Interstellar (2014): or how I learned to suspend my disbelief and love movies

I've always been a big fan of Christopher Nolan, ever since Memento, which was among the earliest movie I reviewed here. Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Prestige are also in my list of personal favourites, and that is due to one reason; the motivation of the characters in those movies are believable. Things don't happen just so that the plot can be advanced. I've also written about this. To a certain extent, I've also adopted the same notion in other mediums of art I enjoy, that's why I consider HBO's The Wire as my favourite TV show of all time, and enjoy George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novel series; the characters are calculating and they do not make decisions that make the viewers/readers question the validity. These Nolan movies left me thinking about them a few days afterwards, trying to poke holes and find inconsistencies in them. Usually when I found one (Batman won't kill bad guys, but letting Ras Al Ghul plunge to his apparent death on the runaway train is ok?), it did not matter much because they are just minor things and they are overwhelmed by just how enjoyable the rest of the movie is.

(By the way, the reason Gandalf and the Fellowhip do not take the Eagles from the very beginning is because there are Nazguls and dragons.)

This means that it often detracts my enjoyment of certain movies. I do understand that works of art often need to take certain liberties with things such as realism, physics and politics and employ fantastical elements, but I've become too eager to pick holes in said movies. Let's take the example of those Marvel superhero movies. I do enjoy them, but only to a certain extent. I can't get past why Iron Man only needs his basic suit to take out hordes of Chitauri spacecrafts, but needs to wear another armour over his basic armour in order to take on Hulk. That's why I don't really care for Thor, because his movies sit in the magical realm, although they do try to explain it away as very advanced science, which to our relatively primitive civilisation, appears magical.

That's not to say I'm a total logic monster. When it comes to watching comedies and musicals, I am more pliant. My shield just goes up when I watch drama, thriller or any 'serious' movies.

And that is why I didn't mention his other movies above; The Dark Knight Rises and the very popular Inception. I was massively disappointed with TDKR, because there are just so many plot holes in it. Gordon brings his confession note everywhere, later conveniently found by Bane who uses it to demotivate the city residents? Batman simply believes a female criminal who dresses up like a cat, who then walks him right into Bane's trap? Almost all of Gotham's police force is taken to conduct a raid, only to be trapped underground, leaving the city defenseless, and when they are eventually released, they confront Bane's thugs in hand-to-hand combat, in broad daylight? How the hell did Batman manage to get back to Gotham, and sneak into the isolated and barricaded city? If I found more holes, the movie would turn into a documentary about cheese instead.

Whereas with Inception, the problem is not so much with the plot, which I think was more or less watertight for a movie with its scope, but with me not being able to enjoy it. It was just 'meh'. I didn't go home trying to work out what the inconsistencies were.

Naturally, when Nolan's latest movie, Interstellar was announced, I was equal parts excited and wary. It did look exciting with a hefty science fiction subject matter that involves space travel and time, but movies that employ these two usually end up with numerous plot holes. I wondered whether this movie would go the same route as TDKR. Maybe TDKR and Inception were not glitches.

[SPOILERS] After watching Interstellar last week, my take on it is that it does have a few plot holes: the sudden inability of a smart physicist in calculating the time dilation on the first planet, how Cooper manages to come through the other side of the black hole, that sudden talk about love nonsense, how Murphy manages to convince her very angry brother that their father is actually talking to her from wherever he is, and who are 'they' actually?

However, I think this is the first time whereby plot holes in a movie does not affect my enjoyment of it. I thoroughly enjoyed every second of it, and it convinced me that the holes are necessary for me to enjoy it. I cried three times at least, and it made me feel the vastness of our universe and comparatively, how infinitesimal we are.

Interstellar also reminded me again how a movie can use the fantastic to make us forget the world beyond the four walls of the cinema, for the duration of the movie. Just like his earliest movies, I spent the following day just asking questions about the movie's plot, and I did find a few things (which I raised above), but they ultimately don't matter. It managed to sweep me to a different state of mind.

I'm not gonna review the movie because I'm sure other people have done it better than I can. But you should go watch it, the visuals are impressive, the plot arresting and best off all, all this is used to speak about the bigger picture; humanity. The science fiction elements are merely vehicle to tell the story of humanity and our place in the universe.

The GOOD: Bittersweet and heartbreaking theme, beautiful visuals, brilliant execution, spot-on performance, and TARS.
The BAD: That hammy love vs science speech that comes out of nowhere, repeated quoting of Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night".

My VERDICT: 8/10. Far from perfect, but highly enjoyable and mindblowing in more ways than one.

TRIVIA: Matthew Mcconaughey once starred in another movie about interstellar travel, Contact (1997) as a priest.