Review: Interstellar

Directed by Christopher Nolan
Written by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan
Starring Matthew McConaughey (Cooper), Anne Hathaway (Brand), and Jessica Chastain (Murph)
Cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema
Edited by Lee Smith
Released in 2014

Kubrick’s interstellar opus has a modern reputation as challenging and difficult sci-fi. Despite that, it’s entirely possible, and okay, to enjoy the film on a base level as spectacle. Gawking at the special effects Douglas Trumbull and his crack team came up with is immensely enjoyable. They range from detailed costumes (the apes), elaborate sets and models (the futuristic vessels and bases), and the hallucinogenic (the disorientating slit-scan photography). The effects have such a great physical presence and look so detailed, that they surpass anything the CGI age has offered up so far. At times, 2001 feels less like a film and more like a vision of the future, sent backwards in time, and beamed directly into the brain. Another slight misconception about 2001 is its status as the premiere head movie. This is no doubt due to the murmurings that audience members regularly dropped acid during 2001’s first screenings. I’ve never been convinced that this was a regular occurrence. The drug use probably occurred a few times and was then magnified through gossip. The “Dawn of Man” and the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” sections contain the right ingredients for “the ultimate trip” (to quote one of the film’s posters). However, the moon-base and Discovery One portions, which make up the majority of the runtime, are detail-oriented and process-driven. As soon as HAL begins to malfunction, the action changes to that of a basic survival story. Not exactly the most LSD-friendly material. 

All that being said, if 2001 were just a simple tale wedded to insane spectacle, I doubt its critical cache would have lasted this long. The advanced techniques are used to get across complex ideas related to humanity and technology.  Most famous is the match cut from an ape’s bone flying up in the air to a futuristic space station. In a single juxtaposition, Kubrick evocatively and immediately links the ape’s brand new knowledge of weaponry to all of scientific progress. Kubrick identifies the inherent possible danger of new tech and the sometimes sinister motivation behind its development. A kind of post-human point of view is revealed when spinning space stations, ironically scored to balletic classical music, are intercut with a stewardess stumbling down a hallway and a man snoozing in zero g. The message? In the future, glimmering titans of metal will be more graceful than us Homo sapiens. The incongruity between the banality of the space travelers and the grandeur of their surrounding vistas sneaks in a bit of visual humor. The stewardess looks she stepped off a Pan Am flight from the 60’s, Dr. Floyd has an everyday conversation with his daughter while the goddamn Earth is spinning right outside the window, and the chatter between him and his colleagues sounds like it was taken from a 50’s commercial.

HAL is the sun around which 2001’s planetary themes orbit. Commonly, the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer is seen as more human than the astronauts that look over him (or are looked over by him). While Bowman and Poole’s demeanor is comically sedate, I can’t fully agree with this conclusion. HAL is nothing but a red dot, a monotone voice, and a small amount of flicker. So much of human communication involves reading facial cues, body language, and subtle vocal inflections that it is nigh impossible to determine HAL’s man-or-machine status. The duel that eventually develops between HAL and Bowman sparks all kinds of interesting moral quandaries. HAL does not start killing off the crew until Bowman and Poole make it clear they intend to shut him down (note that self-preservation is a universal signifier of life). On the other side, Bowman’s strongest emotional beat comes from responding to HAL’s murder attempts. Bowman doesn’t feel real until he’s in that red-tinted control room, wrenching out HAL’s intelligence core, and breathing and sweating like a madman. If you’re inclined towards pessimism, you could encapsulate two significant parts of the film, separated by millions of years of progress, as two entities trying to kill each other.

A Space Odyssey captures all of the complex attitudes people have about extraterrestrial flight, technological advancement, the vastness of the universe, and our tiny place within it. Plenty of films have explored different elements contained within its 2 ½ hours. Star Wars combined the excitement of old serials and pulp stories to a sci-fi setting and perfectly captured the wonder of a gigantic universe. Alien, with its terrifying bio-mechanical sexual imagery, made visceral the sheer terror of encountering the unknown. Blade Runner explored the hazy line between man and machine using a messy, ambiguous narrative. The Terminator followed common thriller rules to spin a tale of mankind being wiped out by its own creations. All of these have their merits, and I enjoy all of them, but none surpass 2001. Simultaneously grand and steeped in minutiae, it is one of the few pieces of cinema whose world seems to exist beyond the frame of the camera. It is so awesome in scope and brimming with ideas that turning off your brain and picking apart every second of footage are equally satisfying.