Interstellar

I strongly believe that when I watch Interstellar a second time, free of any of the hype, I will be able to enjoy this professionally made and above-average sci-fi movie enough to give it four stars… but I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that it was quite a big disappointment. And I’m really sorry about it, because there wasn’t any other film this year that I was more excited about. The biggest problem was the last half-hour, it wanted to be smart and ambitious, but I thought it was actually dull and banal. Really, all that exposition in the middle wasn’t original at all. If only the characters stopped talking so much and let the viewers figure things out for themselves, it would have been very successful and literally, and surprisingly, emotionally cold (the emotional peak comes undoubtedly somewhere around the middle, when they watch the messages). On top of that, there are some weird decisions and logically contradictory moments, which really harms such an ambitious film like this (after realising that time passes more slowly in the first planet due to its proximity to a black hole, these leading scientist really didn’t think of the consequences that it could have on what Dr Miller was supposed to do, etc.?). But Interstellar has many things that I liked. There are scenes that made me hold my breath or that captivated me. Excellent music, great Matthew. But from the whole, I’m still undecided, sigh! (11/10/2014)

It's always been like that. Always. For every film that has (re)defined the sci-fi genre, there have been widely conflicting responses; only time, the fairest judge, has helped resolve the dilemma of a work' immortality. This applied even to Kubrick's Odyssey, which was loved in its time by hippie circles but reviled by critics and mainstream audiences. But Nolan is like expensive wine, if you like it and you know that it makes you feel good, you will forgive it a little bit of tartness and you will be happy to come back to it. He’s not the cheap swill that delight the bums at the train station, but a proper vintage Bordeaux. Cheap swill are most of today’s movies, especially the innumerable comic book adaptations that have already bored the gourmands. Nolan can still surprise, and as he gets older, his films become more epic, more narratively sweeping, in short, more cinematically ambitious, while focusing more on the visceral feelings of individuals, bringing the simple human dimension to the fore in a Spielbergian way (see the third Batman). But I still wasn't prepared for what was coming. Interstellar is so ambitious and bold in its message, in its rarely seen narrative structure, that it will either hit you like a ton of bricks or, on the contrary, make you feel uplifted. It depends on your nature. And I could go on with superlatives, such as the original and unprecedented concept of the gradual destruction of our ecosystem, all from the point of view of one family (similar to Spielberg's War of the Worlds or Close Encounters of the Third Kind), breathtaking space compositions, while maintaining a serious scientific dimension and the laws of physics (though this is for a longer discussion), and all that while keeping the narrative intimate and thought-provoking. Nolan is a man with a big heart, and those who are afraid of honestly conveyed emotions, thoughts revolving around the fate of the family and the weight of the responsibility to bring a child into the world, may not appreciate this. But would it be presumptuous of me to say that at least half of the positive impression of the film in my eyes was made by Matthew McConaughey himself? An actor so malleable, with such a breadth of emotions, it's breathtaking. Matthew, if I see you one more time showing your six-pack in the company of some second rate bird like in one of those forgotten comedies you (thankfully) have left behind, I’ll smack you in the head with one of your surf boards. (11/09/2014)

There is power in simplicity, even if the monstrous epic tempts many viewers to seek complex interpretations. The power of Nolan's narrative lies in confronting the fundamental life decisions of a handful of people about the future of homo sapiens at the expense of personal interests and desires. Let us take those scientific lessons, limited to the described tables, which we do not understand anyway, as a glittering decoy toward a dead end. The sweeping cinematography and roaring music are meant to give the impression of a major space adventure, and yet, thanks mainly to the terrific cast, it's really one big cliché about a father-daughter relationship where the question is whether the journey through the wormhole will help them see each other again. I really didn't expect myself to be so sensitive and that at the end of it, I would cheer for it wholeheartedly. It was actually nice to get something completely different in the movie theater than I originally expected and that the whole colossus worked. This is particularly true when I sat in front of the screen with a certain amount of skepticism thanks to the diametrically opposed responses. [But I don't deny that everything negative you read about the film is true. And yet so are the positives.] (11/21/2014)

As if Christopher Nolan was filming more from himself than ever before. He was already indulging in the smartest twists and tricks in the plot and narrative with The Prestige or Inception, but here he genuinely experiences his omnipresent fear for his family every minute, engraving it into every passionate monologue by Matthew McConaughey and building all the twists around it. It is not easy to accept that this time, too, the driving force behind the universe (occasionally even literally) are his own desires and regrets. But thanks to that, Interstellar soars through drama, ecology, wormholes, water, and ice with Hans Zimmer's organs on its back, aiming for a subjectively absolute rating that has no equal. Because I now have greater respect for distant stars than ever before and at the same time, I would give anything to be even a step closer to them. (11/06/2014)

Are you one of those who wished Chris Nolan’s movies were not so (seemingly) free of emotions? Well, you know what they say ... Be careful what you wish for, it could come true. Because more than anything else, Interstellar acts as Nolan's sincere response to the above complaint. It's just an effort that is more wanted and forcibly pushed than naturally arising from the story and the characters. At the same time, for a long time (which, given the footage, really means for a very long time), nicely rational (and it is evident where this systematic analogy to Kubrick's 2001 comes from), but it turns into a variation on the Frequency viewed by Spielberg family perspective. However, if, after all, you really want to look for an analogy, then it clearly call for the Contact that also ruined its rational level at the end, although not as literal as Interstellar (what is strange is that on the one hand it is so cheaply literal and yet you can read between the lines, how and what was achieved for humanity during the ending scene). You either get over it or not. I did mainly thanks to the fact that the very first dialog of the daughter in the whole film will clearly determine where from and what point will follow. However, if nothing else, the once-in-a-lifetime audiovisual impression (especially in IMAX) of a pioneering journey into the unknown, which is breathtaking all the time, if not in terms of emotions than at least in terms of what the movie shows. In addition, it is one of the few orthodox big-budget science fiction, where during most of the footage the science, not the fiction is being emphasized, as we can typically see. And that means a lot, if on top of that it is quite likely that you will enjoy it even in terms of emotions. (11/06/2014)