Film Review: Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014) ★★★★★

Matthew McConaughey delivers another Oscar worthy performance as Cooper

Set in the not-so-distant future, Earth is no longer able to sustain humanity. The crops are failing, armies and government are redundant and dust storms scour the land. In a bid to save the future of human kind, a Professor leading the remains of NASA recruits a retired test pilot and father, Cooper (McConaughey), to head a team of explorers in to a wormhole in the hope of finding a new home for future generations of man. 

Christopher Nolan is well and truly back with this stunning film which breaks down the boundaries of cinema he set previously in Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). The narrative is set in an unspecified time in the future, highlighting a social and political message of global warming and the end of existence through-out. In a time where the moon landings have been announced as hoax and all military and government schemes have been renounced, the future for many is just to survive and gather food. Family man Cooper, is a former NASA test pilot turned farmer living with his father-in-law Donald (John Lithrow) and two children, son Tom and 10 year old Murphy - better known as 'Murph'. Murph, believing that the house is haunted by a ghost, challenges her father to investigate which results in his discovery in a change in gravitational force. In search of the abandoned NASA location, Cooper is reunited with Professor Brand (Michael Caine) who informs him that the world has but a few decades left before extinction - leaving his daughter's generation the last on Earth. Set with the task of saving the planet, Cooper reluctantly sets course for Gargantua, a giant wormhole said to have another universe on the other side. Once there, the team of explorers made up of Brand's daughter (Anne Hathaway), Boyle (Wes Bentley) and Romilly (David Gyasi), must find a resourceful and suitable home for the future of man kind. However, with each hour they visit these potential planets, it is costing them vital fuel and several years back home. 

From the opening scenes, Nolan asserts his undeniable cinematography with stunning establishing shots already providing a glimpse at a uncertain future for Earth but not one too unlike that of our own. it is not before long that audiences are stunned by scenes outside the Earth's atmosphere - visions of Space near impossible to create on screen and yet somehow they are. It is easy to be fully amerced in each individual shot - forgetting that what we are experiencing is not actually real after all. Nolan creates a perfect imitation of physical space, allowing us to feel every jolt and bump, every shiver and every confining or vast extension. 

Challenged with Earth's future in his hands, McConaughey offers an utterly believable and heartbreaking turmoil through his character. In choosing between staying with his family who beg him not to leave, he faces the tough decision of knowing whether they will survive along with the future generations. Having left Earth, his son and daughter have grown in to their thirties and are still clasping on to the hope that their father will return. We soon learn that not all is as it seems and, in true Nolan style, the narrative its turned on it's head not just once but several times. So much so that it is near-on impossible to explore this without giving away the entire plot! 

The main themes explored in the film are centred on those that define us as human. A need to survive, love; this is made vocal to us by Brand's character (Hathaway) explaining that love knows no bounds, it is the one exception of  gravity, time and space and travels through any vacuum. Fear, in this case that of the future generations which is becoming a more real fear in our own society as global warming theories are becoming more and more relevant and impossible to ignorable. Hope, a continuing theme throughout that Cooper will be reunited with his family or even to save the Earth's occupants at the very least. A winning combination on the road to Oscar winning success. A true feature of a Nolan film is its ability to make you feel. Whether it be to build adrenaline, reduce to tears or warm the heart. This comes as a result of Interstellar's truly exceptional cinematography, outstanding writing and narrative which presented an in-depth understanding and research of it's subject and an award-winning, star studded cast of the most bold actors in Hollywood. And so then, because I could write about this film forever...Interstellar gets a Sophie star rating of 5 out of 5 stars. An outstanding piece of cinema which will set the standard for films to come and asserts Nolan as one of the greatest directors of our generation. I can not wait to see this clean up at this years Academy Awards. 

Until next time movie fans,