Jack Denver’s review published on Letterboxd:
🔥 SOME FLAWS BUT STILL A MASTERPIECE 🔥
4th Watch | Top 100 | Christopher Nolan Ranked
Christopher Nolan has been my favorite director since I started my cinematic journey around 1.5 years ago. Early on, I adored all of his films, but Interstellar was extremely high on my Nolan list, placing second, which was only behind The Dark Knight (my favorite film ever at the time). However, as I heard more and more people talk about Interstellar, I realized that maybe it wasn't as perfect as I made it out to be. It dropped steadily, and overtime went from my second favorite to my 6th favorite Nolan film. As a disclaimer, I have 6 Nolan films that are 5 stars, so despite the ranking, I still liked the movie. For my Top 100 list, Interstellar had placed 52nd before my viewing.
I decided to watch Interstellar because I was one film away from reaching 1,000 hours of movies logged, a major milestone. Therefore, I wanted to watch a film that I had loved since the beginning. Interstellar fit that criteria. I had concerns over Interstellar before I watched it though. I had criticisms of the story (especially near the end) and Anne Hathaway due to my evolved thoughts overtime. I was not a fan of the thematical aspect about love transcending time and space. However, I decided to watch Interstellar anyways. Thankfully, even though the criticisms were still present, they were way less prevalent. Although it's not as perfect as I once thought it, Interstellar is a remarkable film. Even if it only rose one spot in my Nolan ranking (surpassing Inception), it rose significantly in my Top 100.
Interstellar is a tough film to rank because on one hand, it has some inconsistencies that are unfortunately more prominent than many other spectacular films. As I said earlier, these inconsistencies don't severely impact my perception of the film like what happened earlier, but they still impacted my experience to a degree. On the other hand, there are many times where Interstellar's brilliance exceeded many other films. A major factor in my enjoyment (and thus my ratings) comes down to consistency. That is why Dunkirk, The Prestige, and Memento are among my favorites. They are very consistent with their tone and quality. In Interstellar, the visuals are stunning, the score is magic, and the emotion is felt. However, the story itself sometimes felt a little empty handed at times compared to the rest of the film. Scenes like the tesseract scene just don't click to me. Therefore, I can fully understand Interstellar being one's favorite Christopher Nolan movie. In fact, the "inconsistent" moments of the movie actually became less severe on my rewatch. The scene where Dr. Brand goes into why Love is so important didn't actually spark any significant negative reaction. I mainly just thought, "whatever" instead of thinking "this is really stupid." I'm not saying that there wasn't anything inconsistent about the film; there were even new things that I caught on to that didn't make much sense. However, they didn't have much of an impact on my enjoyment (contrasting what occurred last time).
"We don't need more engineers. We need more farmers."
When I heard this quote, I already knew Earth was in trouble. This was the case because engineers would actually be more vital than ever in a situation like this. In actuality, having engineers would be far more valuable than having farmers. This is because of genetic engineering, where scientists are able to modify the genetic makeup of an organism to overcome many evolutionary obstacles. These are called GMO (genetically modified organism) crops. Obviously, this doesn't only have to include crops, but in the nature of this story, being able to modify crops to be able to withstand the dusty earth, you would need to modify the genes of the crop and then allow that crop to spread it's genes. Going back to the film, this would mean that engineers would actually be more valuable than farmers. However, I said that this "inconsistency" didn't make the film worse, and that was because one could justify this because it shows how the human race has become more stupid over time. The film suggested that our stupidity was our downfall, which is a great theme in the story. This theme is very prevalent in the film, but I've read almost no analysis covering it. The teachers are ignorant and are refusing to consider viewpoints which contrast their own, causing their students to lack important knowledge (as shown with Tom). The rest of the public is too stupid to see that they were beyond the point where saving the Earth was possible. Considering ⚠️SPOILERS⚠️ Tom becomes naive and results in many of his kids being killed. Mann was too stupid to see that he would die if he opened the hatch, almost causing him to jeopardize the mission. In addition, Cooper was so stupid to back away from Mann when Mann was slamming his helmet against his, almost causing Cooper to die, which would've resulted in a failed mission and an extinct Earth population; it's a 50-50 for Mann, but it's also a 50-50 for Cooper. Obviously, the film doesn't end in tragedy because then there would be millions of angry movie-watchers about how the ending was really bad. ⚠️SPOILERS ENDED ⚠️ However, the theme about our stupidity causing our downfall is still present
Another "inconsistency" I had was with the dialogue in some portions. There were many times where exposition was used to talk about concepts such as wormholes and relativity. Once again, this is justified because unfortunately people are extremely stupid and need explanations for concepts such as relativity. The wormhole example used in the film is used practically in every science fiction movie that includes an explanation about wormholes. It's the same demonstration with the pencil and the folded paper. I did appreciate how Doyle talked about taking the 2D concept with the paper and how that relates to an actual wormhole that's tri-dimensional; I hadn't seen something like that before. However, the need to include an explanation in the first place was just mildly annoying. If a 15 year high school student can understand the concept of wormholes and relativity, then a grown adult should be able to as well. But humanity somehow finds a way to prove the impossible when it comes to the negative side of the spectrum.
Another "inconsistency" was indeed the black hole scene (⚠️SPOILERS⚠️). To be fair, this is somewhat justified due to black holes being very mysterious, even now. However, we do know some stuff about black holes, and what was portrayed in the film wasn't quite accurate. Firstly, before you storm to the comments telling me I'm wrong because the black hole looks incredibly real due to real research, you're right. What I mean is what happens inside the black hole. If someone was to be sucked into a black hole, they would die. There is a process called "spaghettification" where objects are literally stretched to look like spaghetti. This happens because the singularity has such a strong force; it would literally pull you apart. From what I know, I think that spaghettification doesn't occur with a supermassive black hole, but Gargantua isn't a supermassive black hole. Basically, Cooper wouldn't just fly into the black hole like an airplane in turbulence. In addition, when Cooper was in the middle, the singularity seemed to have a lot of mass, like a big sphere. In reality, the singularity is just a point that is infinitely small. Despite all of this, I justify this by saying that it's Hollywood.
Finally, the last "inconsistency" I had with the film was gravity, and more specifically the gravity equation. From a story perspective, the whole idea that you can take data from a black hole to change the way gravity works is absurd. It's like saying that the Sun is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the surface and then using that data to somehow make the Earth hotter. At least I finally understand why the gravity equation was so important now; in my first 3 watches, I was completely clueless on the possible correspondence between saving the human race and gravity. However, I blame this lack of understanding until now because of how crazy and dumb the idea was in the first place. To justify this equation, you have to think about the bigger picture. The equation represents the way that humanity can save the earth. This equation could represent us banning the use of fossil fuels, preserving habitats, or anything else to preserve the environment. It's a way of symbolizing the steps to creating a healthy Earth. However, even though it works very well when thinking about the big picture, it's still absurd from a story perspective. But then again, Interstellar is fiction.
Those were pretty much all of the details that impacted my viewing experience. Notice how each of these "inconsistencies," as I've called them so many times in this review, are all justified. I can understand them being a problem for some viewers, but I can totally understand others being unfazed by these as well.
Since I have already mentioned all of the things that could've negatively impacted by rewatch, let's go into the things that positively impacted my rewatch.
Firstly, the acting was spectacular in Interstellar. I had remembered Interstellar for Matthew McConaughey and Mackenzie Foy. They were absolutely phenomenal as Cooper and young Murph. They displayed a ton of emotion and had wonderful chemistry with each other. The father/daughter love was very easy to see. However, this rewatch allowed me to appreciate the other performances too. Anne Hathaway was a main concern of mine before the film, but somehow my thoughts about her changed. I loved her during the film, and she was one of my favorite characters. It was way better than her slutty Cat-woman performance. If I didn't like Hathaway in Interstellar, this movie would've probably dropped many spots from where it is now. Furthermore, there are many other great supporting performances such as Casey Affleck and Timothée Chalamet with their portrayals as Tom. And of course, Sir Michael Caine was a great addition to the cast.
Interstellar is a masterpiece on the technical side of filmmaking, and the visuals prove that. When it comes to visuals, Interstellar masters the VFX and the cinematography as a whole. However, I'll start with the cinematography first. Every frame in the film looks beautiful. The cinematography perfectly sets the tone for the film. It is grand and epic... a spectacle. Many shots convey this feeling. For example, this tone is felt in the extreme wide shots of the film, where the Endurance flies past Saturn and where it flies past Gargantua. Sure, the visual effects were crucial for the visuals, but the cinematography was even more important. There were more astonishing shots, and among those was every shot from the side of the space craft. This conveyed a major sense of immersion and realism, as the camera was placed directly on the space craft for many shots. This realism is important because of what was happening on Earth: the human race was failing. If we aren't careful, then we can be in a position where we could become extinct. This ties in perfectly with the threats of climate change that we see today. These types of shots were also immersive because it showed how the audience was essentially with the main characters; there was the feeling that we were in the space craft with them embarking on the journey to save the world. As a result, we become completely engrossed in the story. There are plenty of beautiful and meaningful shots in Interstellar, but what makes the film so memorable is the visual effects to tie along to the cinematography.
Interstellar isn't just an achievement in cinema, but it was also an achievement in the scientific world. The first black hole was photographed in 2016. Without that knowledge, does something feel strange? Yes, Interstellar was released in 2014, before black holes were even photographed. That was because of the research from Kip Thorne and his collaboration with Christopher Nolan for Interstellar. His research and calculations were extremely accurate, and those calculations were used to digitally construct the black hole, taking approximately 100 hours to render EACH frame. However, by the end, it looked beautiful. Even now that we have actual photographs of the black hole, it's amazing how accurate Kip Thorne's calculations were. Kip Thorne was a massive contributor to the film. Despite how impressive the black hole was, there were still amazing visual effects that were surprisingly achieved practically for the most part. This made the visuals much more authentic than what CGI would've created. It was a shock to me that Miller's planet and Mann's planet looked so real even though they are completely fictitious and differ from Earth in many ways.
Hans Zimmer has earned his reputation as the GOAT (alongside John Williams) when it comes to making scores. He has a very specific touch that is immersive and emotional. That could not have been more true than in Interstellar. It was incredibly emotional and it engrossed me (even deeper) in the film. The best scenes were accompanied with the score because of how it worked together with the scene. Many people say that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, music is worth a thousand words too. It perfectly set the tone for the film.
Once again, Christopher Nolan created a masterpiece with Interstellar. It's crazy how it's only my 5th favorite Nolan film, but it's around 20th on my all time ranking. He has only made two subpar movies, them being The Dark Knight Rises and Tenet (and some even adore TDKR). Even if people don't like the screenplay or the acting or don't care for the technical mastery, none can deny that the direction itself was stellar. Nolan had a vision for the film and it worked tremendously. I'm so glad that Kip Thorne decided to choose Christopher Nolan to direct and create this project over Spielberg. Nolan (in my opinion) just has a different touch when it comes to filmmaking in my opinion. Nolan was the obvious keystone of the film. He was the reason why the cinematography, the score, blah blah blah was so good. The editing was superb, making a near 3-hour film feel like a quick two hours. That has been my experience each time with this film; the pacing is phenomenal and the editing's brilliance even goes beyond the pacing too. Without Nolan, Interstellar would've lost its identity and would've never become as influential in the filmmaking and scientific world. Many people pursuing astrophysics today were actually somewhat inspired by Interstellar. I also dream of becoming an astrophysicist one day, and Interstellar has definitely influenced my decision.
In summary, Interstellar has all of the qualities of a good film in my opinion. The only minor details that didn't fully work involved the screenplay, but it was still enjoyable regardless. It was extremely influential and Nolan's touch played a pivotal role in the film. He had fantastic direction that was contagious across the entire film. As a result, there was great editing, cinematography, and one of the greatest scores of all time. There is a reason why I used to love Interstellar sooo much, and even though it doesn't quite pass Dunkirk and The Prestige in my opinion, it's still a masterpiece of cinema. I love Nolan's films, and especially Interstellar. There is definitely a reason why many people have Interstellar as their favorite film of all time. It's simply an unforgettable experience.
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