Interstellar (2014)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
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70 films that influenced Interstellar
What critics say influenced Interstellar
Here is a film that provides plenty of 70mm action (cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot the whole thing on film with IMAX cameras he calls “the world’s heaviest Go-Pros”), as well as references both obvious and veiled to such influential sci-fi and/or science touchstones as 2001: A Space Odyssey , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , The Right Stuff and the best speculative fiction of to-the-stars maestro Robert A. Heinlein.
There is sincerity in the homage paid by its writer-director, Christopher Nolan, to two masterpieces of science-fiction cinema, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Interstellar, which was originally a Steven Spielberg project (some of his markers, notably the ’70s-style farmhouse, remain), has an emotional core that recalls Spielberg’s critique of his own film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Richard Dreyfuss should have never left his family.
The rustic homestead, where Cooper and his father-in-law (John Lithgow) drink beer on the porch, recalls the Indiana home of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" — an early hint that "Interstellar" — moving and sentimental — will be more Spielberg (who was once attached to direct) than Kubrick.
No, Nolan's end result here will not and should not be mentioned in the same breath as "2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
Astronauts Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway journey to a distant galaxy on a desperate mission to save humanity in this brainy, heartfelt, gorgeous and flawlessly acted sci-fi epic — inspired by “2001: A Space Odyssey,’’ “Close Encounters of the Third Kind’’ and less likely sources such as “The Grapes of Wrath.’’
And to pilot the ship, he needs Cooper, an instinctive flight jockey in the Chuck Yeager mode, much as McConaughey’s laconic, effortlessly self-assured performance recalls Sam Shepard’s as Yeager in “The Right Stuff” (another obvious “Interstellar” touchstone).
Here is a film that provides plenty of 70mm action (cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot the whole thing on film with IMAX cameras he calls “the world’s heaviest Go-Pros”), as well as references both obvious and veiled to such influential sci-fi and/or science touchstones as 2001: A Space Odyssey , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , The Right Stuff and the best speculative fiction of to-the-stars maestro Robert A. Heinlein.
There is also a “hotdog” swagger to his performance that reminds of the thrill seeking pilots, turned astronauts in Philip Kauffman’s 1983 space-race epic The Right Stuff .
Matthew McConaughey plays a former test pilot named Cooper (surely an homage to cocky test pilot Gordo Cooper of “The Right Stuff”).
Set in a near future when a dusty, ravaged Earth seems unlikely to sustain another full generation of humans, Interstellar finds Matthew McConaughey playing a cross between Richard Dreyfuss' Everyman from Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind and any of the brave astronauts seen in Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff (two more classics whose DNA can be detected in Nolan's film).
Matthew McConaughey stars as “Coop,” basically playing Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff and doing a fine job of it.
His images are arresting and original — but with echoes of "Inception" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" (the movie to which "Interstellar" will inevitably be compared).
In a sly bit of homage, “Interstellar” references not only “2001: A Space Odyssey” but the sequel, “2010.”
Here is a film that provides plenty of 70mm action (cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot the whole thing on film with IMAX cameras he calls “the world’s heaviest Go-Pros”), as well as references both obvious and veiled to such influential sci-fi and/or science touchstones as 2001: A Space Odyssey , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , The Right Stuff and the best speculative fiction of to-the-stars maestro Robert A. Heinlein.
One of the most important settings from the film looks and feels like a shelved concept (wink wink) from Inception , practically a dream sequence but certainly inspired by Stanley Kubick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey ; that film seems to be a blueprint for this movie, substituting similar visuals while even the robots resemble one-by-three-by-nine obelisks.
This is Nolan’s unabashed tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the first movie he ever saw at the age of 8 and the one that made him decide to be a filmmaker (there are homages to that earlier film everywhere).
There is sincerity in the homage paid by its writer-director, Christopher Nolan, to two masterpieces of science-fiction cinema, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The first hour is a prairie home exposition, a soft combination of "The Road" and "The Grapes of Wrath."
Astronauts Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway journey to a distant galaxy on a desperate mission to save humanity in this brainy, heartfelt, gorgeous and flawlessly acted sci-fi epic — inspired by “2001: A Space Odyssey,’’ “Close Encounters of the Third Kind’’ and less likely sources such as “The Grapes of Wrath.’’
Often, Christopher Nolan’s ambitious film, which looks like the Dust Bowl evacuation scenes in “The Grapes of Wrath” one minute and the eerily blank vistas of “2001: A Space Odyssey” the next, also seems to be trying to reconcile competing impulses.
Juggling the ricocheting notions of the theory of relativity, the metaphysical meditations of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the symphonic connectivity of The Tree of Life, and the Dust Bowl doom of The Grapes of Wrath, and filming it with a giant Imax camera - Nolan's Interstellar is a feat not to be taken lightly.
Many of Interstellar's finest moments are familiar; visual allusions to The Grapes of Wrath and Field of Dreams, and of course Kubrick's 2001, including TARS, a robot shaped like a walking monolith, with Bill Irwin wisecracking about ejecting someone through an airlock.
Ambitious and grand in scope, it is, in a way, a modern version of "The Grapes of Wrath" in which the dust bowlers go into outer space rather than to California - with comparable disappointment.
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Employing interviews with seniors looking back à la "Reds," Nolan gives us tales of life as it once was while tipping us off that it has continued, but his actual storytelling leaves us to fill in blanks.
It contains more echoes than we’re accustomed to from Nolan: I caught whiffs of E.T., Alien, Contact, Moon, (obviously) 2001, and (surprisingly) Reds, but those are just the most transparent ones.
(One of Nolan’s more eccentric flourishes involves intercutting the early scenes with interviews with Dust Bowl survivors, who function like the talking heads in Warren Beatty’s Reds .)
(Some of this scene-setting is accomplished via pseudo-documentary interviews with the elderly residents of some more distant future reflecting on their hardscrabble childhoods, which Nolan films like the “witness” segments from Warren Beatty’s “Reds.”)
The ominous sci-fi elements are reminiscent of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs.”
Of course Nolan knows he’s channeling all sorts of heartland-set farm-family movies, including “Field of Dreams” and Shyamalan’s “Signs.”
Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker are obvious influences, but there's also shades of James Cameron's The Abyss and, more unfortunately, M. Night Shyamalan's Signs (which desperately cribbed from Spielberg's broken-family-in-peril blueprint).
His images are arresting and original — but with echoes of "Inception" and "2001: A Space Odyssey" (the movie to which "Interstellar" will inevitably be compared).
The origami reality games that Nolan pioneered in “Inception” get a reprise here when you least expect them, in the form of a tsunami big enough to swallow clouds and a climactic tesseract that nods to both the finale of “2001” and the classic novel “A Wrinkle in Time.”
The strategy, in the film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, has traces of the whiz-bang spectacle of his trilogy of Batman films, but it also is reminiscent of "Memento," Nolan's stark film about an amnesiac traveling back and forth in time within himself, and his elaborate optical illusion "Inception."
Directed by Christopher Nolan (Memento, Inception, the most recent Batman trilogy) and written with his brother and frequent collaborator Jonathan, Interstellar takes place in a near future that harkens back to the recent past — like the 1950s Midwest or maybe the Dust Bowl, but with laptops and drones.
Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker most often credited with making modern blockbuster films that tackle big themes and require grown-up thought (“The Dark Knight,” “Inception”), reaches for his inner Spielberg with “Interstellar.”
It's a device reminiscent of the 'dream within a dream' world of Inception , only here the stakes are so much higher.
At this point it’s almost a reflex action in sci-fi cinema to refer back to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Solaris,” those tragic-elegiac masterpieces of another age.
“Interstellar” aspires to similar realms of ponderous mythos as such predecessors as “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Solaris,” often lingering on astronomical imagery while Hans Zimmer’s funereal, organ-heavy score reinforces the notion that we’re accompanying these explorers on a great pilgrimage.
Typically you end up with beautiful visuals surrounding stories that are either confused or rehashed ("The Fountain", "Solaris", "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence"), but occasionally you end up with something iconic and groundbreaking ("2001: A Space Odyssey", "Blade Runner", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind").
(I won’t spoil them with descriptions; basically, don’t expect Land of the Lost. ) Interstellar excels when it veers into 2001 territory – showing us the inside of a psychedelic wormhole – or Solaris territory – such as when Cooper mourns the lives he’s left behind – or Sunshine territory – by revelling in the death-defying nature of outer-space survival.
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I’ve enjoyed space exploration movies, going all the way back to cheesy movies like “Rocketship X-M” in the 1950s.
(This is no art film, though: the other movie I would bet money inspired Interstellar, at least partly, is the 1979 Disney space adventure The Black Hole.