Is there
anyone out there? Or more apposite: is there anywhere out there? Just one of
many questions Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar asks. Any fan of Nolan’s, as I
am, would know from Memento, The Prestige and Inception that Nolan’s conceptual
faculties are perhaps the best in the mainstream business. But along with his technical ability he gets
results out of actors that help the audience to engage.
What most
of us wondered was if Interstellar was going to be his Prometheus or his Close
Encounters. It’s neither. It’s a movie that leaves your brain rattling away
long after the end credits.
It’s a
movie that asks questions about our (humanity’s) place in the universe.
Explores the power of love and tries to realign perceptions of time: so far so
highbrow. We make comparisons of films: that’s just what we do, and
Interstellar‘s nearest touchstones are 2001: a space Odyssey and perhaps
Solaris.
When
drawing analogies with Kubrick’s epic it is an easy parallel: the gates of
perception and spacecraft spinning against a vast backdrop (along with some of
Kubrick’s pretension). The scenes of spacecraft and planets are beautifully
captured and this counterpoints the personal drama of the story.
Where 2001
had HAL Interstellar has TARS, a robot of humour and initiative. In fact TARS
starts of as an unwieldy clunky relic but his design is unlike any robot
character I’ve seen at the cinema and his bizarre, almost Analogue design puts
him (yes him, not it) in the pantheon of great Artificial intelligence.
It touches
on the Spielberg school of emoting at times but what it does do is provide a
three hour cinema experience that is sometimes profound, often thrilling and
intermittently baffling, but in this world of junk movies it is a meal that is
full of diverse flavour and none overpowers the other. Tuck in.
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