![]() It’s a cleverly envisioned apocalyptic society that has abolished scientific determination because of an acute technophobia and has traded the most valuable natural resource of human ambition for basic short-term problem solving. The Nolan’s quietly introduce us to a familiar yet futuristic rural stretch of North America filled with dust storms, worn-down pickup trucks, and fields of corn (the only crop still able to grow) that is accompanied by old-timer talking head testimony making it feel as though we’re in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. But there is an arguable method to their enigmatic madness since there is a steady momentum that builds from the film’s apocalyptic terrestrial beginnings to the sweeping infinite of space. ![]() ![]() In tackling the vastness of space Nolan will generate idolization comparisons to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, and though Interstellar shares a visual consistency and intellectual inquisitiveness to its predecessors it undeniably lacks their dramatic gravitas and contemplative ingenuity making it a visionary film that unfortunately lacks unique vision.Ĭomplexity is the illusion of most Nolan films because screenwriters Christopher and Jonathan have developed an art of hiding their easily digestible themes within layers of unnecessary exposition, ponderous dialogue, and lengthy developments inevitably coming to a point where direct obtuseness is needed to explain themselves. There certainly are moments of visual majesty, genuine suspense, and intellectual curiosity, but they are unfortunately diminished by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s script that has numerous missteps towards juxtaposing simplistic father-daughter reconciliation amidst cosmic enigma and a Deus Ex Machina third-act that becomes a tad laughable if it weren’t so pedestrian. Ambition is not what Nolan lacks, especially with Interstellar’s exceptionally detailed production design and sweeping cinematography to complement its intellectual potency, but instead he lacks a sensible connection to narrative where cheapened sentimentality is the leading dramatic element of the entire film. Interstellar could be described as a survivalist space epic that mistakes a long-winded runtime for grandeur and melodramatic seriousness for depth that becomes enslaved to its own sense of ambition as it attempts to balance theoretical physics applications towards gravity, time, and space with concentrated terrestrial aspirations. And as it was with Inception, an impressively visual yet ultimately meaningless and flawed abstract exercise on human consciousness, Nolan’s latest visual extravaganza Interstellar embraces the best of Nolan’s technical abilities with the worst of his narrative weaknesses. Despite an ardent fan base who would disagree with even an ounce of criticism towards him, Nolan is an emotionless tactician of a filmmaker who possesses his strengths in creating awe-inspiring visual spectacles combined with weighty intellectual pondering but lacks sincerity as a dramatic storyteller where his characters are always overpowered by the process. It seems fitting that director Christopher Nolan, a filmmaker obsessed with the more cerebral slanting elements of film, would ambitiously attempt to tackle the vastness of our Universe and its infinitely changing properties because in most of his original pieces of film he has already bent time ( Memento), manipulated space ( The Prestige), and created new dimensions ( Inception). ![]()
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