INTERSTELLAR

CASE: “This is not possible.”

Cooper: “It’s necessary.”

Two nights after it was released, I saw the newest Nolan film in IMAX 70MM at the renovated TLC Chinese Auditorium, and I left the theater shaken to my core. Okay, maybe that was due to the wake of the surround sound speakers.

It was visually astonishing, musically breathtaking, emotionally cathartic, and full of black holes. And I mean plot holes. Let me just say this. I graduated from CSU Northridge with a Bachelors of Arts in Film Production and for the last seven years my hobby has been screenwriting, so I love film enough to dedicate my life and copious amounts of student debt enslavement to the art of profound, cinematic stories. So when I say that Christopher Nolan is my favorite director, don’t take it lightly. But as incredible as the film was, there were definitely some problems. I definitely advise seeing it, but just know that it is no The Prestige or Inception.

As a critic, I’m going to focus mostly on the negatives, but just know I cared enough about it that I went and saw it in a regular theater the very next day. I shall discuss the Audio, Thematic dialogue, Soundtrack, Character, and Plot (holes and best moments). 

The Audio

The most frustrating part of the whole experience of watching Interstellar was the audio, or more specifically, the sound-mixing distinguishing the dialogue from…any other sound made in the movie.

I understand the tactic that they were trying to do. I love Nolan for his usage of realism. And it normally works. From practical affects to limited CGI to shooting in good ole fashioned film, Nolan as a director does his best to make his films a truly authentic, gritty-real experience. The mixing for the audio was designed to put you, the viewer, ‘in the moment’; to experience what it would sound and feel like if you were an astronaut traveling through black holes and to strange new worlds (Check out this video from the Sound team: http://www.soundworkscollection.com/videos/the-sound-of-interstellar). But nothing took me more ‘out of the moment’ than straining my ears to try to understand whatever the hell was being said. I honestly probably didn’t hear about a quarter of all the dialogue. In a movie where every line is important to understanding the complicated ideas the story is tossing at you, this is a grievous loss.

I wondered if maybe this was just because I saw it in IMAX with speakers far bigger than my 6’2” self, so I spent the money to go see it in a regular theater the next day. That time, I was able to hear much more of the dialogue, but maybe that’s because I knew when to really listen more attentively. Though you truly feel the sound in a real IMAX theatre, much like riding a motorcycle (which was truly awesome), I do NOT advise seeing it in the format that Christopher Nolan “intended” you to see it: IMAX 70MM.

The Dialogue and Thematic

Along the lines of the dialogue, I’d like to mention that everyone in the film seems to be a philosopher. Everyone has seemingly deep and compelling ideas to speak about. And not just occasionally, but almost every moment of the movie. Which, for the sake of realism, is not realistic. I understand that this is a very thematic piece, which I love. But there’s a few problems with how it was done.

First, even in a world and situations where you’re dealing with the threat of the end of humanity, no one is going to be speaking philosophically every couple of seconds.

Secondly, not to bash on anyone’s intelligence, but not everyone even thinks in a philosophical way often. When Anne Hathaway was defending her case about the power of love, I was surprised that Matthew McConaughey didn’t laugh at her. I would have thought it would have made him far more an interesting character if he had. Imagine him like the skeptical scientist (Jodie Foster) in the similar film Contact [which ironically stars Matthew McConaughey opposite her as the man of faith].

Thirdly, you know the phrase too ‘on the nose’? Imagine taking a hammer to the nose. When you’re being thematic in your story, you don’t want it to be obvious all the time that you’re talking about your theme. But even still, some of these ideas that are being dealt with aren’t actually that deep and profound to begin with. The whole talk about love transcending all things (especially time) was really cheesy. I somewhat agree with the concept, but it shouldn’t have been talked about so much, but rather implied. Sometimes the most compelling things are the things not said, because they are so complex no words can express. Christopher Nolan often tells and shows, but often in film you just want to show.

The Soundtrack

As much as everyone raves about Hans Zimmer and as successful as he is, he’s not my all-time favorite composer. He works on so many soundtracks that often many of them sound the same. However, his work on Interstellar was truly phenomenal and distinctive. Hans Zimmer normally focuses on creating action epic music (heavy brass, etc.), but this time he took a lesson from James Newton Howard (the composer he was teamed up with on Batman Begins and Dark knight), using more of violins and strings, and even ushering in an unique usage of organs. I will definitely buy the hard copy of this entire soundtrack.

Structure

In the first Act, there are random cuts to documentary-like footage of older people talking about their experiences during earth’s last days. After a few of these inserts though, they completely disappear until the end of the third Act, and they are simply referenced. Why? You could completely take them out of the film, it’d be shorter, and better. (SPOILER: Revealing the clips of people in their old age talking about the subject matter actually alludes to the possibility that everything is alright in the end. Imagine if I started telling you a long story about the end of the world, but I say “spoiler! Everyone is alright in the end.”) Yeah, you lose all of the tension before the movie even blasts off. Also, the documentary clips serve the plot in no way except unnecessary exposition. Nolan sometimes has a problem with “telling” rather than just “showing”.

Character

Authors naturally either focus more on “Character” or “Plot”. Christopher Nolan tells his stories more from the latter, even though they have a lot of heart in them. However, he often misses the intricacies of “character” that make people three-dimensional, which is ironic because he literally suspends his characters through multiple dimensions. Often his characters come across as flat, and show up simply for the plots purpose. You might miss this fact, because Nolan is brilliant and casts even the smallest roles with noteworthy and talented actors (ex. Topher Grace). But actors can only carry a performance so far if their character doesn't have, well, character.

Also, when you have a character grow up, you need to consider them as a new character, because the audience notes that this is a new actor. You basically need to reintroduce the character with new depth, something that shows they aren't a flat character.

For example, I will use another 2014 release as an example. In Guardians of the Galaxy, we begin with Starlord as a kid, and he visits his mother in a hospital, dying. She gives him a gift, and then dies. He runs out crying, and is then abducted by aliens. Holy shit. Then, the very next scene, he is grown up as (Chris Pratt), but he’s wearing a rogue attire with a villainous mask, exploring a dark, perilous world. We sense that he has been scared by the years away in space, just like this world. He enters a temple, takes off his mask, and pops in the headphones (from the gift of his dead mother, to a Walkman), and then begins upbeat music. And though it is just the opening credits, he begins DANCING through the perilous temple like a walk in the park. Now THAT is character. That SHOWS us so much about this person. Though he’s had a shitty hand dealt to him, he is optimistic and careless. He’s maybe a bad boy with a heart, and he’s too goofy for his own good.

Christopher Nolan’s characters often miss those moments. And if you want us to care about your characters, especially when they grow up, we need something like that. We need to FEEL for the characters. Imagine meeting a new character is like going on a date. You’ve only got a few minutes for that first impression, and if we don’t find something unique and quirky about that person, we lose interest.

PLOT

This is the midpoint of my review, and from here on out, this will all be SPOILERS. If you don’t want to read Spoilers, skip to the last paragraph. Otherwise, I will examine the best moments of the films, and the black holes of the plot through Act 1, 2, and 3.

Act 1

Best Moment #1:

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) leaves the house, driving away in his truck as we hear the shuttle take-off countdown, and young Murphy (Ellen Burstyn) runs out of the house crying for her Dad to wait, but he is already gone. And Cooper never sees this. Cooper looks under the blanket on the passenger seat, where he caught Murphy hiding in a previous scene. But no Murphy this time. He is all alone. And his daughter hates him for leaving.

Black holes (4):

First, the dust. It is never really explained what this is really about. All we know is that the planet is suffering from a famine where most plant life is dead, and humanity is at risk of starving. Why? Is it the dust storms that are causing the famine, or the famine causing the dust storms? There is no answer, but get used to these kind of problems in this film. Sometimes in cinematic stories, it is good to suggest knowledge rather than explicitly stating it. This is trusting the audience, because you’re hoping they’re smart enough to fill in the blank. But you don’t want to do that all the time. You don’t even need one dialogue line to answer this question, yet it isn’t answered.

Second, the binary dust lines on Murphy’s bedroom floor. So Cooper stares at the lines long enough to figure out that they are coordinates. But here’s the problem. Binary code (0’s and 1’s) take up a lot of lines to convey data, and we’re not just talking about the broad location defined by longitude and latitude, but the precise coordinates that pinpoint them to the NASA secret facility. How do all of these lines fit on the limited space of the bedroom floor? There isn’t enough room, and we clearly only see a few lines. Also, these coordinates lead to NASA, which is only a few hours away. Isn’t that oddly convenient?

Third [on that last note], why does NASA not summon Cooper to fly their mission? Professor Brand (Michael Caine) reveals that Cooper was their best pilot, and their secret base was literally just within driving distance. I understand why the screenplay has the coordinates lead Cooper to NASA, and not NASA coming to Cooper, but this is just too convenient.

Fourth, Plan A. When describing Plan A, the characters only say that they designed the NASA facility for space, and they plan to use it to move people off of earth, but they don’t really explain how that would even work. Then Professor Brand comes in talking about gravity, gravity, and theorems. He says he’ll have figured out the theorem by the time Cooper gets back from the mission. But what the hell is the theorem? It’s incredibly vague. Did he just pull this theorem out of his butt? It’s like if a child asked a scientist why the planet rotates and revolves around the earth, the scientist just says “oh yeah, um, gravity.” Or rather…”Because I said so.” No further explanation needed I guess. We are left to assume that by gravity they mean finding a way to understand the quantum physics of wormholes, but they don’t even try to use big words to make them sound smart or try to illustrate precisely what they mean.

Act 2

Best Moment #2:

Due to Brand’s (Anne Hathaway) momentary mistake on the water world, they have lost 23 years in relation to Earth time. Cooper watches the video archives sent from Earth addressed to him, and he literally watches his son Tom’s (now Casey Affleck) life pass him by, from graduation to marriage to the birth and then death of their first son, and then his own father’s death (John Lithgow). And then for the first time, Cooper sees footage of his grown-up daughter Murphy (now Jessica Chastain) saying that it is her birthday, and she is the same age he was when he left. Relativity is a bitch.

I actually really liked the first half of Act 2, and felt like there weren’t any real problems with the plot until the second half…

Black holes (3):

                First, the transmissions. Transmissions can be sent from Earth into the wormhole and received on the other end, but this doesn’t work vice versa [except with the use of simple beacon pings or something of the sort]. What? This is clearly a cheap gimmick of the plot. Another conveniences just for the sake of the story.

Second, Tom’s wife (Leah Cairns) and second son’s (Liam Dickinson) cough. Getty (Topher Grace) says that it is bad, and they shouldn’t stay another moment in the house. But they don’t explain why it is so bad. Are their lung issues because of the dirt? Or rather does it have to do with the gravitational phenomenon in the house? This latter explanation is far more compelling, but it isn’t even hinted at, so it’s better to assume it is just the dirt. But then why doesn’t Tom have the cough? He is outdoors far more often than his family is (being a farmer and all), so why is he okay? If I was just given answers, I’d be okay. But too often this film possess an idea without a real explanation.

Also, let’s talk about Getty’s anger-issues. We barely know anything at all about this character (he’s a friend of Murphy’s who works in the hospital), but within moments of discovering that the wife and kid [that he’s possibly never met] have serious lung damage, the moment Tom walks in the door, Getty’s basically yelling at Tom that he has a responsibility to get them out. Getty is the reason Tom gets mad in the first place. I mean hell, I’d be pissed too if some random person started telling me to get my family out of the house I grew up in and that basically it was my fault that they were dying. I mean, shit man, read the room. And then when Getty is helping Murphy get the wife and kid out of the house, he yells at them to get in the back seat. I mean come on dude, I know you were only the Venom for like 20 minutes in Spiderman 3, a really shitty movie, but no reason to yell at anyone. You’re in a rush, but no need to seem like an impulsive, angry dickhead.

Third, Dr. Mann’s (Matt Damon) lies and murderous behavior. I know that Nolan loves to delve into the themes of lies and the ethical dilemmas they pose. It’s probably the dominant signature theme I’ve detected in all of his works, but I was very surprised at how dominant it was in Interstellar. Which I liked actually. But when it came to Dr. Mann (Matt Damon) lying about his ice planet being habitable, I thought this was foolish on his part as a character. I mean, I understand why he activated his beacon. He didn’t want to die alone, and that button was haunting him for years. But why’d he lie about it once they arrived? What was the worst thing that would have happened if he came clean the moment the astronauts arrived? They would have still brought him along with them, even if they were really pissed. Yes, it would ruin his reputation, but his lie was inevitable to be discovered anyways, so for the sake of self-preservation, why not come clean? I suppose the easy answer to this is faulty human emotions. He wasn’t thinking clearly, and maybe even went a little nuts being alone for so many years. I’ll let it slide, but I thought it was worth noting.

Act 3

Best Moment #3

Dr. Mann steals one of the shuttles, and imperfectly docks with the space station “Endurance,” Cooper and Brand try to talk him down, but as he opens the airlock, he begins a monologue that abruptly is cut short by the depressurizing explosion, ripping the shuttle and station to pieces. I’m not shocked easily, and I normally know what’s going to happen next in films, but I was caught breathless. I instantly thought “Fuck. It’s over. They’re hopeless.”

This was the “darkest hour” of the film, the moment that propels us from the end of Act 2 into Act 3, and I’d say it was the best “darkest hour” I’ve seen in a while. But the sequence continues with Cooper blasting their shuttle toward the station, attempting to match the station’s velocity and dock with it before it falls into the planet’s atmosphere. It was the most epic moment in the film, far grander than even the climax.

Now this is where the real plot holes are, as we literally delve into the black hole.

Black holes (3):

First, the biggest problem in my opinion is the causality loop. 

Imagine one timeline. A->B->C->D->E->F

Point A is Cooper with Murphy on Earth. Point B is Cooper leaving Earth, through the wormhole. Point C is Cooper entering the black hole. Point D is Cooper within the Tesserack sending Murphy on Earth the black hole data. Point E is Murphy completing the gravity theorem, gaining mastery over dimensions. Point F is humans in the future dwelling within five dimensions, creating the wormhole in Point B.

The paradoxical question; what came first: Point B, the appearance of the worm hole, or Point F, the creation of the worm hole?

We call this a causality loop, and it appears in a ton of science fiction films. Think films like Back to the Future or Terminator, but here’s the problem; both of those films BEGIN with the concept of time travel. The films revolve around the concept of changing the past. Interstellar only gets into the idea of relativity at the MIDPOINT of the film. In screenwriting, the first ten minutes of the 1^st Act is the time period in which one reveals what is possible in this world.

Think the opening scene in The Matrix when Trinity is running from the Agents. Why is that scene even there? It is there to explain what the rules of the world are. People can do supernatural things. A person can be sucked into a telephone. Nothing is as it seems. By the end of the 1^st Act, Neo has been prophesized as the One, removed from the Matrix, and seen the machines enslaving humanity. This is the real world. All the cards have been laid out on the table for the audience.

Interstellar is a longer film, so the 1^st Act is longer than your standard 30 minutes, so let’s go over what we learn in the 1^st Act. The world is dying from famine, some gravitational phenomenon is occurring in Murphy’s bedroom that she calls a ghost, delivering a specific message pointing to a secret NASA facility, where they are prepping the last space mission to another galaxy through a wormhole that was placed there by supposedly extra-terrestrials. This wormhole allows shuttles to travel across the universe almost instantly. Do we have all the necessary rules of the universe? I’d argue not fully. Sure, along with wormhole travel comes the idea of relativity, but that isn’t even acknowledged until well into Act 2. And relativity isn’t time travel. It is the concept that time moves faster or slower depending on where you are. Only at the MIDPOINT does Cooper even bring up the idea that could they maybe rewind time, and Brand says no, that the only thing that is unrestrained by time is gravity (they go hand in hand). So only half way through the movie do we get all the rules of the universe. Too late.

The point. Don’t add new rules, especially if they are game changers, so late into the story.

Second, how does old Murphy know about Brand’s condition on the desert planet? And how does she even know that Cooper and Brand had bonded? Can humanity already manipulate the fifth dimension to see infinitely through time? If they have that much capability now, why hadn’t they sent anyone to retrieve her then?

Third and finally, this leads us to Murphy and Cooper. Father and daughter have finally been reunited, and then Murphy says that a parent should never see their child die. That’s pulling at the emotional heart strings. But then she says he should go, seeing that she has her kids to see her off. What the hell. If I were Cooper, there’s no way in hell that I’m leaving my daughter for a moment, even if she’s about to die. He just missed her entire life, his whole family is dead. He’d be grief stricken, but he wouldn’t leave her again. Come on, Nolan. You’ve spent the whole movie talking about the power of love, and then he just says “see ya!”

                In conclusion, Interstellar was an epic film that was truly incredible, but it was too hard to understand (let alone hear some of the dialogue) due to too many plot holes or simply unexplained ideas, and even with the explained ideas, they weren’t portrayed as profoundly as Nolan may have thought them to be. I say it is a must see, but it falls short of the format he wanted you to see it in (70MM Film) and his other astounding works. See it in a regular IMAX setting.

Feel free to share your opinions below.