discoveries, and its fate. I don’t want or need to detail what happens, for fear of spoiling the surprises (and there are some) in store. Along the way, we get to see Nolan’s vision of interstellar spacecraft and space travel, some visceral moments of thrills and terror, an uncredited dramatic cameo by a major movie star, and a highly cool conception of a very well informed, cleverly adept robot, called TARS, with an almost-but-not-quite human personality. Unlike HAL in 1968’s 2001, A Space Odyssey, TARS is benign and mobile; unlike R2-D2 or C-3PO, Tars is neither goofy nor hampered by any speech impediments.

Cooper continues to wrestle with his decision to leave Murph, particularly as he comes to realize that, thanks to relativity, she will age much faster than he does (without even knowing whether he is alive or dead), and if he manages to return home, his little girl could be older than he is. In fact, the second section of Interstellar runs in parallel, alternating between depicting Cooper’s adventures and Murph’s life on earth: the ten year old’s grief and dismay at the departure of her dad, then her commitment to science, as a young adult (Chastain) who works alongside an aging Dr. Brand. Chastain’s Murph has been scarred by her father’s abandonment.  She no longer believes he will come back. But life on earth is only growing more tenuous with the passing years, and she still believes in, is committed to, science as the solution. Cooper meanwhile grieves for the daughter he has lost.

The mission sets up interesting and dramatic personal, scientific and moral quandaries. Was Cooper  right to take on this interstellar quest (which was, after all, going to proceed with or without him), effectively abandoning his daughter and his family? Assuming Cooper and crew find a habitable planet, how will it be possible to convey tens of thousands(or millions) of people there? As the mission is leaving Dr. Brand is hard at work on “solving gravity”, promising that he is almost there, and will have succeeded by the time they get back. Leaving aside the silly idea that one can know in advance whether such a problem will be solved, could it even be possible to “tame” gravity so as to use this force to convey an intergalactic busload of earthlings to a new world? If doing this is highly uncertain or impossible, is it even moral, in a time of crisis, to devote valuable resources to interstellar expeditions and speculative theoretical physics, rather than efforts aimed at human survival on earth? How important is it anyway to ensure the continuation of the human species, if there is no longer a habitable earth?  All these questions and more are raised, if not fully explored, over the course of this film.

The dramatic arc of the picture leaves the explorers little hope of getting home again. Nolan borrows again from 2001, A Space Odyssey, cinematically speaking, for his final segment – which I found fascinating and mystifying at the same time. Without giving much away, I hope, this last bit does raise some intriguing further scientific and philosophical questions, having to do with the frontiers of string theory. Is time a physical dimension that can be manipulated? Are there other dimensions? Can the human mind transcend our apparent three-dimensional limitations? Did aliens put that wormhole there or not? I’m not telling, because how the hell would I know?

Whatever the explanation, the concluding moments of Interstellar do bring us back to the personal

and to the human and emotional plane from which it launched. And on that level, at least, it is satisfying – even heartwarming.

The actors help a lot. McConaughey is terrific, as usual, in a varied and challenging role. Chastain is given less to work with, but she conveys intelligence and depth of feeling as the adult Murph; while newcomer Foy is quite amazing as ten-year-old Murph.  Hathaway, Caine, Lithgow and Casey Affleck (as Murph’s brother Tom) all give credible performances, although their characters are not much developed. Bill Irwin’s voice is perfect for TARS, the robot. The music, by Nolan’s frequent collaborator Hans Zimmer, helps a lot also, adding to the mood and depth of this film.

Interstellar is a bit long at 149 minutes, but it’s imaginative, thought provoking, visually arresting, inspiring (in the manner of good space travel flicks), and has heart.  As such it is very much worth a look-see. There’s also an Imax rendition of this film, which I have not seen, and which may add to your enjoyment.

In wide release.