Interstellar

 NOTE:  This is a candid review with contributions from Shri Ram, who has a penchant for sci-fi movies.

Okay, call it my impertinence or my brutal honesty, Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” literally forced me to say “Whaaaaaaaaaa, what the hell?” at least 20 times in a span of 169 minutes. Interstellar talks about serious stuff – quantum mechanics coupled with theory of general relativity to find a feasible solution for gravitational equation and many such things which you do not comprehend.

Here’s my take on this movie in few points. Here we go –

1. Christopher Nolan, what were you thinking? Why can’t you limit yourself to our solar system and experiment with it? Why are you going to some other galaxy-something that seems so “far-fetched”?

2. Did I just come out of a movie which recited and presented a research paper of a Harvard astro-physics graduate- with extra emphasis on amazing visual effects and haunting music? Did we literally combine a “Research paper+VFX+Hans Zimmer”?

3. And seriously- why is the past, present and future all messed up in the beginning? My brain does not have the capability to map all these three phases of a timeline in fraction of a second.

4. We had a “Black hole” and now we have a “Worm hole”. What next? Polo?

5. In context to the “hibernation” concept- How can you just undermine the teachings of biology to strategically place Dr Mann on Mann’s planet? Did we just mix zoology with anatomy?

6. They say, if you cannot convince then confuse. Was that the purpose behind the  dimensional circus that you tried to convince us with? A two dimension in five dimension  Tesseract? Heyyy! I need an eight dimensional cerebrum in a ten dimension skull to  understand that logic of yours.

7. Memories of the past and superhuman of the future are helping the present  become the future. Like, why is this movie not stable? It’s like an infinite loop-what if we fail in between?

8. This movie runs neither in one timeline nor on one planet. Forget planet- we keep switching in between two galaxies!

Apologies if my hatred has hurt your feelings. Though I found the foundation of this movie lackluster, I do have a few words of praise for it.

1. Nolan succeeds in breaking all the forbidden barriers of our imagination and transcends us through a dimension of space-time-gravity and yet keeps us rooted by the emotional gravity of the relationship between a father and daughter. Time varies, planets vary, people vary, galaxies vary- yet the unshakable love between a father and his daughter remains constant, surpassing the expanse of the universe.

2. Who can forget the VFX? A special mention to the company Double Negative  which is behind the awesome VFX of this movie. I mean, I cannot even fathom the amount of hard work that has gone into the VFX part in order to make the visual experience a treat to the viewers. A credible effort nicely furnished by perfection and care. Every scientific detail is well-handled and projected beautifully – for instance just look at that worm hole!

3. Did anyone observe the peculiar design of the robots-“TARS” and “CASE”? Our brain is channelized to see a robot that looks like “Wall-E” but in this movie, “TARS” has a quadrilateral shape! The robot’s movement is fluid and well coordinated with its shape.

4. Interstellar shows us that progress in science is a yardstick for mankind. We are breaking out of the clutches of this rudimentary comprehension and stepping into a higher cosmic awareness. This is a pursuit of self-awareness. If self-awareness is what counts, leaving earth is probably worth it.

5. Last but not the least, actual science is rooted in the fabric of the movie. Every scientific calculation is real and factual. Nolan’s strategy for the course of the movie may be a fickle affair, but the scientific calculation is no work of fiction. Such equations actually exist, and yes, such people actually exist- hope I never get to meet one.

Overall, this movie is a colossal loss with any stretch of my logic, yet it manages to garner visual and auditory appeal. The music composed by Hans Zimmer is just so well fitting, that it lingers in your mind throughout the movie.

Maybe next time, Nolan should restrict his imagination and try not to play with a genre which is too complex to understand. As they say, too many cooks spoil the broth. Too many complexities, spoil the fun!