Interstellar (2014)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2014
	Director: Christopher Nolan (Memento, Inception)
	Actors: Matthew McConaughey (Contact, Ed TV), Anne Hathaway (Brokeback Mountain, The Dark Knight Rises), Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine (Harry Brown)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF, Drama
	Conditions of visioning: 10.11.2014, CINEMA theater
Synopsis: In a world invaded by dust, former pilot Cooper (McConaughey) is now farming to survive with his family (father-in-law and two children). He will find out about a project of interstellar travel aiming at finding a new home for mankind.
Review: Five days after the release of this movie, the cinema room was still full thanks to the good word-of-mouth surrounding it. The trailer promises a parallel between the space travel and the survival on Earth, and this is what we get. We were also promised a realistic yet mind-blowing tale of Science Fiction in the line of 2001, A Space Odyssey, and we get that as well. To me Interstellar is almost a remake of 2001 because it sends the same message in a visually similar fashion, but with a more modern film-making technique and the will by Nolan not to loose the random movie-goer with too complicated scientific and philosophical implications.... well at least for as long as possible. Note that my comparison with 2001, more favorable to Interstellar, doesn't mean that I think bad of Kubrick's Masterpiece. Actually I am eager to watch it again very soon in Blu-ray. In fact, the resemblance with 2001 is simply due to both their influence by the same master of Science-Fiction Arthur C. Clarke. Similar topics are found in Rendez-vous with Rama and The Songs of Distant Stars, not so much in the other novels I have read: Childhood's End, The City and the Stars and The Fountains of Paradise. I felt so much that influence that right after the movie I purchased the third novel in the Rama series that Clarke started with Rendez-vous with Rama, and I ferociously started to read it and follow this SF story where I left if off after the two first books. The movie even includes Clarke's motto: Humanity may have been born on Earth, it was not meant to die there. I also noticed some common elements with the graphic novel Universal War. The anchoring point of the story is quite actual: pollution in the form of dust (coming from the mines around the globe that we used to harvest the rare elements required by our current technology?) but the effect on humans is slow: at first it limits the production of cereals to almost exclusively corn (well, like it is the case already as I learned while watching Food Inc.). From there, we follow in the person of Cooper a father that wishes to see his family again, and an adventurer on a mission to save the world. With respect to that dual story, I found that Nolan manages the feelings conveyed by the characters in the best way since Memento, and the rhythm (editing) is very well balanced (where did the 3 hours go?!?). I was missing those two elements in the Dark Knight Trilogy and Inception. Some actors are great. Matthew McConaughey find himself in a movie with a similar topic to Contact, but as a completely different character and playing it differently as well (To see another side of him, also watch Killer Joe). Michael Caine is majestic, as I noticed again recently in The Dark Knight, Dressed to Kill and Harry Brown. And the music by Hans Zimmer, although minimalistic, is mesmerizing. An important goal of this movie was to make it as realistic as 2001 but more accessible. You notice that when the action pauses so that a character can explain what are black holes or time relativity. On the other hand some events and technological feats are taken for granted and seem quite unrealistic (some example that could be spoilers, highlight to read: cryo-sleep, the resistance of the spaceship to the proximity with a black hole, the difference between the gargantuan black hole and the worm hole they travel through, the topology of the visited planets...), but this is all part of the suspension of disbelief and I accept that if it means making an accessible movie. Finally about the philosophical / scientific themes in the movie: I really liked the ecological and ethical sub-text in the movie (what are we doing to our planet and how will this affect the life of our children?). In particular the mythology of Lazarus (the spaceship named after a figure that had to die in order to be reborn) let me thoughtful long after the end of the movie. After all the quality of the this movie is difficult to share, it is more a question of feeling, and I had a very good one after leaving the projection. I found that the pure SF bits (space travel and time relativity) were perfectly in place, and some revelations in the movie actually meet some of my own fantastic theories, undoubtedly elaborated in my dreaming mind after having read some of Arthur C. Clarke's work. It is a pity that some people in the theater didn't get the meaning of the movie and instead of keeping their ignorance to themselves, laughed during some revelations in the last half hour. To watch this kind of movie I am unfortunately but definitely better off at home on my Home cinema.
Rating: 9 /10