The premise is nothing new. The world is ravaged by war perhaps and food is scarce. Agriculture and survival is the main focus of the people on Earth. We then shift camp to some farm in the US where wheat and other crops are destroyed save for Corn. Mankind is at the threshold of existence. No light is thrown on the reason for this scarcity. But that really doesn't matter here. Interstellar is not about what happens on Earth but about the future without it. As the hero says "Mankind began on Earth but it doesn't have to die there".
The visuals of IS has a lot in common with Gravity. Stark scenes of harsh sunlight reflecting off of space stations set against the gorgeous background of planets and and stars, Icy terrains , mountain tall waves and the narrow, dull interiors of a spaceship that reminds us of Gravity. The scene where Matt Damon is blown off a spaceship and the transition from the screaming wind when the airlock breaks to the silence that depicts the fact that he is now into space where sound cannot travel is all handled wonderfully. Visuals were always a strong point of Nolan's movie and IS spares no expense in this regard. Those close up shots with gorgeous lighting, the wonderful shots of planets makes you want to watch IS many times over in a cinema. And Nolan in his typical "fuck the norm" fashion shot it in regular 2D effectively doing away with the eye pain inducing gimmicks( Again Nolan is one of the few directors along with Tarantino who still shots his movies in film).
Nolan juxtaposes the survival of the species with the emotions between individuals. Characters are not just skin deep but have intentions and emotions that often conflict with their responsibilities. Matthew McConaughey wants to finish off the mission quickly so that he can get back to his daughter, Matt Damon is haunted by the ghost of aloofness and Jessica Chastain is distraught at her father for leaving her yet desperate to get back together with him. It is a soulful tale full of emotions although it can be a bit draggy at times.
The science team seems to have done their homework very well. The shot of matter swiveling around a super massive black hole is said to have been rendered with the help of proper scientific equations and took around 800 TB of data to calculate. I am reminded of George Clooney's dialogue in Gravity "Cant beat the view".
The movie Looper has a good albeit tough to understand explanation of Time Travel and its consequences. Bruce Willis travels back in time and affects the past and events that are changed in the ripple causes him to lose previous memories and "remember" the new ones as they are formed. In IS though it is told that humans have transcended into higher dimensions that allow them to travel through time like they travel through space and communicate with 3 dimensional human civilization using gravity. They create the wormhole through which humans can travel to another galaxy to resettle and assist the hero and his daughter to derive the equations to manipulate gravity to launch mankind en masse into space. Here is where a conundrum presents itself. How could humans help out their past survive an apocalypse in the past if they do not have a way to survive it without help from the future in the first place ?? Someone somewhere might have an explanation and I reserve the right to change my opinion when I get a better explanation. This is a major chink in the armor of Interstellar, which although not fatal is seriously distracting as one cannot help but notice this after it has been pointed out.
Summing it up, IS is "The Turn" in the 3 parts of a magic trick, where the director seems to showcase something wonderfully impossible and delightful at the same time. 165 million dollars have gone into making this visual extravaganza. "The Prestige" is the storyline, the one that tells that this a human story, bringing us back to the ground. I wouldn't want to give this movie a rating. Movies are very personal and cannot be reviewed objectively. Apart from its lack of explanation of the time travel part and the rather longish (3 hrs) screenplay Interstellar is just what is expected of a director of Nolan's caliber.
