Interstellar: Movie Review

2014, 16+ on Amazon, PG-13 on IMDb 

This movie is eye-candy for my physics-undergrad heart, when I learned the basics of modelling astronomical phenomena.

Interstellar is a physicist’s dream come true—to pour millions of the entertainment industry’s dollars into real-life visual modelling of a black hole and a wormhole. In fact, one of its executive producers was a theoretical physicist. One reason I pursued physics was the wonder awoken by glimpsing the beauty of phenomena we only indirectly experience by virtue of effect. 

It’s not just me enjoying access to the shiver-inducing imagery: this film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Watch on a big screen with surround sound. 

Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a retired NASA test-pilot-turned-farmer. Through a series of mysterious circumstances starting with “the ghost” in the family’s old farmhouse (not as creepy as it sounds), Cooper ends up re-recruited as an astronaut to save the world, for which he must leave behind his young daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy of The Nutcracker and the Four Realms), and son, Tom (Timothée Chalamet of Dune and Wonka). 

Several other big-name actors jump into the action: Anne Hathaway as Dr. Amelia Brand, McConaughey’s costar; Michael Caine as Professor John Brand, a NASA scientist; and Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on a planet.  

The initial farm setting is dead simple—shot in Alberta, Canada, including Okotoks and Lethbridge—but the music, dialogue and movie magic starkly sketch Earth’s ominous plight through one family’s daily struggles. You don’t have to leave the farm to feel the menace of a global blight threatening the world’s entire food supply. 

Hans Zimmer hits dead centre on the production goal of an unusual musical score that sets the story miles apart from other contemporary sci-fi. The music is so unique I can never quite remember what it sounded like a week or two later, making me want to watch the movie again. 

And the robots: at first the TARS units seem very so-seen-it-already, 2001: A Space Odyssey’s-HAL-esque, but then they move and make jokes in such varied environments and with such dexterity that you know their creators are taunting us. “Hah, didn’t see that coming, did you?!” 

Director Christopher Nolan (Inception) keeps the story moving at a steady pace that reminds me of the slow development in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but Interstellar is more coherent. The story’s end is reminiscent of HG Wells’ novel The Sleeper Awakes, where someone wakes in a future world, but this is the beginning of redemption for Cooper rather than the chaos unleashed in Wells’s story.  

The big twist is also the reveal of who ‘they’ and ‘the ghost’ are. The answer is ridiculously coherent, which is sometimes lacking in the trade-off for wonder in sci-fi. 

In the physics department where I studied, we were always philosophizing—apparently physics and math just beg for metaphysical discussions. And so it was a lovely touch that Interstellar, by acting as a physics department for its viewers, invites philosophical questions such as: “You don’t think nature can be evil?” and other questions about love and space travel and time that play out with real consequences in the plot and character arcs. 

The theme of regret develops and persists until it collides with revelation and healing and sacrificial love, personally and globally, and tumbles beautifully to resolution.  

Surprisingly, I think IMDb’s PG-13 rating is just fine. Yes, there’s language and violence. The big special effects are very realistic and can be overwhelming. But there’s no sexuality and a lot of worthwhile deep thinking. I would show it to my 13-year-old.  

Review written by: Jazmine Lawrence, Captain (Retired, RCAF), BSc Honours Physics, MA (Theology) student, future sci-fi author