Overview
Interstellar chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
In the not too distant future, earth is running out of resources to sustain life for much longer, leading to a search for a new planet for mankind.
In short: it is a great movie, with many flaws, but somehow these flaws do not ruin the movie. At least not for me.
It has been a long while since there has been a science fiction movie with this level of grand ambitions. The Director, Christopher Nolan, lists various movies that have inspired him for Interstellar, including Metropolis, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner. For me the more obvious comparison however is with Contact.
Besides both movies sharing Matthew McConaughey, they also both centre around a daughter feeling abandonded by her father, leading them on a lifelong journey committed to science to find out what is ‘out there’. Both daughters are the first to find messages from outer space. In both movies these messages are the key to grand missions for mankind. And both movies end up in fairly esoteric finales where sentimentality beats science…
The acting in the movie is decent, not excellent. The best is the young daughter, the worst is probably Matt Damon. The visuals are beautiful and awe inspiring when seen on a big screen – but actually not as impressive and ‘clean’ as in Gravity. The score is great even if more sentimental than Nolan has been before. But where the movie stands out is the grand ambition of the script. Some will say it is overambitious but in my opinion it stays just on the right side of hubris.
I don’t like spoilers so I won’t give any details, but if you want it is easy to find various published lists of plot holes in this movie. If you want to focus on those, yes there certainly are various holes to find. But also a lot of supposed ‘plot holes’ are more like ‘odd choices’ characters make – and that is not a plot hole, that is a choice in storytelling. I had heard about the plot holes in this movie and chose to go into it not trying to find any. And I throoughly enjoyed the movie just going with the story as it is being laid out.
I will say the ending is not great. Not at all. But somehow for me it didn’t undo the first 2.5 hours of the movie.
I give it a generous 9/10 for grand ambition and great storytelling, with beautiful visuals and a solid sound track. It makes for a great movie experience and I only wish we had more of these kind of epics to enjoy every year.
