Interstellar : A Movie Review

There is that one hilariously sardonic exchange(ostensibly which only the 5 of us in the entire cinema hall found tacky enough to share a laugh) between Coop(Matthew McConaughey) and his daughter Murphy's teacher about how the Apollo moon landings were staged to drain the Soviet resources and its subsequent disownment by the new federal framework. Neither the Academy nor Big Brother will be pleased with such a banter. Ok, so that rules out Interstellar from the race for the Oscars this years.

Speaking beyond those tuxedo clad nights, Interstellar is collosal and ambitious. It is like a spiritual child of Kubrick's Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky's Solaris, contreived by Sagan's Contact. With its own share of gaffes(we'll come to that), Interstellar is a brain-busting sci-fi opus with an unprecedented grandeur, scientific authenticity . (Only that, the latter proves to be a modicum source of inexplicability for a normal movie goer.)

The Pledge
Set in a not-so-distant dystopian future plagued by a crop blight and dust-bowls, Nolan(the uncrowned almighty of every contemporary cinephile) hits the ground running from the word go. He takes no time playing mumbo-jumbo or allaying your curiosity with insipid back-stories. He is in control and he has your full attention. As adamant as he is about filming in stock(the reason for the surprisingly fresh colour palette), and his abstinence from over-cooked CGI, he is a sobriquet for stifling with our minds.

The grand-auteur stages a marvelous, humble tribute-like pastiche of numerous hollywood sci-fi ventures:- when the Kit-kat shaped droids that accompany our heroes on the mission is nothing more than a reinvention of the E2D2 or an archaic opera scoring whilst the ring-like space ship drifts through space is so reminiscent of those iconic scenes from Space Odyssey.

One moment he dares you to fight back your tears when Cooper visits the twenty-three year long recordings sent to him; the next he delves you into a nail-biting tension when our heroes combat a mountain-high wave. The sheer scale and imagination this man crops is audacious and worth applause.

The Act
Matthew McConaughey will always cherish his decision to think beyond the paycheques the big-6 offered him for his rom-coms in the 2000s. Since Jeff Nichols' "Mud" in 2012, this guy's been on a roll. He remains the heartbeat of the film. Will the McConaissance be rewarded with yet another Oscar, when he sure as hell has put himself in contention? Fingers crossed. Anne Hathaway with her sleek cheek, thrives as the no-nonsense Dr.Brand. The Nolan mainstay Sir Caine seems unscathed by muscularity of the project, delivers a composed performance like always. Jessica Chastain chips in astutely.

The Prestige
It is in the final third we see things breakup into a tinge of awriness. The presposterosity is so evident when one of those scientists ask Cooper to have a peep at the singularity on his journey back (seriously?!) Or how our heroes maneuver at the edge of a black hole to sling around ( I repeat, even light cannot escape its sphere of influence) or how Cooper falls into one ( a black hole is never a hole to be exact. Its an infinitesimally tiny dot of infinite mass. Falling onto it would result in disassembly and coalescing with the mass of the black hole). Nolan particularly fumbles when called to deal with those strong scenes like the 20-minute mind-bending, complex climax which seems a tad-too untidy in terms of lingering misgivings, or that potentially emotionally rich rendezvous of Coop and Murph which is seemed particularly rushed.

The Verdict
Set aside all such gaffes, Interstellar is nevertheless an epic in every magnitude. The sheer scale and perfunctory work put in is evident in every frame and Nolan & co. truly deserve the applause for the visual mastery and the audacity. Now forget all that you read; run to the next cinema hall and experience it for yourself. 

Verdict : 4/5