3.5/5
Review by John P. Harvey.
In a world on the verge of famine following unmitigated climate collapse, in a United States afflicted by drought and dust storms, at a time when facts and government policy don’t mix, former NASA pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is growing corn and raising a son, Tom (Timothée Chalamet), who wants to become an engineer, and a daughter, twelve-year-old Murphy (Mackenzie Foy), who wants to study science. The climate and the dust storms having decimated the land’s capacity to grow food, Tom’s school wants Tom to turn his attention to farming and derides as “fake history” the moon landings that Murphy has focused a school project on.
Against this background, with Cooper’s encouragement for Murphy to pursue scientific enquiry even concerning such mysteries as what on Earth is pushing her books seemingly at random off her bookcase, Murphy discovers in these “ghostly” activities some map coordinates — leading Cooper to learn that his piloting skills offer a quietly revived NASA its best hope of finding a home for Earth’s remaining population.
Along with many other memorable movies that co-writer and director Christopher Nolan has written and directed (including Memento; The Prestige; Inception; and Tenet), Interstellar makes playful use of recursion and interesting hypotheses and perceptions concerning time to embroil us in unravelling the plot. And, though it suffers from a few obvious holes, the plot is an intriguing one. With McConaughey and Foy maintaining the film’s emotional tensions, and Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, and Anne Hathaway providing extra stellar interest, there’s always something or someone to keep us wondering.
Screening in Dendy’s new IMAX theatre, this 10th-anniversary release of Interstellar holds up well visually. Aurally, the session I attended suffered somewhat by poor sound settings. Even after multiple customer requests led the cinema to turn the sound volume down somewhat before the movie itself commenced, the act of making the movie “immersive” created sustained distractions by amplifying deep rumbles to the point of overwhelming some of the lines and boosting the sound volume of much of the film beyond normal pain thresholds. Assuming that the sound is no longer set to “stun” mode, though, its soundtrack, courtesy of the masterful Hans Zimmer, otherwise suits well the film’s adventurous explorative intent. It’ll be a journey worth contemplating for some time.
Screening at Dendy IMAX .
Erratum: the review title originally inadvertently included “3D”. Apologies for any consequent confusion!