Interstellar: Progressive Cinema

 Interstellar is a great film. Possibly one of the most important sci-fi films of the past couple of decades...but not for the traditional reasons of, ya know...being great. It's not game changing in terms of effects, quite the opposite in fact, Christopher Nolan choosing a more natural approach and shying away from CGI , such is his MO and an important part of his auteur signature.
It doesn't do anything particularly revolutionary with regards to narrative or subject matter either, at it's core it's a classic race against time to save mankind tale, which eschews the frequent perilous circumstance of films like Armageddon - as well as it's sister flick, Deep Impact - and Danny Boyle's excellent Sunshine, in favor of  a pragmatists-eye view of the apocalypse. The Nolan brothers proffer that the world is already screwed and mankind needs to use it's knowledge and experience to move on.

So, why is Interstellar such a landmark film for the genre and the medium? Because, like Inception before it, it's a richly detailed, intelligent film that doesn't seem beholden to any specific demographic. Nolan's films are a new kind of event movie that don't seem to have one eye on the bean counter. It would be naive to think that Nolan was allowed to make Inception because of the success of his new take on the Batman, Warner Brothers was taking a chance either way. A summer event movie about a group of boffins that enter other people minds, with a complex set of ideas and a multi-tiered narrative? Try selling that to one of the big studios 10 years ago and they would laugh you out of the room. Inception was like nothing anyone had seen before, much like Batman Begins was like no other comic book adaptation we'd ever encountered. The guys in suits took a chance on Christopher Nolan, the gamble paid off and now we are reaping the benefits of his influence on modern cinema.

Nolan's space exploration epic is similar in tone and execution to Inception. Nothing about Interstellar unfolds exactly how you expect it to. Traditional genre moments, like the crew escaping a gigantic wave slowed by the pull of a nearby black hole, seem purely incidental. A major character dies with little

fanfare and is never mentioned again, an event which a lesser film would dwell on and emphasise to tug at the heart strings, whereas here it's just something that happened.
Later, a fist fight between the film's only real antagonist (aside from time itself) plays out with such drawn out reserve that tension reaches unbearable levels before any conflict erupts. And when it does? No pyrotechnics, figuratively or literally, no choppily edited fisticuffs or heroic moments. The film shows us what it's like when two scientists in spacesuits duke it out on a stark, alien landscape. In many ways it's the perfect action setpiece...because it feels real. It's heartening to observe the positive reactions to a film which is in many ways the polar opposite of the science fiction blockbuster template studios have been using for over a decade now.

Interstellar will invariably be related to 2001: A Space Odyssey in the descriptions of those that have seen it and those convincing others to see it. It's an apt description. Cold, exhaustive attention to detail and a provocative conclusion. I say provocative, because the final act of Interstellar swaps out hard sci-fi for romantic flights of fantasy that didn't sit well with me and may divide audiences. It's a conversation piece, something to mull over, and that's a very good thing.
However, It lacks the lasting impact of Kubrick's masterpiece and that's mainly down to Nolan's deliberately sombre tone. As a piece of science fiction cinema, 2001 gave us a woozy, dreamlike vision of a stylized yet plausible future, serious but fantastical. Interstellar is almost defiantly grounded in reality, it's science fiction with the emphasis on science.

This isn't really a criticism, I'm not saying that 2001 is objectively better, or that Interstellar is a poor imitation. In fact, the comparison works towards my point  that we need films like Interstellar. 
Imagine that instead of cookie cutter romantic comedies and teen chick flicks, we had original productions with energy and verve like American Graffiti or When Harry Met Sally. In place of trite urban crime thrillers, we had something with the style of The Godfather or the ferocity of Boyz N The Hood. And hell, I'm just gonna say it, imagine that instead of mining the YA section in the library for fantasy to target the younger audience, we made another Star Wars.
Revolutionary is a far too overused term when writing about any cultural product, but the work of Christopher Nolan, and the decision to fund such creations by studios like Paramount and Warner Brothers, is nothing less than revolutionary. If people flock to see a cerebral blockbuster like
Interstellar and clamour for more of the same, then the day of the Michael Bay explodathon is over (sorry Bay, I love you, but you gotta reassess your situation).   

The very fact that so many people balked at the idea of a new Batman not overseen by Nolan, suggests that adult, technically proficient and thematically complex productions are what cinema goers want these days. Is Interstellar a great film? Sure, it's a flawed masterwork of minimalism spliced with spectacle. Is it a further landmark in the ongoing maturation of modern blockbuster cinema? Absolutely.
Also, the blocky Lego robots TARS and CASE are the best comic relief automatons since C3PO and R2D2. Fact.