Christopher Nolan's first film following the conclusion of his gargantuan "Batman" success is the space epic "Interstellar." A film that aims to be both profound and entertaining, it's a visually beautiful film that stumbles with its story, mixing melodrama with philosophy and physics in a heady brew that leaves a slightly bitter taste in your mouth.
I saw the trailer. This looks weird.
Well, it is weird to a certain extent. The film blends loads of traditional storylines -- an ecological apocalypse, the derring-do of a team of space-faring heroes, a precocious child that happens to be a genius, and so on.
The weird part comes when all of these disparate pieces are slammed together. Instead of coalescing into a tonally rich whole, they feel like disparate fragments, never coalescing into a singularity but instead floating about in a haphazard orbit.
Where does the idea come from?
Instead of our run-of-the-mill comic book movies, this one has a decent pedigree. Physicist Kip Thorne, a renowned specialist on gravitational physics, had previously collaborated with producer Lynda Obst on the 1997 Robert Zemeckis-helmed film "Contact." Originally Steven Spielberg was attached to direct their new idea "Insterstellar" back in 2006, and he hired Christopher Nolan's brother Jonathan to write the script.
By 2012, Spielberg had bowed out, and the elder Nolan was brought in to direct, where he added to the storyline an interest in popularizing the idea of human spaceflight for younger generations, merging these elements with his brother's exciting screenplay.
So, is this really "science-y"?
Kind of. There's lots of astro-nerdery to fall for in this film -- notions of extra dimensions, beautifully rendered views of singularity wormholes, and a keen attention to such details as the haunting silence of space. At its best, the film is illuminating in the way that "Contact" was, at its worst it's dull, pedantic and overly expositional the way "Contact" was. Desperate to be clever while still playing to a general audience, the film works at a level far below popular science shows like "Cosmos," spending inordinate amounts of the almost three-hour running time explaining over and over again things that frankly could use a little more poetry and a little less pedantry.
Wait, this thing is three hours long?
Well, it's 169 minutes, which is close enough. Besides, time is relative, I'm sure there's a parallel universe where this film feels like 90 minutes. While watching it, it felt like it took days -- again, an extension not of quantum mechanics but of clunky storytelling.
You saw it on film?
I did, and Nolan's making a very big, kind of obnoxious deal about this. A big chunk of this was shot on IMAX film (15perf 65mm negative for those who want the numbers), and when projected this stuff looks, well, stellar. The rest was shot on 35mm, and the aspect ratio shifts from the more square IMAX shape to a normal widescreen 35, where the film gets grainer, the colours less saturated, and the image itself softer and less defined. The same trick was done with the "Batman" films, but this time around it seemed more distracting, the shifts in aspect and clarity far less integrated into the story.
Given that digital elements have to be integrated anyway (i.e.: Nolan's going from film to digital back to film), it might have been a far better idea to shoot the bulk of the picture in digital while saving the big moments for the IMAX celluloid, then keep a consistent aspect throughout, with the film popping (ideally) in clarity.
This, of course, isn't what Nolan wanted, and given the film's ambivalent theme about looking to the past instead of seeking out a better future, the use of the dying technology of celluloid is one of the ironies of this film that never quite gets reconciled.
Enough of this mumbo-jumbo -- this is McConaughey's first big screen adventure since winning the Oscar. How is he in this film?
He is (wait for it!), um, all right. There are times he seems to be in a different film than what's taking place on screen, and in other scenes he could easily be replaced by "Armageddon"-era Bruce Willis (especially during some particularly silly boardroom moments). "True Detective" showed that McConaughey can play a character that travels for long distances while spouting half-baked aphorisms that make him seem clever and engaging, so this film is hardly a stretch.
Is there anything good about this?
Yeah, plenty. I really dug the robots TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin) and CASE (Josh Stewart) as they ambled about like prancing versions of the monolith from Kubrick's "2001" while wisecracking like B.O.B. and V.I.N.C.E.N.T. from the 70's Disney film "The Black Hole."
In fact, there's plenty to admire -- moments of visual splendour, for one, and some pretty great ideas to incorporate hard science into a popular film. Alas, like an unsolvable equation, it just doesn't add up. Some stunt casting badly misfires, where the resulting conflict is telegraphed as soon as our crew lands on a bleak landscape.
So, should I see this thing?
Absolutely, and on the biggest screen you can. It's a jumble of a film, a collection of decent moments and parts that drag. Much of my disappointment about this work comes out of a sense of a missed opportunity -- there's clearly intelligence at play here, and Nolan has demonstrated an ability to mix the pulpy with the profound in ways that are entertaining.
"Interstellar" isn't stellar, but it's not a complete dud either. It's a journey worth taking, even if there are plenty of bumps along the way. I could have hoped for a smoother voyage, and can readily think of other films that it borrows from that do a far better job of projecting wonder and adventure onto the screen.
Part of me wished I was seeing this for the first time at a young age, free from the myriad of films it references, free from (accurate) predictions where the relatively paltry plot would lead us. I wished for wonder, and got enough of a sense of it to feel it just a bit out of reach. Fascinating, frustrating, "Interstellar" has many dimensions, I simply wished they would have come together as elegantly as they do within one of the film's more effective set pieces.
"Interstellar" is now playing in theatres.
from The Moviefone Blog http://ift.tt/1Gq9HNu
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment