MTV Review | Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' Is Out Of This World

UK Release Date: 7th Nov
 
Certificate: 12A
 
Running Time: 169 mins
 
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck. Michael Caine, Matt Damon
 
Director: Christopher Nolan
 
Plot: Earth is dying. Well, its not really dying, but it’s decided it’s had enough of the human race. Devastating droughts and famines have pushed human existence to the very edge of extinction. But salvation may lie through a wormhole that has suspiciously just appeared near Saturn and a top secret NASA mission sends farmer Cooper (McConaughey), scientist Brand (Hathaway) and a merry band of brave explorers into an unknown galaxy far away to find a hospitable planet that the human race can call home. Needless to say, things don’t go to plan and space, the final frontier, is not a friendly place.

Best Scene: So many contenders. The WTF ending, chasing a drone through a corn field in a truck, and landing on an ocean world with waves even bigger than Matthew McConaughy’s career revival among them. But the most dramatic, edge-of-an-uncomfortable-cinema-seat scene is a deep space chase back to the Endurance between Dr. Mann (Damon), Coop and Brand. 
 
Best One Liner: “That’s relativity, folks!” quips David Gyasi's Romilly after he explains that through the wormhole, one hour for the Endurance crew equates to seven years back on Earth. Which is an all round bummer because mankind doesn’t really have much time to spare.
 
Date Movie or Mate Movie: Love transcending space, time and the 5th and 6th dimensions is a theme in this film, so definitely a date movie. Also, with mankind’s fate resting upon the shoulders of Coop and his crew, friendships on his spaceship quickly turn very tetchy.

Scene Stealer: Gargantua. No, not a WWF wrestler or a pet name for a tarantula, but a great big massive black hole which is at the centre of Instellar’s narrative. It just sits there eating light and time like a trucker with a service station full English breakfast. After crunching lots and lots of astro-physics formulas and rendering out the CG Gargantua, this black hole is the most realistic example of a black hole ever seen. And, curiously, it isn’t actually black. It’s bright and absolutely beautiful.

WTF Moment: The ending. I will say no more.

Summary: Interstellar is a total brain-bender - in a good way. The stakes are high for the characters involved and McConaughy and Hathaway approach their roles with aplomb. Not only does the future of mankind rest upon them (no biggy!) but they carry their own inner conflicts and emotional turmoil, such as McConaughy not saying a proper goodbye to his daughter, Murph (Chastain), and knowing that if he sees her again she will be the same age as him. Nolan’s interstellar space is awe-inspiring and the set design is phenomenal. NASA’s spacesuits and spaceships are realistic and the theories behind the movie are drawn from more science fact than fiction. There are no little green men or ray guns either. 

The ending, however will divide opinion more than the timeless debate: should cinemas be allowed to sell stinking cheesy nachos. You’ll either see it as a satisfying resolution to the emotional arc of McConaughy’s character or a bat s**t cop out on an intergalactic scale. Either way, I watched this intelligent sci-fi movie with awe and the questions it left propelled me to enter the BFI’s very own black hole of a website and buy IMAX tickets for a repeat viewing of this certain classic.

By Michael Currell @MTVUK