Book Review
Interstellar
Personally, I believe Interstellar is Christopher Nolan's finest
achievement. Perhaps the general public would rank this blockbuster eighth
among the top ten best space movies. I, for one, would place it third, behind
Ryan Gosling's First Man and Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity. Interstellar appeals
to me since it focuses on personal grief and the love one has for one's
family. The beginning is fantastic! I like how it starts with a farm surrounded
by corn crops, a simple start. It's a lot better than starting the film with all of
the intense, apocalyptic action that usually occurs at the beginning and end
of superhero films.
The main structure of the story is very excellent. Cooper is heading
into space with a team on a quest to discover a new habitat for humanity's
future generation as the food supply runs out. But the fact that he has say
goodbye to his darling daughter Murph and the rest of his family is even
more difficult. Even though he's only been in space for a short time, time
slows or speeds up as he falls further into space, and his family begins to
age.
Cooper meets a number of wonderful, loyal friends along the way on
his mission, including the two amusing cubicle robots, CASE and TARS (I
often confuse one for the other). It's cool how they kiss farewell to their
galaxy as they fall into the black hole, because it reminds me of the star gate
tunnel in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the robots remind
me of the monoliths due to their shape. I enjoy the build-up of tension when
they arrive on various planetary terrains.
Above all, I enjoy the scene near the end where Cooper descends into
Gargantua's abyss and finds himself alone in the 5th dimension, which
appears to be a library of flashbacks at first. I don't want to give anything
away for you people out there, so don't read my review. For those of you
who have seen Interstellar, I'd like to point out how Cooper initially feels
depressed and emptiness after saying goodbye to his daughter, and I agree
that the loss is tremendous, but Cooper soon realizes that the theories she
had about a ghost in her bedroom were all along his presence.