Rewatch – Interstellar
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Jessica Chastain
Year: 2014
Original Rating: ★★★★★
New Rating: ★★★★☆
I cried the first time I saw this movie. The “don’t let me leave Murph” scene broke me. McConaughey watching twenty-three years of messages from his kids while tears stream down his face broke me again. I walked out of the theater convinced I’d seen one of the great films.
Ten years later. Hmm.
The first two hours of Interstellar are still incredible. The setup on the dying Earth. The launch. Miller’s planet with the massive waves. The time dilation reveal where Cooper realizes decades have passed for his family. All of that still works. Nolan at his best is unmatched at creating awe, at making you feel the scale of things.
But the third act. Oh the third act.
Cooper falls into a black hole and ends up in a tesseract built by future humans where he can communicate with his daughter across time through gravity and morse code and a bookshelf.
I. Look. I bought it in the theater. The emotional momentum carried me through. But watching it now — sober, at home, able to think about what I’m seeing — it doesn’t hold up. It’s goofy. The logic is hand-wavy in a movie that spent two hours establishing scientific credibility. “Love is the one thing that transcends time and space” is a beautiful sentiment and a terrible basis for the third act of a hard science fiction film.
And the ending. Cooper wakes up on a space station named after his daughter. She’s an old woman. They have a brief reunion and then he flies off to find Brand. It’s weirdly rushed for such a long movie. The emotional payoff we’ve been building toward — Cooper and Murph reuniting — happens and then immediately ends. He doesn’t stay. He doesn’t see his grandkids grow up. He just. Leaves again.
The performances remain excellent. McConaughey is giving everything to this role. Jessica Chastain in the middle section is great. The score — Hans Zimmer doing organ swells — is one of the best of Nolan’s career.
I still love the ambition. I love that Nolan swung for the fences. I love the practical models and the real cornfields and the commitment to showing space as it might actually be. I love that this exists.
But I can’t give it five stars anymore. The third act breaks too many rules the movie established. Four stars. Still great. Still flawed.
My rating: ★★★★☆
