Alrite, so here’s my take on Nolan’s Interstellar..very audacious..but in true spirit of the movie, I wanted to push the boundaries…. To begin with, the plot is simple. Set in the near future, Earth is no longer habitable, and so NASA sends in a team of astronauts through a wormhole to distant galaxies to find candidate planets for colonizing. Cut to a few years, the hero, the ex-astronaut and his daughter literally stumble upon an obscure facility in the middle of corn fields..which is NASA. Once in, the Professor played very subtly by Michael Caine puts the hero –Cooper, his daughter –Ann Hathaway, and two other people on a spaceship to explore further 3 possible candidate planets..based on the messages sent by the earlier team of astronauts. This is when the movie picks some pace…and the group of four start exploring the planets. One team member dies on the first planet, and with limited resources, and TIME, the team needs to decide on ONE planet they should explore. This is when the scientist heroine makes a judgment stating that LOVE can traverse space-time, and that they should explore the planet on which her boyfriend (one of the astronauts from the earlier mission..and surprise..played by Matt Damon) is! Cut to the 2nd planet where they resurrect Matt Damon from Hibernation (and its about 24 earth years from the time these people have started their journey)..a few conflicts ,and after another team member gets killed, the team realizes that Damon has been sending false reports about the habitability (??) of the planet..his only intention was to get rescued. An audacious docking of the space module with the mother ship goes wrong, and Damon gets killed too! Now its up to the Hero, Heroine, and a robot to decide if they want to explore the 3rd planet, inspite of the limited resources, and after 124 earth years have passed! They decide to give it one last shot..with the heroine landing on the planet, and the hero, and the robot getting sucked into a blackhole abetting this planet. (and this is exactly where I kinda lose track of the movie)…I think the hero emerges on the other side of the blackhole..travels back through the wormhole, and ends up on a space colony somewhere near Saturn that is now inhabited by earthlings. He meets his very old daughter, but decides to head back to space (and back in time) to the heroine who is stranded on the 3rd candidate planet! Nolan brilliantly plays with the concept of time.. he has done it in Inception, and now in Interstellar..firmly establishing that Time is RELATIVE! He really brings alive TIME as a “physical”..tangible dimension..especially in the part where the hero falls through the blackhole and is at a point in time in the past where he is leaving his daughter to go on this mission. For Non-Science people who have always wondered at the concept of Time, and how do u “see” time… this episode is fascinating. The movie essentially moves at two levels..one which talks about the concepts of Time and Space..how they are merged in conditions of extreme gravitational force, and how do wormholes facilitate interstellar travel (again a fascinating episode where the whole space looks tweaked ..something like one of those reflections in the funny mirrors that u see in the local fairs)… so here, the audience literally experience what it feels like when space and time get tweaked! Brilliantly conceptualized graphically but that’s it.. At the second level is the human aspect, the bond between the father and the daughter…a father and the son…love which is unflappable through the passage of time (124 years and counting!!!)… The movie though has some issues…the most important one is who actually put the wormhole near Saturn for earthlings to explore other planets… given that earth is less than a speck of dust in this universe, are we really worth the effort! The movie just says “THEY” have put the wormhole… the other question is that of humans inhabiting a space colony somewhere near Saturn…if we had the capability to build a space colony..why bother with the whole deal of going through wormholes and finding new planets! The third one, and which to me is the most important thing..is that somehow Nolan holds back the visual narration of the movie! Take the case of Jurassic Park …a very complicated plot (given that back in the 90s very few people had a grasp of DNA..genetics)..a simple 2D graphic shows how the dino DNA is extracted, placed in Frogs, and fertilized.voila..Dinos brought back from extinction! Similar is the case with another classic AVATAR… that movie had a very deep philosophy which is co-existence and reconciling with nature… brought to the celluloid beautifully! The point is with Cameron and Speilberg, they simplified the complex plots, and added stunning visual narrations…this probably achieves two things..brings in more audience to the theatres…even those with not so high IQs and who don’t want to strain their grey matter; and two..very easily opens the plot threadbare! I have to go back to my Professor who always says…If I see a picture..I know you are clear about what u r talking about in your paper!...similar analogy perhaps! So…with more stunning visuals (which brings in more clarity to the simplified plot)… the movie would have been a classic! (would strongly recommend Danny Boyle’s Sunshine and you know what I am talking about…) The bottom line…as always..grab the diet coke..nachos..popcorn..n head out to the movie..Bon Weekend!
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 13:02:22 +0000