Interstellar by Christopher Nolan, the new review of the film ten years later

Ten years ago, I went to the only real IMAX theater in New York City and sat at the press preview of Interstellarthe highly anticipated first film by Christopher Nolanafter freeing himself from the chains of Batman. (To be honest, between one Batman and another he had managed to achieve Inception). Interstellar promised to be a dizzying journey and enveloping through the cosmosa drama-thriller on black holestime and – somehow, in the midst of all that immensity – on family. I was thrilled.

But as the film unfolded, the disappointment grew. Sure, the images were impressive. The Morse Code soundtrack by Hans Zimmerwith its deep rumbles and pipe organ crescendos, was a marvel. And the acting, on the part of Matthew McConaughey And Anne Hathaway and the rising movie star Jessica Chastainit was solid. But Nolan’s reasoning and emotional argument were weak, inconsistent. The film’s conclusions seemed banal. Interstellar I didn’t like it and wrote it in my review. (Which didn’t shock anyone online.)

In the years since, I have often been asked if there was a review I regretted, if I ever thought I had misjudged a film. Of course there are myriad examples I could point to, but the one I cited most often was Interstellar. Because, when I watched the film again at home in 2016 or so, it seemed smoother, breathed better, without the anticipatory pressure of the press preview weighing on it. His somewhat corny talk about love was less problematic, more easily compensated for by Nolan’s extraordinary vision of relativityon thewide and frightening abyss of space. I liked the film and regret writing such a harsh review.

So when the opportunity arose to see the film again in the same theater where I first saw it, almost exactly a decade later, I jumped at the chance. This week Interstellar was successfully revived for the anniversary and the IMAX screening was virtually sold out. Given my repentance over the years, I expected to be confirmed as a diehard by this afternoon.

Indeed, the early stages of Nolan’s 169-minute film are gripping: a cupa image of the Earth’s near futurein which humanity is slowly dying along with hope. We intensely feel the weight of the decisionheroic Cooper pilot to leave behind his family, including his youngest daughter, Murph. And then there’s the immense awe of Cooper and his crew as they launch into space, pushed inexorably towards ruin or the salvation. It’s one great showarguably Nolan’s most overtly sentimental work to date. The scene in which Cooper, having lost years of Earth time to relativity, watches video messages sent by his son as he grows up, addresses a truly heartbreakinga manifestation of what I assume is common parental anxiety: How much of my child’s life am I missing out on while I’m out working, trying to support and improve their lives?

Well, this is the theme of much of InterstellarRight? Nolan uses a epic scale to confront and atone for all the time he had to spend away from his family while working on his massive productions. There’s something about it Sweet (even if a little self-congratulatory) in this one allegory: The blockbuster archwizard who reflects on the personal cost of all that success.

And, of course, the film is a reaction to ours increasingly dark realityas the climate transforms into something increasingly inhospitable to animal life. Ten years on, things certainly haven’t improved, and so the environmentalist warning Of Interstellar resonates even more powerfully.

However, as the film enters its final two acts – the decision to travel to the planet frozen of Doctor Mann and the struggle to escape from it – my old aversion to Interstellar has come back to be heard. The Hathaway’s monologue about love as a measurable force in the universe it is so exaggerated and, dare I say, senseless, that it compromises the film’s otherwise lucid and thought-provoking philosophy. And then Nolan reduces the film to one again family historylinking their narrative to that of the entire human species. I suppose this choice is narratively necessary, but it also makes the heroes of Interstellar so special that the center of the universe it is literally found in Murph’s childhood bedroom.

Once again, when faced with certain things I rolled my eyes; maybe ten years ago I wasn’t wrong after all. But then, well, the film’s tail began, in which Cooper is somehow rescued from the ark of humanity and reunited with his now elderly and dying daughter. I cried for perhaps the last ten minutes of the film, overwhelmed by the representation of Interstellar of a link that echoes and endures through many decades, back and forth. We don’t need all the talk about love to feel the importance of these final moments; they speak clearly and loudly to themselves.

In 2014 I hadn’t been as moved by this one cosmic reunion. What has changed, of course, is that time has passed. Now, a decade closer to the end of things, I understand more painfully what Nolan was pondering. The old adage that time accelerates with age is, in fact, terribly true, and Interstellar he realizes it in sensationally astonishing dimensions.

It is Nolan’s most acute idea, which I would have liked to let emerge and penetrate in a more natural way. That said, I think if you come away from a three-hour space movie with tear-stained cheeks, the job was probably done pretty well.