Interstellar

Director: Christopher Nolan

Year: 2014

The whole reason I review movies the way I do, with a resonance rating, is so I can judge their impact both immediately and over time. The movies that bother me most are the ones that I feel should have a greater impact but, for whatever reason, didn’t. Interstellar is one of those movies.

I don’t like to feel stupid – particularly at the movies, an area where I feel fairly well educated. I’m respectful and a fan enough of Christopher Nolan (Dark Night, the Prestige, Memento and Insomnia were all excellent – Inception, many Nolan fans favorite, was very interesting, but, similar to this film, one that I felt may have flew above my head) to give him the benefit of the doubt and succumb to the fact that I may have missed it – maybe many its – in my viewing of Interstellar. My biases/realites that may have played a part include:

1)   the venue – I saw this movie in an antithetical environment to what Nolan intended, I’m sure – a dollar (okay, two dollar) theater. It’s basically a mid-80’s setup with a narrow theater and a not-so big, big screen and a muddy sound system. The sound may have been the worst part actually as I felt several lines just went right past me – I’m guessing that was an issue of the dynamic mix running through a crappy system.

2)   The time of day – it was a 9:30p screening following a full day of running with my kids. I was a bit tired. I don’t think enough reviewers take into account their personal state when they review a film – it matters. I realize a professional is always going to be her best at her job, but movies are an emotional experience. And if there’s something emotional or physical that affects the reviewers experience, he should mention it so the reader understands the color of the lens they are looking through.

Those things being said, here’s what I got from the movie: the earth, in the near future, is coming to a dustbowl end. Something’s happened along the lines of six billion people all wanting it all at the same time and the environmental well has been inextricably poisoned. Got it.

Coop (Matthew McConaghey) is a former NASA astronaut who didn’t get to fulfill his young life’s work because science was abandoned in the new world order that insisted people focus back on farming. Got that.

He and Murph (his daughter) stumble across an above-ground/”underground” remaining secret society of NASA folk and the main story – searching a wormhole near Saturn created by “them” for other habitable planets for the remaining people of earth (plan A) or colonizing the found planets with some cocktail of humanity (plan B)…got it, I think.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Robert Zemeckis’ “Contact”. There are some similar themes here, with the stories turned inside out in terms of where the time is spent – Interstellar is mostly in space while Contact is mostly on the earth. This may have been part of Interstellar’s problem for me, not that it needed more time on earth, but it needed more emotional grounding. It seemed to want to do so much on the ground in terms of semi-explaining what was going on that the depth of the emotional loss between father and daughter wasn’t as much as I was looking for. It was there – but it didn’t shred me the way the moment should have (especially as a father of two kids whom I adore).

Into space we go, so far so interesting. The main driver at this point is Coop’s leaving his son and daughter – mostly his daughter as his son seems pretty okay with the setup – for what may be forever. Time and space get wonky out in light years, wormholes and, what will become the overriding factor in the story, gravity.

Instead of going forward with more got it/didn’t get it, I’ll pick on the gravity angle for a bit. It is the literal weight of the knowledge in the movie that dragged me down, though not completely out. I always wanted to see what happened next, but at the same time I was almost perpetually wondering if I’d really gotten what I just watched. There was a lot of physics-speak, which is fascinating conceptually, but as a man who’s baldly ignorant of said science, they may as well have been speaking Saturnian. What’s that? You ask. Exactly, I say.

As with all my reviews, I’m not much interested in the good/bad debate. Plenty of other critics will shape their finger in a specific direction, sprinkle stars on you or offer a measure of freshness. I’m about resonance. Will the movie last and stir me for further thought and discussion. At this point, I have to say no because the biggest takeaways for me were the sadness of the human condition that insists we will all selfishly survive at the cost of all others and that love conquers all, in spite of the selfishness. It’s too big and broad and, for all the time spent in the set up, not nearly emotional enough in the father/daughter bond to make me invest as deeply as the nearly three hours suggested I should.

I wanted to love this film. I didn’t hate it. But as confusion is one of the great irritants of life, I left feeling as if I’d been scratching at something I couldn’t get at for large portions of those three hours. Maybe I’m just not that smart. I’ll read a few reviews and see what I can pick up. But my initial thought is…it’s a beautiful-looking (there’s a scene on a water planet that probably would have been worth the price of admission on its own on an IMAX screen), well-acted and occasionally thrilling film. And even with all that, I don’t believe it will matter much down the road.

Resonance Rating: 3.0 out of 5.