Interstellar

Christopher Nolan has a cavernous brain of fantastic and intricate ideas. His latest, Interstellar, is no different from his other wonderful work. 

The film opens on Matthew McConaughey, his father, played by John Lithgow, and his two young children. We soon learn of the dust and how it's slowly covering their land. The crops are failing and it seems like planet earth is in a slow demise. McConaughey plays former pilot and now farmer Cooper: A single dad with a love for space and science. The film is just under three hours long, so as you can imagine, we're given a real insight to their family life before venturing out into space. We follow along as Cooper visits his kids school, as he downplays the existence of the supernatural to his ghost visited daughter and as he brings down a military drone whilst driving through a corn field. Just your normal day! But soon, things escalate with the weather and Cooper, with daughter in tow, discovers a secret government run base. I wont go into much more detail about the plot because it's fantastically constructed and my words wont do it justice.

Firstly, the film is available in both 2D and 3D. I saw the film in 2D and still had brief moments of motion sickness. There are several moments within Interstellar that involve constant spinning and wormhole light contortions. As you can imagine, this will be heightened in 3D and could leave audiences feeling nauseous by the closing titles! Even in 2D the film is beautiful with sharp colours, wide angle views and beautiful other-worldly landscapes. Even the scenes that were created using advanced CGI technology looked incredibly realistic and were familiar enough to be understood as real. With so many people choosing to watch films at home on smaller screens and on laptops, this film would be wasted anywhere but the wide screen of a cinema.

Undoubtably, like most of Nolan's films, Interstellar has more than a few plot twists and turns! Once in space, the team encounter difficulties with gravity, relativity, fuel and with a particularly suspicious astronaut from a previous expedition. However, I think one of the biggest surprises was the emotional depths that the film explores. I found myself on the brink of tears not once or twice but five times. The film is intense and builds as the minutes tick by. Even in the moments of silence in space, there is an uncertainty that haunts each action on screen. Anne Hathaway, as Amelia Brand, and Jessica Chastain, as Murph(ey) Cooper, provide tender but powerful feminine touches to an otherwise entirely masculine cast. They are both strong characters, one more than the other, who are a representation of the smart and strong willed girls in our society who still have typically 'feminine' emotions that sometimes take control.

The film deals with so many fascinating questions, most notably: Is earth the only planet we can live on? This film will likely spark thought provoking conversations amongst audiences world wide. Are we alone? Can we travel through time and space? It's important for films to open this discussion because it's not only interesting but it could potentially spark a light under a passionate individual who could one day answer these questions for us. Nolan's ability to create such captivating characters and dialogue, opens doors for Science Fiction to further infiltrate mainstream cinema more than ever before. 

This film is a must see and will likely win big during award season next year. If the film wasn't three hours long, I'd head back to the cinema now to watch it again!