Interstellar
When Terence Malick’s The Tree of Life appeared in 2011 to some critical acclaim, but nearly universal disregard by the general public, one wouldn’t have guessed that it would, in only three short years, turn out to be one of the most influential films in decades. Melding the intimate with the cosmic, one small family’s life with the creation of the universe and the first life on Earth, The Tree of Life audaciously attempted to meld the scope of 2001: A Space Odyssey with painful early memories of Malick’s youth. Roger Ebert wrote at the time, “The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I’ve seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and it lacked Malick’s fierce evocation of human feeling.”
The Tree of Life went on to influence the rural look of the Ma and Pa Kent sequences in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013) and, one suspects, many recent medicine commercials. Now comes a film, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, that acts as both an extension of and response to The Tree of Life. It visually and thematically echoes (in some cases one might even says mimics) both The Tree of Life and 2001, again overtly melding the cosmic with the intensely personal, in this case the love of a father for his daughter.
In the not too far future, mankind’s facing its last days on Earth due to blight. In a setting reminiscent of the dust bowl era, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is a former NASA pilot turned to farming (as so many are in the desperate society), with his young son, daughter and father-in-law. In this Earth-bound world, NASA has been discredited and the moon landing officially taught as a fraud.
The story begins with a running debate between father and daughter on the possibility of the supernatural (not unlike the excellent discussions in M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs), prompted by odd manifestations in the girl’s bedroom. Eventually the strange events appear too real for Cooper to argue against or explain away and their realization that some kind of sentience is providing a code to them leads to a mission of critical importance to the survival of the human race.
To say further would ruin a perfectly surprising and epic film. The cast list is formidable: Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain (the mother in The Tree of Life), Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon and John Lithgow. Interstellar‘s a pleasing, captivating, immersive film with much amazing imagery along the lines of Nolan’s Inception (2010). Apart from a few brief scenes, though, it doesn’t have the poetic grace and visual art of 2001 or its sense of lonely isolation. This is partially due to the overbearing score.
Like Gravity (2013), which suffered from too much music played over scenes in deep space, Hans Zimmer’s loud score for Interstellar is, while melodically pleasing in places, inappropriate and unnecessary for a film which largely takes place in deep space. To make matters worse, the mix frequently drowns out dialogue with music. Problems with the dialogue being drowned out by the music score are being reported all over the nation, in articles like these from SlashFilm and Forbes. If, as some sources are saying, the drowned dialogue was a deliberate decision by Nolan, that’s a serious misstep.
In addition, Nolan and Zimmer’s repetitive use of a major chord for organ which ends the introduction to Johann Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra is so associated with 2001: A Space Odyssey that hearing it in Interstellar takes one right out of the movie. This has become an unfortunate trend, with Godzilla (2014) using Ligeti’s Requiem, also inextricably associated with 2001, and Michel Hazanavicius’ The Artist (2011) bizarrely and wrongheadedly stealing from Bernard Herrmann’s score to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Kim Novak had this to say about the issue: “This film should’ve been able to stand on its own without depending on Bernard Herrmann’s score from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ to provide more drama”, and “It is morally wrong for the artistry of our industry to use and abuse famous pieces of work to gain attention and applause for other than what they were intended”. Hollywood reporter Todd McCarthy wrote that Herrmann’s score is “so well known that (Hazanavicius’ use of) it yanks you out of one film and places you in the mind-set of another.” Exactly.
Quibbles aside, Interstellar is very much worth seeing, especially on a huge theater screen. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Tree of Life, it may not be to everyone’s taste. It makes emotional sense, but not always logical sense. Some have complained it’s hard to understand, but I didn’t find it so. Some plot twists are hard to believe and scientifically unsound. For spectacle, suspense and sheer thematic audaciousness, though, Interstellar can’t be beat.
—Michael R. Neno, 2014 Nov 19