Interstellar

Interstellar

Director – Christopher Nolan

Writers – Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan

2014, USA-UK-Canada

Stars – Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain

 

‘Interstellar’ is ultimately more about parenting than space adventures. This is what they call the “heart” of the film. Perhaps this may interest you more than the hard science-fiction elements such as playing with time and wormholes that occur in the second act, or maybe not.  There is little doubt that this middle section, which involves visiting other planets in a search of a new home for mankind, can provoke genuine awe: it’s what special-effects companies were made for, to provide alien landscapes and giant waves and spaceships… But despite this, there is the nagging self-absorbed feeling that the film thinks that the human individual and his feelings trump this awe. There’s the sense that it’s a little strong on the “I am centre of the universe (and other dimensions)!” It’s the same issue that troubles ‘Arrival’, although ‘Arrival’, as Philip Challinor writes, fails dramatically by making the super-smarts of its female protagonist secondary to motherhood (be smart, girls, but don’t forget what you’re on the planet for!). Not that science-fiction can’t be moving,* but these films seem to foreground and broadcast their emotional arcs in such a mainstream fashion (“Hey, we’re going to be, you know, weepy!”) that their serious treatment of otherworldly ideas seem belittled consequently.

Perhaps this would not be so problematic if Matthew McConaughey (who is, you know, great) as Cooper was not such an all-round genius at everything: not only is he an accomplished farmer but he used to be a brilliant space-craft pilot too. He kind of excels at parenting too: he’ll happily drive through a field of presumably precious crops for an exhilarating parenting moment in pursuit of an errant old drone, for example.** This means his character doesn’t really offer friction, except where he might occasionally butt heads with others. But we know they’re wrong and he’s right anyway. He is perpetually in motion by quest, but when he finally makes his way back his daughter, the moment is more-or-less waved off and brief, leading the audience investment a little short-changed. For a film so hellbent on parenting-as-cosmic-quest, the daughter should not be a McGuffin.

‘Interstellar’ won the American Film Institute 2015 award, and the blurb says:

INTERSTELLAR is proof on earth that artists provide our strongest voice to rage against the dying of the light. Christopher Nolan illuminates the darkness of deepest space with the brilliance of his singular creative vision, while grounding the cosmos in a deeply emotional tale of fathers and daughters. This is cinema at its most ambitious, with Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain providing the beating heart to this awe-inspiring work that reaches across time and space to find meaning in the unexplainable.

 Well, it is a film that is heavy on explanations for its science-fiction – black holes, other dimensions, etc – and that’s what agreeably grounds it. This is where it shines: heady ideas and existential peril that bends time and space.

The imbalance is that the sentimentality outweighs the science-fiction. The aesthetic, effects and ideas are fascinating and wonderfully executed, because Nolan excels at this stuff; indeed, this middle section is apparently credited more to Christopher than his co-writer, Jonathan Nolan. But these strengths are mitigated by the human drama being routine and pedestrianly executed. Hans Zimmer will sweep and soar at the emotional bits, for example (but the score did win an Oscar). It’s very signposted and it is not nearly as smart as it should be; or rather it relationship drama could benefit from being as smart as its concepts. 

The ending is not so much gratuitous as a little unsatisfying. Via Entertainment Weekly:

Nolan’s early take on the ending, however, essentially cuts Cooper off inside the black hole. His script “had the Einstien-Rosen bridge [wormhole] collapse when Cooper tries to send the data back.”

Actually, Jonathan Nolan's original ending would have struck me as more tragic rather than sentimental, and therefore conceptually superior. Science would not necessarily give way to sentiment.

‘Ad Astra’ is more obvious pulpy fun because its flaws are more evident so you can just go along for the ride without thinking too hard. ‘2001: a space odyssey’ remains the pinnacle of Hard Sci-Fi cinema and doesn’t feel the need to explain itself or rely on routine human dramatics. ‘Interstellar’ is better than the former but doesn’t reach the heights of the latter.

When I watched ‘Interstellar’ for a second time, I enjoyed it more as pulp, as the kind of science-fiction I was reading as a teenager (Harry Harrison comes to mind). For me, in this example, “grounding the cosmos in a deeply emotional tale of fathers and daughters” is not respectful of and belittles the cosmos.

·   * For example, that’s me as an adult on the bus trying not to cry as I’m finishing ‘Flowers for Algernon’; that’s me as a teenager wondering why Philip K Dick’s ‘Our Friends from Frolix 8’ has left me feeling so oddly emotional.

·   ** They grew the field for the film and sold the crops.

This Island Earth

 Joseph Newman, 1955, USA

One of my fondest film-watching memories is when I was living at my grandparent’s house as a preteen and getting to watch the b-movie season playing over months and months on television. I was about eleven or twelve and I loved getting into my pyjamas and watching these films on a Sunday evening before bed. I saw so many of the black-and-white creature features this way; my personal education to the drive-in horror and science-fiction era, as if I had been born decades earlier. I know for sure that I saw “The Beast from 50,000 Fathoms” and “King Kong” and “It Came From Outer Space” that way, as well as “It! The Terror Beyond Space”, “Earth versus the Flying Saucers” and “This Island Earth”.

“This Island Earth” is kind of an honorary classic: it’s not a classic due to story and execution, for it has some of that workmanlike clunkiness and flatness of the era, but the whole is definitely greater than the parts. It looks and sounds like a tacky Fifties sci-fi, but it is much more if you play into it. It has decent and decidedly adult characters; it has a nice air of menace and mystery and a fascinatingly ambiguous relationship with its aliens. The aliens are the kind you are likely to meet in “Star Trek” – intelligent, humanoid and talky with over-sized foreheads so that they can seemingly pass for human, but they are more than typically two-dimensional. They are a threat in that they are a civilisation – from Metaluna –  on the brink of being wiped out by their enemies and both need Earth’s help whilst simultaneously plotting to colonise Earth. But they are desperate rather than cruel or megalomaniacal. The film’s classic status is surely down to the fact that it is quintessential Fifties-era pulp sci-fi and that’s a lot of fun and no bad thing. It also has a slow build-up that is rewarded with a fantastic if brief visit to Metaluna itself, a gorgeous cosmic vision with comic-book colours and mutants, one which rivals “Forbidden Planet”.

“This Island Earth” is full of green rays, flying saucers, manipulative but super-smart aliens, decidedly square-jawed scientists (Rex Reason) and equally unlikely science. It looks and acts like something from an “Astounding!” magazine cover, and that’s integral to its delight. The film worries about other cultures being smarter, more manipulative and colonialist, but trusts its American square-jaws and female vulnerability to get an Earthman through an extraterrestrial encounter. It is dated, but that doesn’t seem to do it any harm. It gets better and balmier as it goes on and has the good sense to throw in some alien mutants too to spice up things.

Yes: the mutants. These insectoid aliens gave me a nightmare that I have never forgotten. They were lumbering, soundless and – well, you can’t get much more alien than insects. They don’t have much screen time, although they are plastered all over the posters, but hey are unforgettable. I dreamt that I was on the spaceship standing inside the giant transparent tubes it had to condition people to different environments; my dream was paraphrasing the spaceship and a scene from the film. One of the mutants was going crazy on the flight deck, just as in the film, and I was stuck in the tube. The difference was that there was a gap at the bottom of the tubes so that feet, ankles and lower shins were horrible exposed. The alien came attacking the tubes and I was trapped inside and, eventually, it started to attack my feet at the gap at the base of the tube. I suspect I woke up during the attack. Oh yes, it was quite a nightmare and I’ve never forgotten it. For this reason, I have quite a soft spot for “This Island Earth”.

It remains a delightful slice of pulp hokum with an odd charm all its own. It doesn’t have the resonance and deep chills of, say, “Invasion of the Body-Snatchers”, but it is old school fun and possessed of enough intelligence and gorgeous alien scenery to more than hold its own.