Interstellar Update June 2023

 

Interstellar 2014

UPDATE 25 June 2023

• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Seen by this director: Tenet, Dunkirk, The Dark knight etc, Inception, The Prestige, Insomnia
• Based on the book: no
• Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Mackenzie Foy, John Lithgow, Timothée Chalamet, David Oyelowo, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, David Gyasi, Casey Affleck, Jessica Chastain, Matt Damon
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Matthew McConaughey – True Detective, The Lincoln Lawyer, EDtv, Amistad, Contact
• John Lithgow – Shakespeare 400 Live BBC, Third Rock from the Sun, The Pelican Brief, Footloose, Terms of Endearment, The World According to Garp
• David Oyelowe– The Butler, The Help, Small Island, The Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, As You Like It, Derailed
• Anne Hathaway– Les Misérables, The Dark Knight Rises, Alice in Wonderland, Rachel Getting Married, Becoming Jane, Brokeback Mountain, Ella Enchanted
• Michael Caine – Widows, Breath
• David Gyasi – Cloud Atlas, The Dark Knight Rises
• Casey Affleck – Gone Baby Gone, Lonesome Jim, Hamlet, Good Will Hunting,
• Jessica Chastain – The Help, The Tree of Life, Coriolanus, Veronica Mars
• Matt Damon - Elysium, Contagion, True Grit, Invictus, The Brothers Grimm, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Bourne Identity, Dogma, Saving Private Ryan, Good Will Hunting
• Why? sci-fi
• Seen: 1 July 2016

      

       It doesn’t start out very interstellar. It starts with an agricultural blight and a family fighting it on their own farm. Widower Cooper lives with his father-in-law Donald and his children Tom and Murphy. They are trying to adapt. The world needs farmers, not engineers and pilots like Cooper.

       The Apollo space missions are said not to have happened, they were just invented propaganda. It was the consumerism of that period that caused the current environmental disaster, but Cooper – who knows the missions took place because he was on some of them – longs for the days of space travel and high tech. He hates being a farmer. And he denies his daughter Murphy’s claim that their house has a poltergeist.

       And then he and Murphy discover that NASA still exists – in hiding.  Old Dr Brand (Michael Caine) says, ‘We are not meant to save the world, we are meant to leave it.’ The plan is to send someone out after the three missions that earlier tried to colonise other planets. Cooper is the chosen pilot to accompany Brand’s daughter Emilia, also a physicist, and two other scientists, on a mission to rescue and awaken those earlier missions. So Cooper blasts off, leaving his weeping children behind.

       In a blippy time warp Cooper and Brand are separated from the other two for a few minutes only to discover that 23 years have passed when they are reunited. Cooper has received messages from his children for 23 years. It’s not possible to answer them.

       Earth continues to die as the space travellers have existential discussions about love vs science. With quotes from ‘Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night’ there is drama and philosophy in this odd mixed bag.

       It’s quite long but it has its moments.

 

Update 25 June 2023

On this second viewing I liked it better. In my first review (see above) I told the story. Now I enjoyed the whole sci fi set-up more and the existential premise of human struggle, human survival. It got a bit lovey-dovey for my tastes but this time it’s definitely 4*. PS I’ve seen the actors in other films since the first review.

 

3 ½ * of 5

 

 

 

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