By Kate “One Take Kate” Taylor
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| Image via: Mr Leon Taylor |
Welcome to Interstellar…One Take Kate’s best film of 2014. No kidding! The supreme badassery of Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s expansive space thriller has completely obliterated my memory of anything else I’ve seen this year…it’s that good. Interstellar is intense and intricate; a must see movie for any space or science enthusiasts. Team Nolan again recruit an ensemble of first class acting talent led by the ever-increasingly excellent Matthew Mcconaughey as Cooper; with Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, John Lithgow and Casey Affleck in the mix as well. Emotionally and visually gripping, Interstellar delivers on so many levels and seeing it in IMAX adds an incredible ‘real time’ element to the thrilling action. I’m a pretty active film viewer at the best of times, but this sublime space and time flick had me thrashing in my seat! I don’t want to give away too much about the narrative of Interstellar but it’s essentially a family story, what we do and build as families and how this effects the world around us.
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You can trust that this is an ambitious outing for one of the most boundary pushing blockbuster directors of the moment; and it’s bound to draw a load of mixed opinions from the movie going public. Resist the temptations to cry ‘far-fetched’ or ‘Pfft, Nolan’s trying to do 2001‘ because honestly, we should be thankful that the film making community push themselves to create and innovate for us to this level. Interstellar is a beautifully created, very stern cautionary tale that encourages us to prioritise climate change and sustainable food production NOW…and I couldn’t agree more. Especially as the Brothers Nolan present us with a possible Earth’s fate, when we visit the terrifying planet, Miller. Oh lawdy…that’s the stuff of nightmares right there. It’s intense, intricate and layered with semiotic goodness for all the film theory scholars in the audience with a few Inception and moon landing conspiracy Easter eggs in there too. Our fate as a species; the concept of love used as a compass and the bitter battle of the human condition are huge themes to throw around, yet Interstellar handles them all respectfully and in an impactful way. See it.
Academic area: Screen time vs Narrative time. Woo! This is a mighty big film! Just as Christopher and Jonathan Nolan played with narrative and screen time in Memento and Inception; The Nolans go to town on space time and relativity in Interstellar; the impact of light years and the duration of space travel are laid out as simply as possible; and once understood, bolster the intense emotional or human sacrifices made by the characters. In screen time vs narrative time we’re talking about: the screen time being the roughly 2 hours and 57 minutes of running time you’ll be sitting in the cinema to watch Interstellar. Whereas narrative time is the expanse of time covered by the story of the film and the events that happen to the characters. Need an example? Die Hard. This is a great example of screen and narrative time being the same length, there might be the compression of a few hours as McClane terrorises the terrorists but essentially it’s in ‘real time’ with dialogue references to past and future events, flashbacks count as ‘real time’ as they are being remembered by someone in narrative and screen time. Interstellar covers as little as 40 and as many as hundreds of years in narrative time within it’s nearly three hours. The trick is to try and keep in mind the narrative time plus the time relativity the characters are experiencing, plus the screen time to enjoy the full effect The Nolans are looking to achieve. Like Inception and the time distortion between the ‘levels’ of sleep, it’s good to keep these things in mind as the fearless Cooper traipses from planet to planet looking for our new home.
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