Interstellar (2014)

Interstellar generated a great deal of excitement from movie fans prior to release, only to land with a bit of a thud as it gets celebrated by some for its visual treats but picked apart by many for logical lapses and a problematic third act. I'm not here to defend the third act - it is a stinker. The stinky third act is also one that you can see coming if you are paying attention both because it is a fairly conventional and familiar sci-fi "surprise" and because the film is larded with relentless hinting. The third act, however, only wounds and does not fully kill the experience of what was, for the nearly two hours that preceded it, one of the most entertaining movies I have seen this year.

I think it is important to understand when watching the films of Christopher Nolan that he does not seem to be particularly interested in or bound by logic. Plausibility and coherence are second chair to the overarching concept and the visuals he wants to put on screen. He seems to be a filmmaker of "oh, this will be cool," not necessarily someone with particularly profound things to say about politics, art, or life (calling love the fifth dimension does not qualify as profound - schmaltzy, yes, profound, no).

That is not intended as an attack - though I recognize it certainly sounds like it - but as more or less an invitation to drop the pretensions when going to see Nolan's films. Too many Nolan fans wish to present him as the next Kubrick when what they should more realistically be rooting for is that he become the replacement Spielberg (he's not there yet and should consider bringing in an outside writer other than his brother to hope to get there). He's several steps ahead of the likes of Michael Bay, and his films are certainly more serious in tone, but let us concede that both Nolan and Bay work in the same business.

At their best, Nolan's films work as great entertainment. They are films like The Dark Knight, where it is easy to ignore the right-wing bullshit riddled through the script because it just might be the most exciting comic book film ever made. At their worst the films are incoherent, silly messes - like Inception, where one must try to pretend that complexity alone is enough to make a film intelligent in order to not see that the premise is rotten and the script a poorly constructed excuse for Nolan to work through some visual ideas and themes that excited him.While certainly not as well written, Interstellar is closer to the Dark Knight than to Inception.

For the first two hours, as long as Nolan sticks with the conventional action sci-fi premise and uses his visuals in service of that simple premise, Interstellar works quite well. In that period, one can more easily set aside the logical questions (and if you're thinking too much, they'll start piling up pretty quickly). Nolan does a great job of constructing the near-future Earth as a dying planet that has maybe a generation left before humans go extinct. Once the space flights begin, Nolan does a solid job working through the scientific concepts while also creating a fun adventure movie as the space pioneers work their way through three planets in order to figure out which one may be habitable. They meet challenges both natural and man-made along the way, providing an invitation to Nolan to set standard action film scenes against extraordinary landscapes. The dialogue can be a bit on the nose at times, but not so bad as to ruin anything. Up until the third act begins, it is basically a really good Star Trek movie minus any aliens.

Alas, the fun cannot last forever, and Nolan cannot resist trying to make the film more than just a simple space exploration adventure. The second he deposits our hero (a decent Matthew McConaughey who perhaps is given one or two too many crying scenes) into a black hole the film, well, collapses. Any bare semblance of logic goes out the door as Nolan tries to craft a sentimental fantasy about a father and his daughter working things out through time and space. Nolan tries to tie things emotionally in a tight bow, but it does not quite work. The audience is left to struggle to figure out unanswered questions about what exactly the hero's scientist daughter is working on and how it would or could save the Earth without moving the population. The audience is really not supposed to know - we're just supposed to know it is something. It is just a set-up for the big happy ending.

I would love to discuss the ending in detail because it is ridiculous and completely disposes of plausibility (some on the Internet are already cooking up defensive explanations to try and have it make sense), but too many spoilers are bad - you should make up your own mind anyway. Suffice to say that in the final act Nolan plays fast and loose with common sense in order to answer the questions he set up in the first act of the film while also wrapping everything up in an implausible happily ever after package. It is a big let-down and the bad final act only forces the audience to confront all of the logical problems that up until then could be (mostly) ignored. It is a frustrating end to what was, up until the black hole, a lot of fun.

While the final act is frustrating, I cannot say that I did not get my money's worth. While it would have been nice had the film worked all the way through, I'll take being entertained for two hours as at least good enough to justify the price of admission. Of course, it should be seen on the big screen to be able to fully soak in the film's visual scale. And see it via film projection if you can because that is the medium for which this movie is designed.

Screened in the theater (70mm film projection, not IMAX).