Disappointed. That's the first word that came to my mind when I finished watching Interstellar, a full three months after the movie was released - and, no, I'm trying to bring in the Inception line, I am disappointed with Interstellar.
Now, before you get ready to punch me in the face, do realize that you're hearing this from an ardent Nolan fan - oh yeah, but I've tried to write this review by being as objective as possible, but, as you will soon realize, I have failed miserably.
True, Christopher Nolan has undeniably made himself one of the best directors of our time, but there's no harm in looking at this critically. And now I'll cut down on the number of para splits and give you long paragraphs with my annoyingly long sentences. Nolan is getting carried away with making us feel "intelligent" for merely watching - or, slightly better, being able to understand and explain his movies - a feeling vaguely akin to what IIT aspirants feel when they successfully solve a problem in I.E. Irodov's book. I must say that no director has succeeded in capitalizing on this idea to the extent he has, but this has increased our expectations exponentially. Occasional audience disappointment is perhaps the only disadvantage of making such a mark, and I must say that Nolan is handling it quite well. A paradoxical, fake world as ours may be, we yearn for realism in films, and Nolan relentlessly caters to it but in doing so, particularly since The Dark Knight Rises, his movies have become pretty much like my articles - too much content being squeezed into them, making it difficult to take in, much less, marginally irritating.
This time, he has added yet another layer - or should I say dimension? - to this new realistic film in making it "scientific" - a term where the lay man takes refuge while stereotypically attacking age-old stereotypes, without even understanding what it truly is. At the most, he (or she - happy, sexists?) would've read an article that might have made partial sense to him (or her. Bah!), and he, believing it blindly, vehemently opposes something that is followed in custom. A couple of years later, the same magazine would publish an article on reviving some age-old healthy custom - which would now unanimously be accepted.
I apologize to the reader for this digression and continue with my narration.
Nolan's calculation based visual effects, coupled with Zimmer's out of the world soundtrack definitely took me on a surreal journey - I was out of this planet for those three hours, but somehow, my expectations weren't met. There were several points that could be questioned - that's been the case with quite a few of Nolan's recent films, but I didn't mind those - these do bother me. For example, I never bothered to ask how people could share dreams by just connecting each other's hands with wires or how Batman managed to survive in The Dark Knight Rises - but the loose ends in Interstellar bother me. A lot. Miller's and Mann's planets seem to have plenty of "sun"shine, and it isn't explained as to whether their atmospheres have sufficient carbon dioxide to help achieve that, and the accretion disc around Gargantua lights up not only Miller's (which is pretty close to the black hole) but also Mann's planet, which is quite far away (in both space and time). Ok, that bit is pardonable, but a black hole is not merely a portal to the fifth dimension or to let you use time as a physical dimension - that made me raise eyebrows, far more than a man being able to rub his back against the event horizon of a black hole and come back home in one piece - I can accept even a man's vertebra being punched back into its place (Because he's Batman! - Sorry, couldn't resist), but this was too much for me. And Cooper's black hole experience only seemed to have bent time, not space. He not only came back in one piece, he was in perfect shape, even better that Wayne was when he returned to Gotham.
But with all that, Interstellar is still a masterpiece,and, to me, will remain as one of the best movies - perhaps the best one - I've ever watched.
Talking of space science after watching Interstellar seems similar to claiming to be a Batman fan after watching Nolan's trilogy - there's so much more. Nolan may be a good teacher (the explanation of a wormhole being a sphere was brilliant), but Interstellar isn't a lecture on physics: simply watching this movie doesn't make us Stephen Hawkings - far-fetched is an understatement to describe people bringing books on quantum physics and relativity to the theatre.
Am I saying all this because it was a little too much to take in? Well, I can't completely deny that, but no. I like heavy subjects and, needless to say, I did just sit after the movie, completely lost, thinking, "What the hell just happened?", finding it hard to process it all, most of all, just to discern whether it was a SciFi or a film on love (oh yeah, in case you've forgotten, parental love also comes under the topic of love). I certainly need to watch it another couple of times, to conclude as to how much I like the film, and a lot more number of times to fall in love with Zimmer's soundtrack - just as it happened with Inception and TDKR, but now, just after I've watched the movie, one thing disappoints me the most: This film may not be timeless, like Inception or The Prestige - hypothetically, some day when we do discover what happens in a black hole, Nolan's film may become invalid - now that is something I find hard to digest.
Maybe, but at least I don't pretend like I understand everything - or worse, blindly believe that whatever Nolan says is true, trying to prove that it's right using some over the head physics book.
The "I'm brilliant if I watch Nolan's movies" trend continues, and will continue, perhaps for eternity, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I fall within that bracket too.
As a Nolan fan, I'm worried that he may be proved wrong. Or is that clear already? Man may have achieved several things, but he has never transcended a dimension. No creature seems to have. Is man truly that supreme, that he will, at some time in the future, gain control over time? Has Nolan got too carried away with his imagination?
It is my desire that all of Nolan's films should be timeless - the once so far certainly seem so, but Interstellar was a leap. It was perhaps too much of a leap.
Ultimately, it wasn't the movie we deserved, but the movie that our egos needed.
Ultimately, it wasn't the movie we deserved, but the movie that our egos needed.
I'm worried if it will stand the test of time. Will it? Only time will tell.
