Well, my epically bad year for movies didn't improve this weekend. Interstellar arrived, with a deafeningmore on that laterthud, causing me to scratch my head when I wasn't catching my nap. (The fellow to my right reportedly chuckled at my snoring. And during the early film, not an omen for a good review.)
So what went wrong here?
The director Christopher Nolan made this space epic, of course, knowing he would be compared to the man who many regard as his era's greatest director, Stanley Kubrick, who directed 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Knowing that, Nolan also knew what many viewers found missing in 2001. Many viewers insisted that Kubrick's movie had no more heart than Hal, the sociopathic robot that Anthony Hopkins used as his model for Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of The Lambs.
To give his movie heart, Nolan chose the theme of a father-daughter relationship and the bigger message that love matters more than matter. At one point, the beautiful physicist played by Anne Hathawayimperfectly, to many ears and eyes lip syncs this by saying that love might be a force that transcends time. (Her stilted dialogue sounded like Caroline Sessions in my fifth grade play. I later read Hathaway took seven months just to get into her character. No wonder; who is her character?)
So Nolan sends Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) into space reluctantly, away from his young daughter Murphy who insists he not go. Once out there, Cooper feels tormented by her absence when his head isnt ringing from the We-Gotta-Win-That-Oscar score composedapparently over the din of jackhammers outside his studioby Hans Zimmer. (At one point, I felt like asking my companion what one of the actors said, but decided that she would answer something like B, C, C sharp, B flatand lots of organ music.)Â
At long last, however80 years and almost three hours of filmCooper and his daughter reunite in the films emotional climax.
And what happens?
He and his now-aged daughter catch up on those 80 years by chatting for maybe two minutes. And then she insists "no parent should watch his child die" and that he should return to the physicist wearing Prada. How have you been, what was space like, did you know how much I have missed you?
No, better get back to that brunette.
And Nolan gets it wrong. His contrivanceno man should watch his child dieisnt the sentiment at all. I know this from two close friends who have lost children in the last decade. Their agony is expressed in the actual, well-known sentiment, "No parent should have to endure outliving a child. A parents grief is not from watching a child die. Its in trying to live every day after.
Why did Nolan contrive this? Because he gave himself no choice. After all those spectacular hours in space, he and his audience could not watch his movie collapse into a father and child walking through wildflowers and framed against sunsets while they reflect on their time apart. (Plus can Nolan even direct that scene?)
So he decided to convince us that the Old Saw That Isntno parent should see a child diejustifies a brief hello to a dying daughter and Coopers immediate return to canoodle with some actress in a worm hole who has demonstrated no affection for Cooper at all.
(And by the way, whats his rush? Time wont pass out there anyway, will it?
Nolan aimed high; he was going for The Big Movie. To lend it the needed profundity, he quotes Dylan Thomas at least three times, which was three too many: Do not go gentle into that good night. Those words were the poet's entreaty to his father, a man going blind, to continue to live fully despite his loss. But in a movie supposedly following this theme, Cooper sees the light leaving his daughters life and decides hed better rush back to the brunette and help recolonize her planet.
Really?
I guess Nolan missed the meaning of the poem as completely as he missed what it means to lose a child. (Its likely he thought that going boldly into the dark sounded apt for a film about zipping into black holes.) Rejecting the poets advice, the father and daughter so thoroughly resign themselves to her death that he hops a plane back to a black hole rather than spend another second talking about what they have missed and felt. Forgot raging against the dark, Cooper! Hurry and go see if you and the snazzy physicist, who still cannot figure out who she is, cant get something going.
And one more word about the overpowering score. The movie isnt merely loud. It is shattering loud; there are reports that destroyed a set of speakers at an Imax theater in San Francisco.Â
Yes, the science is interesting when its comprehensible, although the idea that an astronaut would need to explain a worm hole to the astronaut chosen to lead the mission into that hole is, of course, ridiculous. Yes, the Hunk has become a damn good actor. And yes, the movie may give you some faith in miracles. You can live on earth for 80 years and age 80 years like Murphy, for example, or you can age just a few minutes, like the NASA head played by Benjamin Button Michael Caine.
The movie, in short, is like the planet it tries to leave: a mess.
Thanks to the cool special effects and Gravity-like camera work, its a lovely-looking mess at timeslike my bedroom if you hung a couple Renoirs above my bedbut a mess. Nolan wanted do what Kubrick didnt, but he couldnt. Like 2010, he just doesnt seem to have the heart. Or, it sure seems to me, much respect for his viewers intelligence.
So what went wrong here?
The director Christopher Nolan made this space epic, of course, knowing he would be compared to the man who many regard as his era's greatest director, Stanley Kubrick, who directed 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Knowing that, Nolan also knew what many viewers found missing in 2001. Many viewers insisted that Kubrick's movie had no more heart than Hal, the sociopathic robot that Anthony Hopkins used as his model for Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of The Lambs.
To give his movie heart, Nolan chose the theme of a father-daughter relationship and the bigger message that love matters more than matter. At one point, the beautiful physicist played by Anne Hathawayimperfectly, to many ears and eyes lip syncs this by saying that love might be a force that transcends time. (Her stilted dialogue sounded like Caroline Sessions in my fifth grade play. I later read Hathaway took seven months just to get into her character. No wonder; who is her character?)
So Nolan sends Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) into space reluctantly, away from his young daughter Murphy who insists he not go. Once out there, Cooper feels tormented by her absence when his head isnt ringing from the We-Gotta-Win-That-Oscar score composedapparently over the din of jackhammers outside his studioby Hans Zimmer. (At one point, I felt like asking my companion what one of the actors said, but decided that she would answer something like B, C, C sharp, B flatand lots of organ music.)Â
At long last, however80 years and almost three hours of filmCooper and his daughter reunite in the films emotional climax.
And what happens?
He and his now-aged daughter catch up on those 80 years by chatting for maybe two minutes. And then she insists "no parent should watch his child die" and that he should return to the physicist wearing Prada. How have you been, what was space like, did you know how much I have missed you?
No, better get back to that brunette.
And Nolan gets it wrong. His contrivanceno man should watch his child dieisnt the sentiment at all. I know this from two close friends who have lost children in the last decade. Their agony is expressed in the actual, well-known sentiment, "No parent should have to endure outliving a child. A parents grief is not from watching a child die. Its in trying to live every day after.
Why did Nolan contrive this? Because he gave himself no choice. After all those spectacular hours in space, he and his audience could not watch his movie collapse into a father and child walking through wildflowers and framed against sunsets while they reflect on their time apart. (Plus can Nolan even direct that scene?)
So he decided to convince us that the Old Saw That Isntno parent should see a child diejustifies a brief hello to a dying daughter and Coopers immediate return to canoodle with some actress in a worm hole who has demonstrated no affection for Cooper at all.
(And by the way, whats his rush? Time wont pass out there anyway, will it?
Nolan aimed high; he was going for The Big Movie. To lend it the needed profundity, he quotes Dylan Thomas at least three times, which was three too many: Do not go gentle into that good night. Those words were the poet's entreaty to his father, a man going blind, to continue to live fully despite his loss. But in a movie supposedly following this theme, Cooper sees the light leaving his daughters life and decides hed better rush back to the brunette and help recolonize her planet.
Really?
I guess Nolan missed the meaning of the poem as completely as he missed what it means to lose a child. (Its likely he thought that going boldly into the dark sounded apt for a film about zipping into black holes.) Rejecting the poets advice, the father and daughter so thoroughly resign themselves to her death that he hops a plane back to a black hole rather than spend another second talking about what they have missed and felt. Forgot raging against the dark, Cooper! Hurry and go see if you and the snazzy physicist, who still cannot figure out who she is, cant get something going.
And one more word about the overpowering score. The movie isnt merely loud. It is shattering loud; there are reports that destroyed a set of speakers at an Imax theater in San Francisco.Â
Yes, the science is interesting when its comprehensible, although the idea that an astronaut would need to explain a worm hole to the astronaut chosen to lead the mission into that hole is, of course, ridiculous. Yes, the Hunk has become a damn good actor. And yes, the movie may give you some faith in miracles. You can live on earth for 80 years and age 80 years like Murphy, for example, or you can age just a few minutes, like the NASA head played by Benjamin Button Michael Caine.
The movie, in short, is like the planet it tries to leave: a mess.
Thanks to the cool special effects and Gravity-like camera work, its a lovely-looking mess at timeslike my bedroom if you hung a couple Renoirs above my bedbut a mess. Nolan wanted do what Kubrick didnt, but he couldnt. Like 2010, he just doesnt seem to have the heart. Or, it sure seems to me, much respect for his viewers intelligence.
