Film Review - Interstellar

Humans have always looked heavenward. Our fascination with stars, planets, galaxies and what lies beyond stems from our instincts to explore. It’s also where we turn when things down here appear dire. We’ve always looked up when we need grace, hope, salvation, or escape.

No surprise then that Christopher Nolan’s new sci-fi epic Interstellar is a mind bending journey through time, space and emotion.

Set in a future where a global famine is widespread and humanity may soon become extinct, Cooper, a widowed engineer and pilot (a brilliant Matthew McConaughey) finds himself leading a NASA mission to travel through a newly-discovered wormhole to find new planets to inhabit, with the intention of saving humanity. Early expeditions through the wormhole (aptly titled the 'Lazarus' missions) have not returned and no one knows what they may have discovered.

While technically brilliant (the cinematography and score are stunning), this film is a major surprise in terms of its emotional power. Questions of faith and love abound, and resurrection is a major theme throughout. Like Inception, this is a film you need to talk about and process afterwards, and will no doubt leave you asking questions that can only be resolved through another viewing.

Human emotion is proven to be as complex as the science and theories that are discussed. But it’s the humanity and strained relationship between Cooper and his young daughter Murph (an excellent Mackenzie Foy) that becomes the glue that holds Interstellar together. Cooper departs, with his daughter not knowing when he might return, if at all. There is great pain in the distance between them, and a number of their scenes are amongst the most emotional film moments of recent years.   

For followers of Jesus, it brings us great joy to know that our Heavenly Father is not light years away. Not only did our God create the universe with all its complexity and beauty, but he promises to never leave us or forsake us.

While Interstellar has been touted as a sci-fi movie dealing with the complexities of inter dimensional travel and wormholes; in reality, the movie is about a father’s love for his daughter and how he would do anything, even travel to the ends of the universe, to save her. He would also do anything to survive and make it back to her. That conflict, that relentless, aching homesickness — that profound yearning for human companionship that we all have — is what this film captures in a monumentally powerful way.

While the film has its flaws (some clunky dialogue, poor sound mixing, a rather underused Casey Affleck and Anne Hathaway), Interstellar nevertheless feels 'church-like' in its artistic grandeur, intellectual curiosity, and probing of big questions about life, death, sacrifice and love (“the only thing that transcends space and time”).   

There is also a decidedly eschatological undercurrent to the film, with its themes of a doomed, burning planet and a hoped-for 'escape' to a better place beyond the stars.

Interstellar may have been touted as a creative and complex depiction of time and space travel, but the reality is very different.  It’s Nolan’s most personal film to date, one that will leave you moved and thoughtful long after you leave the cinema.  

Review by Martin Barratt

Interstellar
Genre:  Sci-Fi/Drama
Director:  Christopher Nolan
Rating: M (Violence, offensive language)
Run time:  2 hr 49 mins