Interstellar

I do not cry during films. Well, I do now. Post kids. But there was a time when I did not!! Then I had babies, and the hormones allegedly alter your body for life and blah blah blah that stuff doesn’t matter. What matters is the fact that I can bring myself to tears now merely thinking about a Budweiser Clydesdale commercial. IT’S BAD YOU GUYS. There are only a few films that have made me cry, the first of which was Big Fish. I grew up very close to my dad, so that one is a given. The second is Steel Magnolias. We love Sally Field, there is no doubt. We really really do. The next and final film that comes to mind is Interstellar. If you have children, you will sob like a toddler having a ladybug nightmare. If you don’t have children, I’d be surprised if Matthew McConaughey’s performance didn’t well those stone cold eyes up. This film packs a lot into it, and I’m gonna go ahead and suggest the major theme has something to do with family. 

Interstellar has a near perfect story with a curious pace and possibly the best CGI crafted space imagery ever. As the biggest proponent of space movies, I love love love love loved this film. It has everything I want in a space movie – time warping, science beyond my understanding, catastrophe, other worlds, a futuristic setting, heartache, mystery, space travel, and emotionless faces delivering a deadpan string of pseudo science verbs and nouns. SWOON! Taking place in the near distant future, a hidden NASA agenda is trying to find a new world to inhabit by way of wormhole as another mankind-induced dust bowl era envelopes Earth. Time poses an obvious problem, as does humanism, and math. (I dunno about you but math has always posed a problem in my life.) The film almost has a series of vignettes, creating a mini story each step of the journey. Former pilot McConaughey stumbles upon an old professor working at NASA, and is immediately jutted off to space to save humankind while leaving behind his two young children. He and his three-person team (HAHA OK.) visit various planets on a rescue mission via wormhole. I’m not going to give away how it ends, but several stops are made on their way back home. DO THEY MAKE IT BACK HOME??? ONLY THE MOVIE CAN TELL. Because of this information and theology packed environment, the film can be a little too “clever for its own good” (– my dad.) Major time warping leads McConaughey to one of the richest moments of his acting career – viewing twenty years worth of family video messages at once. Have you ever had to hide your tears in a movie theater from your brother in law?? Cuz I have. And it’s hard. Then I saw the film a second time and tried even harder to hide my tears from my husband. (Apparently I was successful, in case you were wondering. #TALENT.) I struggle to think of a film that handles such an enormous mankind problem while simultaneously serving such heartaching and emotional personal trauma. 

As a Christopher Nolan written and directed film, Interstellar delivers. It delivers sooooooooooo good ya’all. This is one of my favorite films in the past ten years. Possibly number one. The score is BEYOND. Hans Zimmer was initially given a one-page fable to design the score around, and developed it perfectly. (ZIMMER FO LYFE.) What would a space opera be without some majestic organ chords?? I would not have sobbed during the blastoff scene if it weren’t for the poignant emotional escalation of the score. (Spotify – Hans Zimmer – ‘Stay’) The film begins with the familiar curiosity of an arpeggio with delicate, sweet, heart wrenching melodies and ends with comically intimidating clock-striking chords – almost all in minor scales – the ‘sound of desperation’, as I call it. As someone brought to tears by most opera music, revisiting the score easily wells me up. It’s just. So. Cinematic. 

The story does leave some mystery to its science, but it still manages to wrap it all up in a classic little Hollywood bow. There seemed to be a split between the understandings of the science. Some felt the wormhole relativity explanations a little too obvious, and some felt perplexed by it all. I felt it was Goldilocks-planet just right. Personally I would have preferred a more Twilight Zone ending, chopping it off inexplicably at the tesseract scene. But this is also a juggle of art and business. 

“IN A WHIIIIIIIIRRRRLLLLED” where the summer blockbuster is king, movie watchers are left with two choices – a boring $200 million safe bet, or an intriguing yet poorly shot low-budge indie. If you were to make a graph with creative originality as the X-axis and commercial success as the Y, Christopher Nolan would crown the top. He has managed to prove himself unique in his storytelling skills and highly profitable at the same time. Nolan effortlessly balances ingenuity and dat DOLLA. Since he’s proven himself as a moneymaker, Hollywood has taken more ‘risks’ with him. Nolan took the overdone story of Batman and made a billion dollars. No seriously. The Dark Knight made over a billion dollars. Some have called it the best comic book film of all time. Mk, I’d buy that for a dollar. 

Go watch Interstellar.