Thel’s review published on Letterboxd:
Only ever seen this in disparate chunks over the years, so while I’ve technically seen it before, this was my first time really giving it a fair shake. Was hoping this would be an instance where my previous views on it were the result of being a very young teenager poisoned by the snarky sincerity-phobia that dominated online culture in the early 2010s (which initially turned me away from great films like the Alien prequels and Pacific Rim), and that’s the case to an extent, but not nearly to the degree that I had hoped. Nolan has some fascinating ideas in here (even if the central thesis feels pretty reactionary), and the emotional core of the film is fantastic, but everything around it feels stiff, broad, and a little gaudy. The dialogue is the obvious killer, this is pretty easily Nolan’s worst scripted film, but it also translates into a narrative that, beyond its admirable high concept components, feels flimsy and loosely strung together. Nolan’s technical work here is masterful though, and while unfortunately the ensemble is surprisingly shaky given the talent involved, McConaughey’s anchoring performance is one of the most powerful leading turns of the last decade. In a lot of ways, its strengths and weaknesses align perfectly with The Prestige’s, differentiated only by their scale, and the level of intrigue that stems from each idea. Where The Prestige felt like the first or second draft of a masterpiece, Interstellar feels like the proof of concept of one, needing significant skeletal changes to become the work it gestures at being.
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