The Dark Knight

 

This movie came out before I had started the blog and this is the first time I am getting to write about the film. I said it last night when I posted an update on Facebook, this is the jewel  in the crown of Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy. Both "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight Rises" are excellent films, but the middle film is the finest second act in a superhero trilogy you are likely to encounter. We are past the origin story and Batman is a looming presence over Gotham. The crime lords are beginning to chaff under the attention they are getting from the District Attorney, and things seem to be turning around for the city, just as Bruce Wayne wanted. Enter the Joker, a figure of chaos, who at first seems like an enemy and then a potential ally to the underworld kingpins, but looks are deceiving, as we will be reminded on a regular basis. 

The opening set piece with the daytime heist of mob money from one of the banks secretly controlled by the criminal elements of the city, is a terrific starting point. The crime is filled with audacity in execution and violent subterfuge by the man who planned it. When the last clown standing takes off his clown mask and reveals the clown make-up he is sporting, we know that we are in the company of a deranged criminal who does not follow any rules or patterns. This will undermine both the criminals and the cops for the rest of the story. This is the performance from the late Heath Ledger that won him a posthumous Academy Award, and it was richly earned. Ledger gives the Joker mannerisms that suggest he is bat shit crazy in every scene, but he also has a voice that commands respect because of the level of intelligence behind it. In the scene at the fund raiser, when he takes notice of Rachel Dawes, he pushes his sweaty  hair back behind his ear, with a knife in his hand, like he is primping for a meet cute, while armed and dangerous. When he gets caught and is baiting the officer who is standing watch over him, he manages to smirk in an antagonistic way, in spite of the fact that he is still covered in his trademark make-up. Ledger underplays so many scenes despite being the most flamboyant character in the story. 

One of the things that makes this film work well is that Bruce Wayne gets to be part of the plot in addition to being Batman. His love triangle with Rachel, his planning of the extraction of the accountant from Hong Kong, and the series of moments when he seems set to reveal himself, are all more engaged in the story than the billionaire usually gets. When he manages to safe the life of the man who is going to reveal his identity, it is in his best detached and clueless rich guy persona, a part he plays regularly in the film. Christian Bale has to do most of his acting in these scenes since the costume does so much in the Batman moments. One of the jokes that people sometimes make about Nolan's Batman concerns the gravelly voice that the Batman uses to cover who he is. I think too many people believe it is just an attempt to intimidate criminals (which it is) but they ignore that he is also avoiding being identified. 

Director Christopher Nolan has put together a great series of action sequences which are mostly justified by the plot, even if logically they can't all come out the way they are supposed to. I have already mentioned the opening heist, but Batman has a heist of his own when extraditing Lau from Hong Kong. The spectacular removal from the building is a moment from a 60s era James Bond film, but played as serious rather than comic. The stunned security men are befuddled at the smashed window and the pane flying into the upcoming day looks just brilliant. Both the Joker and Batman have an action scene that plays out their own plans simultaneously, as Harvey Dent, claiming to be Batman, is transferred across town, there are gun battles, crashes, the end of the Batmobile and the birth of the Batpod, and it climaxes with a tractor trailer cartwheeling front to back on the streets of Gotham.

Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, is the White Knight of the city that Batman wants to step aside for, but of course the Joker has a different goal. Certainly Harvey has reason to feel embittered and resentful. The fact that he can be tipped over to the Dark Side has been hinted at a couple of times in the course of the film. I just think that the final Two Face challenge is such a reach that it is the only flaw in the carefully constructed plot. It works, but only barely, and I think you have to see the film several times to be convinced that it is not just a plot contrivance. 

The film is filled with actors who do a fine job in their parts. Most of the criminals get short shrift but the cops, many of whom are tainted, get a chance to show off a bit. Eric Roberts is slimy as hell,  Morgan Freeman is as cool as you would hope, but the heroic center of the film is Jim Gordon, played by Gary Oldman. Gordon is a cop who tries to play it by the book but knows that the Batman is the linchpin on pushing Gotham back from the brink. His part in the capture of the Joker is a fun twist and his distraught father in the last scenes are demonstrations of Oldman's talents. 

The electronic and orchestral score makes a dramatic impact on the film, although the lack of melodies probably keep it from being memorable. Humming along to the strum and dang of the score is not really possible, but the score is effective time after time in evoking emotions and mood. The action scenes have the parts that are most like traditional tunes, and Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard have divvied up the two antagonists to create wholly different personas for them musically.  It is a very distinct score from the Tim Burton Batman films and several elements from the first film are repeated here, in completely appropriate ways.

Even though the Joker succeeded at spoiling Harvey Dent as a hero, Batman and Jim Gordon snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by changing the narrative and turning Batman into the dark figure of the story. The combination of Batman's faith in the citizens of Gotham on the ferry, and the sacrifice he makes to become a fugitive, give the story the bump it needs at the end to reach an emotional crescendo. The final narration from Gary Oldman makes the conclusion pay off with goosebumps.  

Oppenheimer

 

When a Christopher Nolan film opens, you can count on a fan base to show up, regardless of the subject matter. Nolan has established himself as the preeminent film director of the last fifteen years. Ever since "The Dark Knight", film fans have looked forward to a film with his name attached, regardless of the acting talent involved.  His technical excellence, commitment to film and theatrical presentation and his intricately plotted films have given him a reputation deserving of respect. That said, there is such a thing as overhyping a film, and that is exactly the defect that I had with this movie. 

“OPPENHEIMER. The best, most important film of this century. If you see one film in cinemas this year it should be Oppenheimer. I’m not a Nolan groupie but this one blows the doors off the hinges,” wrote Paul Schrader. This sort of statement will raise expectations beyond reason, and should be a flag that the writer has an agenda in his praise. My guess is that the subject of the first Atomic Bomb and the impact that achievement had on subsequent weapons development, is what generates this type of enthusiasm. Look, no advocates a nuclear war. Everyone recognizes the dangers to the planet should such an event occur. This has not been a secret for the last  78 years. So a movie that warns us of those dangers, is not groundbreaking, and how important it is depends a great deal on what issues matter to you personally. Writer/Director Paul Schrader has tipped his hand at what he sees as critical, I don't know that the film lives up to that standard. 

None of the reservations I have expressed so far are intended to suggest the movie is unworthy, quite the contrary, it is an excellent historical biography about a misunderstood giant of science from the last century. You should certainly go and see it, just tame your ambitions for the film to a practical level and focus on the film making and story telling. The people who are writing about how gut punched they were by this movie, must not have seen a Cold War Thriller in the last fifty years. "Nuclear War=Bad" , got it.

Nolan's films are famous for the use of time manipulation to tell the story. In this film, there is the smallest amount of that approach in any of his films since "Insomnia". There are black and white segments that distinguish timelines in the story from the vivid color sequences, but it is more a technique for indicating flashbacks and flash forwards than it is for advancing the plot. The plot of the movie is basically the rise and fall of Robert Oppenheimer. This is surely a valid project because Oppenheimer was indeed a critical figure in science and the key figure of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first atomic bomb. His complex life lead to his successes and ultimate embarrassment in being denied an extension of his security clearance, in spite of his service in creating the bomb. 

The first third of the film is a long recap of his academic and personal quagmires. Many of the incidents are relevant to later criticism of him, but as a film subject, they feel like they are slowing our progress to the subject of the Manhattan Project itself. As a biography, these segments are acceptable, but the film is sold in part as a thriller concerning the development of the weapon, and that part of the story takes a long time to arrive on screen. The time at Los Alamos is the most effective  act in the film. This is where Nolan's expertise with visuals seems key to the movies success. Seeing the film in the large screen IMAX format with the XD enhancements, made the audience feel like they were there with the other observers at Trinity. The sound design is outstanding and the visual largely eschew CGI in favor of more practical effects.

Other than the weapon itself, the two hearings  that bracket the story, provide the fireworks for the plot. Lewis Strauss, from the Atomic Energy Commission, becomes an antagonist to Oppenheimer, and his plotting to deny the security clearance produces blowback several years later in his own hearings when nominated to be in Eisenhower's Cabinet. It is the crossing of these two men's paths that sustains the film since we largely are familiar with the bombs results. The drama surrounding Oppenheimer takes place in the early fifties and the Strauss confirmation hearings were in the late part of the decade. 

Cillian Murphy is Oppenheimer personified, with his thin and tall build he is a physical match for the scientist. The makeup team does a terrific job helping him play a character that moves across thirty years of time. His youthful gaunt looks in the early years are echoed by a more skeletal visage in his later life. Murphy has a way of speaking that sounds authoritative, cocky, and inquisitive. The one time that it is suggested that Oppenheimer was showing off was when he demeans Strauss's reservations about sharing isotopes with a friendly country. Otherwise, Murphy plays him as respectful of other physicists and intellectuals, although in private he could be dismissive. The personal moments are the least clear in the film. He has a passionate affair with Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh, but other than their physical connection, it was had to see how these two triggered one another. Oppenheimer's wife is played by Emily Blunt, and she is seen as a fragile woman with deep problems, but one who is fiercely committed to her husband and his legacy. Her best scenes are in the hearings where she listens to derogatory information about her husband and she looks like she wants to stab the people testifying, without having to move.  

The cast is packed, and I won't take time to salute everyone who probably deserves it, but there are two other performances that stand out. Matt Damon, in a second film this year (Air being the first) is terrific as Leslie Groves, the military commander in charge of the project. He has to be persuasive, belligerent, patient and intelligent in a lot of sequences in the film, and he nails it every time. If I were taking bets on the Academy Awards for the year, I'd put a large wager down on Robert Downey Jr. for supporting actor. I literally did not recognize him in the film, I did not even know he was in it until the credits rolled. As Lewis Strauss, he is venal, powerful and ridged in his persona. The conniving scheme may be an exaggeration of the real events, but Downey Jr. sells us on Strauss as a villain, at least in regard to his dealings with Oppenheimer. Nolan as writer/director and Downy combine to make an accomplished man with insecurity issues, feel like a vindictive bureaucrat with petty personal animus toward Oppenheimer. 

So the film is overlong, over praised, but still a great achievement. Like his other films, especially "Interstellar" and "Inception", Nolan is showing off his intellectual credentials a bit, but it would not be undeserved. He has clearly put in the work to understand the basic physics of the atomic process, as well as the political landscape of Washington D.C. . The movie could have been as compelling as "Dunkirk" was, if we had a little more story devoted to the competition with the Nazi group that the Manhattan Project was trying to catch up to and beat, instead of the personal drama that does not feel very clear in the long run. The technical details, production design and performances compensate a bit for the flagging story, but if you have a realistic expectation of the film, you will enjoy it a lot more. 

Tenet

This was probably the most anticipated film of the summer for a lot of people. Because of the Pandemic shutdowns, it got pushed back three times before finally making it to theaters this week. Bu all means, see this movie if you are interested, in a theater. The scope, photography and action sequences will be diminished if you choose to see this on a tablet, TV screen or heaven forbid, on a phone.

I want to start with a message that is also a warning. If, during the course of this Two and a half hour film, you need to visit the restroom or concession stand, and you are worried you will miss something that clarifies the story or advances the plot in the time you are gone, go ahead and go. Nothing explained in any five minute sequence during the film, will help you keep track of what the hell is going on in this movie. "Inception", "Memento" and "Interstellar" all play with time and parallel events. If you ever had trouble following those concepts, which are reasonably well explained although still confusing at times, get ready to feel completely lost. For the first hour, things made sense and you could follow the logic of the world Christopher Nolan has created here. The premise is interesting and it contains the usual conundrums that time travel stories face. The problem is that about a third of the way into the film, two or three additional plot elements are introduced, each one with different time influences , and they all start influencing each other. Sometimes those effects are so complicated that a map would not help you. Events start moving faster and trying to keep up will be a waste of time if you are also trying to enjoy the movie.

There is nothing inherently wrong  in having a complicated plot, if at some point you can make sense of how it all comes together, "Tenet" attempts that but largely fails to be coherent, even though several of the twists involve tricks you have seen a hundred times before in a time travel story. Ultimately, I think you can view this film as one loop in an event that has a limitless number of possible variations. Doing that will not make the story more satisfying however. I would have to see the movie several more times to pick out the inconsistencies and  conundrums that pop up, but to be honest, Nolan himself doesn't seem to care about them. He even has one of the characters say as much, fairly early in the film. Stop trying to make sense, let's just let this wash over us. I can live with that, but it will leave Tenet as an exercise in style and film making, rather than a piece of cinematic art.

With a pre-title sequence that feels a lot like a Bond film, Nolan sets this up as an espionage story, that potentially would be confusing the way some double and triple cross stories can be, but it would still be grounded. As the science fiction element takes center stage, the tradition spy tropes get doubled back on with a wink and a nod to time travel twists we have seen before. I won't spoil it for you, but during a heist scene, one character confronts another and we don't see the second characters face in that sequence. You know that will play out again, and there will be a reveal.,,guess what's coming.

John David Washington has just enough charisma to play the low key "Protagonist" of the story. The scene that shows off the potential of what might have been a solid spy film, involves his lunch with Michael Caine. It is not his fighting skill, or dramatic intensity that makes the scene work, rather, it is his bemused self confidence in the face of being judged by others. One place I don't think he was quite successful at was the near romantic element of his relationship with the character played by actress Elizabeth Debicki. I can buy that he feels a sense of responsibility for her in a paternalistic way, but the embers of romance that are supposed to be the base of this are not there.  He can sell that he cares, what is not clear is why he cares.

We get a pretty good preview of what the next Batman movie will be like because Robert Pattinson, plays a much more active Felix Leiter to Washington's 007. I suspect, that as in most of the good Batman films, the quirky Bruce Wayne will not take a back seat to the brooding "Dark Knight". Pattinson plays Neil, the mysterious counterpart to the Protagonist, and he has a light touch with the humor and enough presenter to sell the physicality.

You ready for a surprise? The actor who steals the movie is Kenneth Branagh. Taking the start he made on a similar character in the Jack Ryan film from a few years ago, Branagh manages to make a cartoon villain feel dangerously real. A kingpin of a Russian oligarch, it would be easy to just say the lines and have threats come off as empty bravado. Nolan gives Branagh actions to play that show us his ruthlessness, the actor adds a sense of menace to those lines, but never with the charm of a fictional character. Instead, the deadly earnestness of his performance is disturbingly real. The tiniest touch of humanity right at the end of the film paints just enough of a persona to make the character evn more real, and loathsome.

Filmed in some of the most beautiful locales in the world, it would be hard to fault the look of the picture. The movie is not overcut in the action scenes, but the parallel time tracks and reverse structure do require some frequent cuts in perspective that can get a bit confusing at times. The backward car chase sequence looks great, but when it is followed up on, instead of being clearer, it leads us to start questioning what we really saw before, but not in the good way that it is supposed to work.

At two and a half hours, despite a solid pace, the film feels long. Probably because of the plot conceit concerning inverted time elements. I loved "Memento" but it was less than two hours and the same kind of thing happens there. Adding another forty minutes to it would do to it what happens with "Tenet", it makes you look at your watch and wonder how much longer it is going to go on.  Maybe when it is serialized as a four hour mini-series, it will work better.

Christopher Nolan has one of the greatest imaginations in the film industry. There are terrific concepts in most of the movies he has made. There are simply too many times that we ravel on a tangent that takes up a chunk of time but might have been replaced with something simpler as just as easy to admire. The stacking Russian Doll story structure worked well in "Dunkirk", it was clever in "Inception", but it is simply overdoing it in this movie.

I probably sound like I am down on the film, I'm not really. I enjoyed it quite a bit. Pattinson and Washington invading a penthouse in India, or doing a heist at an airport freeport, were well staged action scenes. The inverted battle at the climax of the movie was spectacular to look at but mostly incomprehensible. The inverted stories are fine but when you start to retcon your own movie to change the outcomes, you create dilemmas that Solomon could not work out and algorithms that might give Einstein fits. See the movie, go with what is happening on the screen at any point and don't try to make it make sense. That extra brainwork will distract from the moment, and it is the moments that make this movie worth seeing, not the plot.  

Dunkirk

 A few months ago, I saw a film that was set in the aftermath of the events of Dunkirk. "Their Finest" was a personal drama set during the London Blitz. Up to this point it has been my favorite film of the year. It has now been supplanted by a film that features the events that are referred to in the first movie. I have been anticipating Christopher Nolan's "Dunkirk' for several months, ever since the first teaser trailer showed up on the local cinema screens. I have seen eight of his films and much like the first ten years of Pixar, I was never disappointed. There is however that first time when your expectations will exceed the results. We will have to hold on for another film for that to happen. "Dunkirk" is a dramatic success without strong characters, a tension filled story for an historical event that people know the outcome for already, and a technical achievement that relies on the directors eye more than every special effect in the book.

Let's look at those accomplishments in that order. Fionn Whitehead is starring in his first film, and he manages to give a credible performance without a large amount of dialogue and with no back story. His character is one of nearly 400,000 men trapped against the sea by the enemy forces after a military failure in the early part of World War II. Beyond running and searching for a place to relieve himself, the only way we know anything about his character are his actions. He is empathetic, but also fearful. He manages to get to the front of a line of soldiers waiting to embark on a hospital ship by using his cleverness and his empathy. He wordlessly connects with another soldier as they collaborate ways to escape from the beach. A third soldier enters the picture as they escape from a sinking ship, he is played by Harry Styles, another character that we can only judge from his behavior in interacting with the other two. This is so not a traditional war story designed around characters that we will care about and feel an emotional bond to. These three main characters from the troops trapped on the beach are ciphers standing in for all the other men trapped there as well. No one talks about their girlfriend at home, or reminisces about their dog, or tells a story of their battlefield experience. They unambiguously try to survive and escape. That pretty much sums up everything which focuses on them. The same is true of Tom Hardy's character, Farrier, a Spitfire pilot who joins the battle and has maybe a dozen lines in the story but is on screen maybe more than anyone else. It is another opportunity for him to act while hiding behind a mask. In this film he gets to do more than hook his thumbs in his suspenders but we only see his face at the very end. We know his emotions only through the choices he makes as a pilot in combat. He is heroic, thoughtful and practical. All of that has to be conveyed with few props and no other actor on screen to play off of. The closest we come to characters that we might identify with and care about are the three men heading to "Dunkirk" as part of a flotilla of rescue boats. Mark Rylance is the captain, accompanied by his son and a seventeen year old boy who sometimes serves as a mate on their pleasure boat. Mr. Dawson knows what it is they will be facing. When the three pick up a stranded soldier on a ship that has sunk, there is more dialogue than anywhere else in the film. Because of the interaction and the small amount of background we get, it ends up that the most emotional investment we have in any characters are those in the civilians rather than the troops.  That's about as close to a negative thing I have to say about the film characters.

Nolan made a decision to tell three basic lines of story in the film. Each is highlighted early in the film with a title card indicating where and when the events we are watching took place in the context of the experience. What he has managed to do is build stories that have completely different timelines into a single whole where everything synchronizes in the third act. The vessel at sea is a story that takes a full day. The aircraft battles occur in a two hour window. The story of the land bound soldiers occurs over several days. Each story line has small little conflicts and extended moments of tension, but as the climax gets closer, we see those stories intersecting and the brilliant score by Hans Zimmer begins to speed up its pace, For most of the movie it si background music that feels like minutes ticking against a clock. The more time passes, the more tense it becomes. At the climax, the score is more traditional with some of the same themes but accelerated into ticking seconds rather than minutes. The story of the soldiers involves several near misses, both in the sense of death and in being rescued. Those moments play out very much in bursts of energy followed by moments of calm. Most of the time on the small boat is more lethargic and there are brief moments of energy that pass rather quickly. Almost every moment in the plane's cockpit involves aerial combat. Each segment there is brief but filled with action. Nolan mixes these moments expertly to keep the flow of the story going. The characters in each of these scenarios get different resolutions as well. Each outcome feels authentic given the circumstances.

I'm not a film maker or much of a photographer, but I can notice when something is being done effectively in showing us a story. The aviation combat scenes are primarily shot fro a perspective immediately next to the fuselage over the wings of the plane. The only time we see a pilots eye view is when there is targeting and the enemy is being shot at. All of the scenes of the pilots are in close up inside of the cockpit. The vastness of the beaches and the number of British and allied forces hoping for rescue are emphasized with wide shots that put the figures in perspective. The beaches are not crowed but rather they are dotted with need lines of men queuing up for rides that never seem to arrive. The scenes set on the ocean show the ships traveling across the channel, but they are not bunched together until the end. The "Moonstone", the yacht that Rypance captains, is small in contrast to the military vessels that are sometimes sinking in her wake. All of the ships are made more insignificant by the smoke  climbing into the sky on the horizon. The deadly action that starts off the film is directed at a frantic pace, with the same high levels of dread that marked "Saving Private Ryan", but without the conspicuous violence.  The deadliest moments involve the participants struggles inside of the various craft they board, Fire and drowning are the most pronounced threats in this view to the events. Nolan reminds us that the danger is not simply a bullet or a bomb, although there are plenty of those, but panic and hubris can take a soldier as well.

It is not spin to turn this military failure into a false victory.  The expedition onto the continent had failed, miserably. There was however a victory in the retreat that took place. Tacitus said it best, "He that fights and runs away, may turn and fight another day: but he who is in battle slain, Will never rise to fight again." These words are not the excuse of a coward but the logic of a realist. The British people were able to see that this successful retreat would enable them to continue to fight. Nolan's story shows the shame on the faces of the soldiers returning home as well as their relief. It is the enthusiastic embrace by the public that makes the event a victory in the long run. "Their Finest" showed how that might be turned into a morale booster in the darkest hour of the war. "Dunkirk" shows us the sacrifice and courage it took to stand this bitter turn of events and grow from it. Later this year we will get a film featuring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill. The film ends with a piece of Churchill Rhetoric, designed to rally the citizens of Great Britain, but also to plead with America. The events depicted in the film give credence to his words.

He that fights and runs away, May turn and fight another day; But he that is in battle slain, Will never rise to fight again. Tacitus
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/tacitus118925.html

 "Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old."

This is a story that needs to be understood by new generations. Nolan gives the events a context that most of us need and does so with a degree of technical excellence that is superlative.  If it is not emotionally wrenching in every segment, it still has a heart that we can all admire.

Interstellar

For seven weeks now I have avoided reading any reviews of this film because I wanted to experience it with a clear and open mind. This would usually have been a film that would have been an opening night must for me, but circumstances have put it off for a substantial period. I can now add my two cents to the discussion, although at this point most of you will have formed your own opinions. "Interstellar" is maybe the most ambitious, intelligent and creative science fiction films made in the last fifty years. It has no fantasy elements to it, and it is deeply seated in the hard science realm of quantum physics, but it is more than anything a story about human beings rather than technology.

The Nolan brothers have a pretty clear opinion on how our science dollars are spent. The idea that short term objectives should take precedence over long term goals is an anathema to them. An early scene at young Murphy Cooper's school tells us exactly what foolishness comes from being narrow focused. It also shows how dangerous the conspiracy theories that thrive on the internet are. There is also a healthy bit of skepticism concerning federalization of the education process. Almost none of this is important to the plot but it is essential to the sensibilities of the film maker. This is a "can do" civilization and we need to keep that belief in something greater alive.

A seemingly terminal malaise has settled over the Earth as blight is decimating agriculture and the population of the planet has been diminished by a variety of  circumstances. Matthew McConaughey is Cooper, an engineer and former NASA pilot who has been relegated to the role of farmer, as has most of the world in trying to cope with massive famine. He and his ten year old daughter Murph, discover an anomaly with gravity that leads them to a secret plan to save civilization in one form or another. The team is lead by another father/daughter combination physicist Professor Brand, Nolan regular Michael Caine, and his daughter played by Anne Hathaway. They need Cooper to lead an expedition to a different star system that is being explored for habitable planets. Of the dozen scout ships sent forth only three appear to have survived and found somewhere promising. Because travel through a worm hole in space allows them to reach those destinations in relatively short times on a human scale, the passage of time on Earth will be longer and Cooper's family will grow old before he will ever make it back. This is the point where most of us who have only a passing knowledge of science need to have some exposition. The pacing of the first act is leisurely with a building sense of dread. Once the mission starts, there are some pauses in the action to bring everyone up to speed on the physics. This becomes a time travel story in the sense that different groups will be experiencing time in different ways during the course of the story. I'm sure there are experts out there who will nit pick the science here the way that was done for "Gravity" last year.  As a viewer of the film, I felt sufficiently informed to be able to follow the ideas up through the climax of the film. Once we arrive at the final explanation, I did feel a little lost, even though I could follow the story line. The pace of the movie picks up and with that urgency, the exposition becomes more visual in nature and as a consequence more abstract.

We are told early on that love is the only thing other than time and gravity that transcends space. The purpose of this movie is to show that this is true. Cooper undertakes this mission reluctantly because he sees it is the only possibility of saving his family. Saving humanity matters of course but it is the survival instinct and the love of one's children that drive us to reach a little further. It is a theory that is expounded upon by a late arriving character in the story. It is also told under harrowing and unpleasant circumstances, but it is nevertheless true as Cooper will reveal. The complexity of love and the ability of that emotions to drive our actions is front and center in the story and it usually makes sense. There are some places where the story telling depends on withholding love and then letting love solve a puzzle that don't always work but they still seem to be honest ideas.

In many ways this film is a counter weight to "2001: A Space Odyssey". Kubrick's view of space travel and human evolution is cold and calculating. In that story we seek knowledge because of our intellect, here we are doing the same thing out of desperation. In "2001" it is the machine that betrays us, in "Interstellar" the betrayals are human in nature. The Discovery travels through space without contact on another planet, The Endurance travels through time and space, encountering planets and other explorers in attempting to seed another galaxy. "Space Odyssey" begins at the dawn of man, "Interstellar" begins at what appears to be man's sunset. The psychedelic trip though time in 1968 was a metaphysical journey without any clear explanations, a similar event in the current film is all explanation (although admittedly not well understood). Human evolution in the Arthur C. Clarke story is a result of extraterrestrial intelligence intervening to make it possible, the Nolan brothers have the audacity to believe that human beings might be the ones who are responsible for our own advances. Both stories feature artificial intelligence in the form of on board computer systems, but "Interstellar" makes those characters, mobile and warm. The idea of sacrificing a computer is objectionable to Brand when faced with the need, because of the personification of TARS. Dave and Frank pay lip service (get it?) to HAL being a member of the team, but TARS and CASE participate in the actions and behave as team members, even to the point of making a "2001" joke.

Christopher Nolan is nothing if not ambitious. This is a story with creativity grounded in science. A fantasy writer can invent any kind of planet and populate it with whatever creatures they choose. "Avatar" is a good example. James Cameron makes dragons and tigers and bears of a different sort. Nolan has to conceptualize two worlds  for the explorers to visit that need to seem realistic and dangerous. Neither of the two planets is very hospitable to humans but not because the indigenous life forms are going to eat us. The ecosystems of the two worlds just are not going to work for human habitation. The water laden planet that absorbs so much of the time for our team is actually spectacular to look at and to contemplate. The frozen world that hides a secret is equally well conceived and  even more believable. Neither one will take us out of the science based story that we are in, they reflect the realities of our choices much more.

The human dangers are the one place where there might be some questions about the story telling. There are two different acts of humans that are questionable from a moral standpoint. I don't want to give away anything that could be a reason for suspense or emotional surprise to the audience but I will say that both of these choices seemed questionable to me. in a longer film, the ideas might be the basis for discussion and the central focus or theme of the picture, in this context they feel a little too much like plot bridges to create drama. They work, but they may do so at the expense of the heart of the real story here.

Cooper frequently jokes with the mechanical members of the crew over their honesty and humor settings. He turns them up or down as necessity dictates. Using a similar measurement, this film is near a ninety-five percent on the creativity and thoughtfulness scale and only slightly lower, say ninety percent on a story telling standard. The actors are all excellent and the cast is really filled with people who know what they are doing. A couple of the performers play against type and do well. Hathaway and McConaughey are the show and I thought they were both effective at conveying the characters, especially at moments of emotional depth. Jessica Chastain is usually excellent, here she was merely satisfactory, having been cast in the most thankless role in the film. Young Mackenzie Foy is the brightest spark in the movie although her character's truculence is a bit off putting, you can easily believe her intelligence. "Interstellar" was a wonderful experience and a great intellectual challenge that is carried off with authority.