Film Review: Interstellar (12A) (U.S.A./U.K. 2014) (Director: Christopher Nolan), The Cameo Cinema Screen One, Edinburgh, Saturday 08.11.2014 15:30

This is a film I was looking forward to due to how impressed I was by Nolan's 'Dark Knight Trilogy' (2005 - 2012) & 'Inception' (2010). A director who could do epic with intelligence. 

Proper paid critics have said that this is a flawed film and it most certainly is. The film is slightly shy of 3 hours, and although it does not drag, they could have certainly lost a chunk of minutes without damaging the film, and it may have even improved it. 

Mark Kermode has said that comparisons to '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968) are lazy, whether this is the case or not, before the film began there was a trailer for 2001 which did not help with keeping the films separate in the mind. That trailer reminded of the brilliant use of music in 2001. In Interstellar the Hanz Zimmer music was okay though there are scenes where characters appear to be saying things quite important to the plot though it is impossible to make out what they are saying due to the music being so high in the sound mix. This is an error that is hard to understand from a filmmaker who is regarded as being meticulous with details. One of the images that is recognisable from 2001 is the black obelisk, Interstellar has robots who when at rest look suspiciously similar. 

Both films deal with the complex ideas of relativity, though I have to say that 2001 presents it's ideas in a manner that is far simpler, clearer and easier to understand (and by this may actually be seen as quite profound). Interstellar resulted in one positive, it made me realise how much respect I have for 2001. I would say that the story of Interstellar is made overly complex to a point that parts of the film become impenetrable. Parts of the dialogue are clunky and jar.

After the film I also recalled parallels with 'The Tree Of Life' (2011), in terms of it's visual grandeur and scale. With 'The Tree Of Shite' (as I like to call it), I was loosing the will too live in some of it's ridiculously slow and impenetrable passages. In comparison Interstellar is a remarkable achievement, though this only goes to support, in my mind, how bad a film The Tree Of Life is. Neither Interstellar or The Tree of Life are great.

Further film reference is that Interstellar explains worm holes in exactly the same manner as 'Event Horizon' (1997). Now it could be that 'the explaining' is the easiest way to convey the complexity of worm holes, though having noticed the similarities to 2001, I feel I had become susceptible to noticing other film connections.          

Despite the rant above, Interstellar did hold my interest, and I found it visually quite remarkable with there being scenes where I cannot begin to comprehend how they were achieved (the filming used no green screen, and it was all done so that what the characters see in scenes is what the actors were seeing while filming). 

Regrettably I don't feel I can recommend this to others. If it were 90 minutes, perhaps I would more readily encourage people to take a punt and see what they think, though I can't justify encouraging others to waste three hours of their lives. 

Rating: 06/10 (for visuals alone).