THERE’S much brouhaha and conjecture going on about how Christopher Nolan’s 169-minute futurist astrophysical space-travel climate-change fantasy polemic will fare at the next Academy Awards.
Leading the cast, Matthew McConaughey is Cooper, widowed former spacecraft pilot turned corn farmer.
Late in the 21st century, when Earth is beset by drought, famine, land deterioration and pessimism, Cooper and his whizkid daughter, Murphy, solve a coded message directing them to the underground base where NASA engineers led by Prof Brand (Michael Caine) have built a spacecraft capable of transiting a space wormhole to search for planets able to sustain human life. Brand’s scientist daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway) will do the necessary studies.
Through the wormhole, one hour in the spacecraft equates to seven years on Earth where Murphy, raised by her grandfather, also becomes a scientist, a role for Jessica Chastain whose participation enhances whatever film she’s in.
What I found unacceptable about “Interstellar” was the same as I find objectionable in any film purporting to break free of Earth’s bounds. It suspends or even repeals a number of immutable physical laws. I’m pessimistic about the probability of humankind ever reaching and surviving on another planet. We must make the best of the one we’ve got.
In 1968, with “2001: A Space Odyssey” Stanley Kubrick came closer to obeying those laws than any film has so far achieved. In “Interstellar”, the doppelganger for Kubrick’s supercomputer Hal is TARS, smarter, more interactive, more mobile, more user friendly, than Hal. But not necessarily an Oscar winner!
At all cinemas
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