Award Season Series - “Interstellar” (2014)

The next selection of my award season review series is a science fiction film released in 2014. This film has been nominated for quite a few awards and is honestly one of the most emotional films I have ever seen. For this review, I will be revealing my thoughts on the Christopher Nolan film “Interstellar.”

In Earth’s future, a global crop blight and second Dust Bowl are slowly rendering the planet uninhabitable. Professor Brand, a brilliant NASA physicist, is working on plans to save mankind by transporting Earth’s population to a new home via a wormhole.

But, first, Brand must send former NASA pilot Cooper and a team of researchers through the wormhole and across the galaxy to find out which of three planets could be mankind’s new home.

“Interstellar” is, without a doubt, one of the best Christopher Nolan-directed films I have seen. The 2014 film delivers a lot of breathtaking visuals, emotional themes of love and sacrifice and an incredible musical score. While it has received a somewhat divisive initial response from audiences due to its complex and convoluted plot, the film’s popularity has steadily grown.

This 2014 film has some of the most captivating visuals I have ever seen. The breathtaking depictions of space, including the scientifically accurate rendering of the black hole and the wormhole, is truly incredible.

There’s a rather terse, yet visually astounding sequence where the researchers and Cooper land on a planet completely filled with water and the planet features some colossal, ominous tidal waves. There’s also another incredible visual sequence depicting the Tesseract, a multidimensional space where Cooper experiences time as a physical dimension, allowing him to interact with past moments.

The father/daughter plot in the film is most definitely one of the major highlights that “Interstellar” features and this plot delivers some of the most emotional moments in the film. There’s a scene where Cooper experiences 23 years of missed moments in one saved video (due to the massive time changes on one of the planets), which leads Cooper to having a major emotional breakdown. And I’ll admit this scene gets me every

time.

There’s also another emotional moment in this film that also gets me with almost every viewing. During Cooper’s goodbye drive where he has his final moments with his family before leaving Earth, he checks under a blanket where his daughter usually hides, just to see if she’s there. This scene, combined with the amazingly powerful score, can get really emotional.

“Interstellar” is a critically acclaimed sci-fi epic praised for its ambitious blend of hard science and profound emotion, centering on the daughter/daughter bond between Cooper and Murph, as humanity seeks a new home, while also exploring themes of love, survival, time, and hope against existential threats. In the decade since its release, ‘Interstellar” has moved from being a divisive blockbuster to a solidified modern classic.

“Interstellar” won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was also nominated for Original Score, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Production Design. The 2014 film was also part of the AFI list of the Top Films of the Year (2014).

Trivia: The method of space travel in this film is based on physicist Dr. Kip Thorne’s works, which were also the basis for the method of space travel in Carl Sagen’s novel “Contact,” and the resulting film adaptation of the same name. The apocalyptic Earth setting in this film is inspired by the Dust Bowl disaster that took place in the central areas of the US and Canada during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LqzF5WauAw

• Early in pre-production, Dr. Kip Thorne laid down two guidelines to strictly follow: nothing would violate established physical laws, and that all the wild speculations would spring from science, and not from the creative mind of a screenwriter. Writer, Producer, and Director Sir Christopher Nolan accepted these terms, as long as they did not get in the way of the making of the movie. That did not prevent clashes, though; at one point Thorne spent two weeks talking Nolan out of an idea about travelling faster than light.

• For a cornfield scene, Sir Christopher Nolan sought to grow five hundred acres of corn, which he learned was feasible from his producing of Man of Steel (2013). The corn was then sold, and actually made a profit.

• The method of space travel in this movie was based on physicist Dr. Kip Thorne's works, which were also the basis for the method of space travel in Carl Sagan's novel "Contact", and the resulting movie adaptation, Contact (1997). Matthew McConaughey starred in both movies.

• Steven Spielberg, who was attached to direct this movie in 2006, and hired Jonathan Nolan to write the screenplay, chose other projects instead. In 2012, after Spielberg's departure, Jonathan Nolan suggested the project to his brother Sir Christopher Nolan.

• The majority of shots of the robot TARS were not computer generated. Rather, TARS was a practical puppet controlled and voiced on-set by Bill Irwin, who was then digitally erased from the movie. Irwin also puppeteered the robot CASE, but in that instance, had his voice dubbed over by Josh Stewart.

• The giant dust clouds were created on-location, using large fans to blow cellulose-based synthetic dust through the air.

• The Wormhole was placed near Saturn as a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), because Stanley Kubrick originally planned for part of that movie to take place at Saturn, which was also the story line of Arthur C. Clarke's novel. Unfortunately, as visual effects technology wasn't able to make Saturn's rings at that time, he changed it to Jupiter.

• The "hyper-sleep" chambers place the astronauts' bodies in a cold liquid, as seen after they wake up, when they are covered in blankets or thermal blankets. This is likely a practical reference to studies that have shown a state of hibernation can be achieved in the human body by causing hypothermia. This technology has been used to treat brain damage, and has been proposed as a viable means of keeping people with severe injuries alive after accidents, while they are transported to medical facilities, where they can be treated by specialists.

• The apocalyptic Earth setting in this movie is inspired by the Dust Bowl disaster that took place in the central areas of the United States and Canada during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

• In Sir Christopher Nolan's opinion, the score composed by Hans Zimmer is the strongest and most powerful one he has created so far.