Movie Review: Interstellar

Photosource: http://www.wired.com/2014/09/interstellar-app/

Not a fan of Sci-fi flicks usually, but space travel has always fascinated me, especially when this movie boosted a rather "chilling" travel into space. The strong cast of Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Matt Damon and Wes Bentley was a bonus that made me decide that spending the SGD$8.50 to catch Interstellar was well worth it.

What began as a homely start of family scenes and siblings' squabbles in Cooper (Matthew M)'s household was really a display of the sad state that planet Earth might become in the future - where resources are scarce and highly intelligent people have to resort to farming for livelihood.

Cooper's 10 year old daughter, Murphy, had her own inklings of the supernatural - or what she believed to be "ghosts" communicating with her beyond her massive book shelf. It was also this "ghostly apparition" one day that led Cooper back to a covert NASA facility where he re-began his adventure as a former pilot / engineer with NASA.

The movie continues to take us through the detailed planning of a group of specialists who would travel into space to discover and stake out new planets to save remaining Earthlings since Earth was dying and no longer fit for survival.

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Interstellar also charters the reality of space travel beautifully for its viewers - the tumultous journey into space, the fear and uncertainty, and then we were treated to gorgeous midnight skies and seemingly unearthly lights of unknown galaxies out there.

The characters also had to traverse the enigmatic black WormHole despite their fears, brace giant waves of the hostile planet Gargantua, and withstand the effects of massive time difference due to gravitional pull. There were some moments that brought jolts, induced some heart-wrenching moments and instilled worry in the audience as we follow their adventures and risks closely. Along the way, some characters did not survive, atypical of such movies.

There were also misunderstandings between Conner and his family (Murphy especially) who thought he had selfishly abandoned them to this dying planet. There had also been betrayals and ugly truths revealed between the inter-NASA parties as the space travellers fought for survival on unknown planets and battling each other as well.

Gratification came towards the later part of the 168 minutes long movie, when enlightenment finally dawned upon Murphy that her dad (Cooper) had not really left them all this while, and she found out the identidy of her "ghost" and the power of the differerent dimensions. This helped her to save the earth.

The reconciliation between father and daughter was an interesting twist in which he looked much younger than her on her deathbed surrounded by a large family of her own - their final meeting before he returned to look for Amelia Brand (by Anne Hathaway) whom he had left on another planet so she could be spared the gravitional pull.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie - the pacing was right; and other than the beautifully projected space whose real face I may never learn of, the movie kept close to its reality factor. The quirky twists were also commendable, adding bites to an otherwise predictable movie. Well done, Nolan.