The trip to my local theater is one that I like during the warmer seasons since the closest distance I can get from a bus stop to the theater itself is a few blocks away so walking isn't that bad. But now it has gotten to the winter months and the temperature has dropped rather quickly when last week it was actually decent weather and this week its been really fucking cold so even a little walk will leave me with my feet and hands cold and numb. Why do I mention this? Because it will probably make my trips to the theater less common for a while especially in the Oscar Bait season since there are some movies that I really want to catch such as Big Eyes and I still haven't seen Nightcrawler yet since it never plays at the time I'm there and I don't want to stay there any later than necessary since I don't want to miss the bus and have to walk all the way home. It will make all the times that I do go much more worthwhile though yet I wish I had a ride I could depend on or at least someone to see some of the movies with especially the bad ones so it'll make some fun riffing. But onto the movie for today. Interstellar was one of those movies that I was looking forward to all year and I would have gone to the preview screening the theater was doing if I had a ride since there was no way I was going to get a bus ride at the time the movie would have ended.
This is the most recent film done by director Christopher Nolan, whose previous work doesn't really need to be mentioned due to the amount of praise his work has gotten over the years. The story had been one that Christoper's brother, Jonathan had been working on years prior and the film originally had Steven Spielberg in the director's chair, which having seen the movie makes some of the story decisions make some sense especially as we get to the ending. It is hard to look at the plot of the film along with the scope of the picture and not compare it to 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that is well known for being the apex of a science fiction film that pushes the boundaries of what the medium can do. Since I have not seen 2001, I really cannot compare the two films but from what I have heard of it, I think that while Interstellar might be invoking that type of film but it is more trying to appeal with the mainstream or maybe not trying to be artsy for arts sake. The basic gist of the film is that a future Earth has turned into a more larger scale version of the Dust Bowl era of America and food is running out fast so an underground NASA sends a team of astronauts to find the next refuge for humanity. Inside of this plot is the story of a father and a daughter, Cooper and Murphy. Cooper is made the pilot of the trip to a wormhole where there may be some planets that humans can survive on. Doing so, he leaves his family behind, which aside from Murphy includes his son Tom and father in law Donald. Murphy deeply resents her father's decision to go and grows to hate him over the passing years that he is gone, all the while working at NASA in her adult years trying to figure out how to get the space stations that the rest of the Earth will take to whatever place they find.
The first thing that I can praise almost instantly is the special effects which are beautiful to look at, especially since a lot of them were done practically which is insane in this day and age. The production design of the planets that the crew of the Endurance go to, mainly the ice covered world where Dr. Mann had been hibernating. There is also the beauty of Gargantua, the black hole where the planets that they travel to are orbiting. I don't know how much of the stuff that in the film is scientifically accurate but it really seems as if the production crew did their homework on many accounts and hopefully any mistakes that are caught do not take away from how powerful the visuals are. The best highlight I might have to give is the score by Hans Zimmer. It is really hard to describe how it made me feel but it seemed to always be able to perfectly encapsulate the moments that are going on in the scene at the time. Some have complained about how the score drowns out the dialogue sometimes but I really could not tell all that much even though I consider myself hard of hearing at least in my left ear.
As for the story itself, I thought it worked rather fine although maybe some of the most Spielberg like moments in the film do kind of stick out although not necessarily to the point where it detracts from the film too much. There are also some moments where it does get a little sappy but a couple of moments like that do work, such as when after visiting a planet where an hour there is seven years in Earth time, Cooper comes back to the Endurance and watches video logs his family made over the 23 years that had past due to the trip. This might get into spoiler territory so be warned but something that did kind of annoy me was the whole arc of Dr. Mann, who was described early on as being the best of what humanity had to offer and was the one to lead off the initial Lazarus missions to go to the planets and figure out whether or not they were suitable. When Cooper and the crew get to him, they find that he had been hibernating in stasis with no date of release set so he had essentially planned to never wake up due to how hopeless his situation had become. Yet when he is rescued, he no longer wanted to do the noble thing and almost sabotaged the whole plan B that Professor Brand had banked on from the beginning. The climax does get into a level of strangeness and confusion that it does feel like as if it would have fit nicely in 2001 and will probably leave me thinking a whole lot about it for quite some time. And then there is the ending after that, which might be the most Spielberg like moment of the entire thing, which is where most of the criticism draws from and for the most part, I really have no idea what to feel about it. I'm not sure if I actively disliked it or didn't mind it at all so I'll have to give it another go and see if it works or not. Maybe it does since there is this theme about love that continues throughout which could play into the plot as a whole. Again, I'll have to watch it again to see how my thoughts change the second time.
Overall, I can say that this movie is fantastic. It is by no means a perfect film and there are some things that I might look back and go "This doesn't work as well as I thought," but it is worth seeing it in the theater and despite its flaws, the almost three hour run time really doesn't feel that long. All the actors do a great job as well and for the most part I could predict that there are going to be some oscar nominations. I'm sure that the visuals and the sound will get nominated for sure and probably win a few. Where this ranks among the years best remains to be seen but I'm sure it will be somewhere in the top but Birdman really looks as if it'll take the top spot. I really should do a double bill of Birdman and Interstellar. Throw some Nightcrawler in there and it'll make a great day at the movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment