Christopher Nolan Week: Part 1
With the opening of Tenet upon us, let's look back at the first 9 films.
Christopher Nolan is the James Cameron of our current era. His films are usually the most anticipated and notable in adult cinema (I am not counting Marvel or Star Wars as adult cinema). His box office takes are epic. The budgets he works with are colossal. The final products are usually excellent. His ability to manage action sequences and slower moments to maintain momentum in his films stands alone in our current era of CGI use, choppy fight scenes and plot-less action films. Tenet, his tenth full length film, is being released this week in the United States after a week overseas. While anticipation is very high, early reviews have been mixed. While I won’t be reviewing Tenet this week, I will take a look at his other 9 films to get a feeling of what to expect. Today I will do number 9, then two per article till Friday. Spoilers will be plentiful, so if you are hoping to watch these films for the first time, this is not for you. Nolan films are known for twists or surprise endings that are key parts of the enjoyment of the film. I will take a look at his master strokes, but also some small holes in his game. This will certainly not be a series solely dedicated to genuflecting to the master. No doubt if you are a Nolanite you will have your own order, but here is mine.
Number 9: Interstellar
The details:
Debut 11/7/2014
Main Actors/Actresses: Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Johnathan Lithgow, Timothee Chalamet, Michael Caine, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace, and a young MacKenzie Foy
Best Sneaky Guest: Matt Damon (king of cameos)
What is it about: Ummmmm… If you saw this, you likely share my questioning. Of all the confusing, time altering, mind warping and twist filled Nolan plots, this one is the king of confusion. Ultimately, Matthew McConaughey sets off to space with Anne Hathaway, and other people I think, to try to save the human race. At one time he had been an astronaut, so despite virtually no training on what is clearly a superior space craft to modern tech (the film is set in an increasingly not too distant future) he is apparently ready to go and the best possible choice. He makes the choice with the hope of saving his beloved daughter Murph and I think he also had a son, although he is an afterthought in this movie. Once up in space, they explore possible landing spots for the human race based on previous astronaut’s readings. The usual chaos in space happens, and they end up many years into the future due to gravity (a concept that is accurate, and a key point later). Without the ability to contact his daughter, he heads deeper into space to save what turns out to be Anne Hathaway’s boyfriend. To pretty much every movie goer’s surprise, that turns out to be Matt Damon (he was not marketed in the lead up to the film). Matt Damon has been fudging his readings, however, in a desperate attempt to be saved. His planet is not inhabitable. When the crew finds out, he tries to kill them, and then, in his addled madness, he blows up the space station the crew was using. Down to just a small portion of the ship, the crew returns toward home. Down to their final chance, McConaughey launches himself into a black hole. Here is where the movie starts to go a bit off the rails. McConaughey enters a “tesseract” that was apparently designed by humans in the future, for humans to find, to save the humans from the past, so they can eventually become the humans of the future. McConaughey then messages his daughter Murph back when she was the age he left to give her a formula to solve gravity. This is used, while McConaughey is in space, to create a space station that humanity can live on, and eventually McConaughey is found miraculously (why do people keep forgetting how big space is) and brought there. If you want to tell me the future humans plopped McConaughey out in exactly the right place, I will tell you that if they have that kind of power there were no real stakes in the movie to begin with. McConaughey’s main conclusion from this is that love is the key to him having been chosen (although it would seem to me that future human self preservation was the reason).
Why does it work: There are a lot of good things about the movie. It is one of the first to deeply incorporate actual science (not movie science) into the plot. Its concepts (involving things like dimension, gravity, and elements of space such as black holes and planets) are based mostly on intensive scientific research. It avoids tropes like the sounds an exploding ship makes (none, they are in the gravity of space), or technology being unlimited (until the end, the majority of the tech is plausible in the future, and fails at times), and the idea that intelligent life is everywhere (it might just be us, actually).
This movie has more heart than a lot of Nolan projects. His disregard for his son aside, McConaughey’s relationship with Murph is the heart of the story (and why he determines that love was the main factor in him being the one to be in the tesseract). First McKenzie Foy and later Jessica Chastain produce great performances for Murph in what I believe to be the best female portrayal in any Nolan movie (it’s close with Hilary Swank in Insomnia). Meaningful female characters will be very sparse in the following reviews. The action sequences in space are visually flawless with perfect CGI. Matt Damon’s appearance and then heel turn are the most shocking twist in the movie. Villain Damon is my favorite Damon. Anne Hathaway gives a love it or hate it performance that, for me, wasn’t great. However, a lot of that has to do with me not liking Anne Hathaway really. I suspect many people found her intensity and emotion to be excellent. I am going to check my bias at the door on that one.
The portrayal of a decaying earth become more real by the second, as crop disease, natural disasters, pandemics and rising oceans give the feeling that there will be an endpoint. The scientific approach to resolving this is realistic. There are Band-Aids put over some of the problems, but nothing is projected as a permanent solution (kind of like real life). The idea that our schools would intentionally leave out portions of history is pretty on the nose, with the increasing desire to eliminate unseemly history from both sides of the political aisle.
What are its shortcomings: Let’s start at the center with the plot. The plot (once they get into space) centers a lot on the ability to travel through time and space. The main point, as noted in the summary, is that humans set off to secure their future, got sent forward in time, found a tesseract by humans from way in the future, to communicate with someone from the start of the movie, to ensure that the person in the tesseract has a place to go to when he leaves the tesseract. So the beings of the future ensured their own existence by providing an opportunity for the formula for gravity to get to earth to ensure they eventually exist. This is a paradox, and the same sloppy time travel approach from The Terminator that wouldn’t work in reality. In reality, time travel would either cause a new dimension, or change nothing (as you see in the TV show Dark for the first 2 seasons or that one episode of X-files). This version has a lot of bells and whistles, but it isn’t plausible. Beyond that, the idea that love was the reason future beings who moved into the fifth dimension would use McConaughey is ludicrous. They are simply insuring their own existence, which again, paradox.
Moving beyond the implausible plot, there are some small (and loud) things to be concerned with. The soundtrack was horrifying in Imax. It is so loud and screechy that it drowned the dialogue, which is the main thing you can’t do with a sound track. It was deafening, which did not improve my experience. It just made me deaf. Music should accentuate what is happening in a movie, not obliterate it. This was the Dark Knight soundtrack turned up to 11. Wholly unnecessary. Some of the performances are better than others here. Michael Caine was a weird choice for his role as manipulating head of NASA. He is Nolan’s talisman, however, so in he goes. As mentioned earlier, I didn’t care for Anne Hathaway’s hyper emotional take on the copilot. It was too much for me, and it took me out of the movie. The idea that they would just “find” McConaughey in outer space is ludicrous. Space is GIGANTIC. Star Wars violates this constantly by having people bump into each other in space all the time. It’s three dimensional and, for all practical purposes, infinite. It’s impossible.
What would I have done differently if I were as smart as Christopher Nolan?
I would have less intensity with the soundtrack. To me, that is the worst part of the movie. It makes portions of the movie unwatchable, which is a first and only for Nolan. Even though the plot makes no sense in reality, that approach to time travel is used all over the place. I think most people were comfortable overlooking that, and remembering it is just a movie. Given how scientifically accurate the rest of the movie is though, it is disappointing.
Best scene:
Stay tuned tomorrow for Part 2: 8 and 7.
Looking forward to tomorrow!
Thanks Skip :)