Interstellar [Review by Haus]

Christopher Nolan pretty much is what M. Night Shyamalan only thought he was, so a new Nolan film is a big event around these parts. And it’s likely to stay that way, because Interstellar is spectacular and you must see it. If you can, see it in 70mm IMAX.

Nolan tethers his intergalactic opus to a smaller, quieter, unhealthy Earth — one ravaged by blight and dust storms, where the technological largesse of today is decried in DoubleThink. This is a world diminished: A world of people struggling to raise dwindling crops, a world in need not of computer tablets and AI and autonomous cars but of basic foods. It’s a world that humans must leave, at a time when we as a species are ill-equipped to do so. (It’s a compelling and stark little future for our eco-conscious times and it’s honestly worth seeing just for this.)

Matthew McConaughey, fresh off his Oscar turn in Dallas Buyers Club, delivers a powerful and honest performance as a former NASA pilot who’s tapped to helm a desperate mission to the stars.  He’s joined by Anne Hathaway, who’s characteristically good and possibly angling for another statue. (Other A-list talent like Jessica Chastain is here too, and, this being a Nolan vehicle, of course we have My Cocaine.)  The mission: To find humanity a new home.

We’ve seen versions of this story before, often without much payoff.  There’s a temptation to center such stories on the development of the craft and preparation of the mission, or to show only the journey and leave the endpoint to the imagination. I won’t describe what happens here, but I will tell you that Nolan has the resources and the imagination and the confidence to see it through and to give this story an honest-to-goodness ending. Yes, Interstellar goes the distance. (It’s nearly three hours long.)

It also gets weird as all heck. You’ll see what I mean. It’s all science and spaceflight until Nolan opens his kimono in act three.

This inevitably will draw comparisons to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which had one of the wiggiest third acts in film history. But this about that: When and if mankind does make a real bid to settle another world, that mission will draw from and build upon the very best of what has come before — a bundle of incremental scientific and technological achievements stretching back to the very beginning.  And that’s exactly what Interstellar does. It pulls from so many predecessors it’s hard to keep track. (Heavy parallels exist not only with the recent hit Gravity, for instance, but with Danny Boyle‘s splendid thriller Sunshine; it also summons, for me at least, the Up Series.) But like all great advances, it transcends what came before.

As for the wigginess, some will bemoan it. I think it’s terrific. A film this ambitious will have holes, and Interstellar does. (Black holes, even.) No matter. (Or lots of matter? I’ll stop.) It’s an interdimensional romp, and hey, quantum physics is super weird to begin with.

Here’s something I realized the other day: Christopher Nolan has always been fascinated by time. When not rebooting Batman, he’s given us: (1) a man drifting in a perpetual present and unanchored by memory (Memento); (2) a mystery in endless Alaskan daylight (Insomnia); (3) a magician whose trick spans decades (The Prestige); and (4) a multi-tiered dreamworld where time slows down further the deeper you go (Inception). Nolan is fond of non-linear storytelling, and of doling out control of time as a resource to his characters — generally in unequal measure. He’s a time nut.

Equipped with this realization, it should come as no surprise that Interstellar is as much about time as it is about space.

With apologies to Inception, this really is Nolan’s dream come true: After all, intergalactic travel offers both the very high speed differentials and very high mass-densities that, thanks to relativity, can decouple characters from a common timeline and actually make it stick. Thanks to Nolan’s pedigree there’s no filmmaker better equipped to mine that particular ore, and the result is spectacular.

This is an amazing movie, an instant classic. Interstellar is at once exciting, raw, emotional, honest, ambitious, thought-provoking, slick, and even passes a 50-foot scientific sniff test (kind of). Nolan plumbs the best and worst of the human condition and wraps it in stunning imagery and deafening noises and stark silence and seamless effects. There are surprise cameos, a couple of seriously unique robots, wild GoPro-style spacecraft footage, and plenty of wonder.  That you can spend the exact same money on a ticket to Adam Sandler’s disastrous Blended is either a blazing deal or a drink in the face of the moviegoing public, depending on your perspective. Either way, see this.

Haus Verdict: Nolan at the top of his game. Interstellar is here — and it’s about time. 

Interstellar opens this Friday, November 7.