Interstellar | Archive

20:04Josh Larsen:Trust me, these are the pieces that get compliments. Shop Boehm online or in store and make this your best dress summer yet. Shop at boehm.com. That is B-O-H-M-E dot com. I wish I could say I had a conversion or that I was going to double down and be even more pinned as a hater. But what you just talked about, that whole Matt Damon sequence, we didn't even get to talk about that in our first review for Fear of Spoilers. And it's one of the things I really do like about the film. So, again, not getting a chance to even talk about some of the things I like. I think I have had this reputation as someone who was really down on Interstellar when I was just mixed.

20:41Josh Larsen:But Damon's great in this. And he, like Leonardo DiCaprio, I think, fare best when they're allowed to be a little weaselly. And that's definitely what we get here. I also got some Colonel Kurtz vibes from his whole character, this crazed man trying to start his own new civilization, you know, unwisely. So I did like that sequence. And, yeah, let's get some of this. That's a Heart of Darkness reference too, isn't it? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of, you know, a lot of those influences you can see on Interstellar. Yeah, let's get the scorekeeping out of the way. Definitely enjoyed it more this time around.

21:14Josh Larsen:It's going to get a bump ahead of the Dark Knight Rises for sure in my re-rankings at the end of the series. But, you know, again, it's not like I've had some sort of conversion. I would say this time I'm mixed to positive. And you touched on one of the reasons why I'm a little more positive on it this time, Adam. about midway through there, you were talking about the ambition and the audacity of it. And I think that is something that I took for granted in 2014 because I had anticipated so much from this film, Nolan being one of my favorite working filmmakers, the whole idea of a space movie from him.

21:50Josh Larsen:The fact that some things weren't working for me, I kind of set aside just how much this movie was trying to do. And though I don't think it succeeded on all those levels you checked off, the fact that it was trying to do all of those and was even somewhat successful in some of them, I should have given it more credit for. Now, as to, you know, sort of the thrills and that giddiness level, I believe that screening we saw it on was an IMAX screening at Navy Pier, the press screening the first time around, because I remember that imagery just being so intense and overwhelming in a good way. And the imagery isn't something we spent a lot of time on either in our initial review.

22:31Josh Larsen:So I want to touch on that. I had a few sort of noggin-blowing moments. Let me say near noggin-blowing moments in Interstellar that I do want to mention, where it was kind of like it got me leaning forward in my seat. Like, here we go. Here's what I love about Nolan films. It is that moment where the movie switches from Cooper's perspective to that of Murph as an adult, where she's played by Jessica Chastain, right? Because suddenly - And that cut. The cut. It's just a simple cut. It's a simple cut and it's a memento-like whiplashing of time and perspective. And I almost wish we had left Cooper for a longer period of time so that that could have sunk in a little bit more because we're with Murph as an adult for a little bit, but then we start going to cross-cutting and it kind of undercuts what a really bravura choice it was to make that timely.

23:25Josh Larsen:But I do like that moment quite a bit. Again, when we discovered that Cooper was the ghost haunting her bookshelves from inside the black hole, I mean, that's a fun little aha, like we've had in other movies and the visual production design at work there that is allowing us to visually put the pieces together, I like to. I don't know if either of those really count for me in terms of giving me that experience, the same experience I had in some of those other moments of his other films I mentioned. And bottom line really is not that I need every one of his films to do that. I'll be very curious to see.

23:58Josh Larsen:I can't think of one off the top of my head from Dunkirk that works in that way, yet I love Dunkirk. But I do think if I had gotten something like that, I might have been able to forgive Interstellar, the other things that do hold me back and that did still hold me back on this viewing. If it had been able to here or there grasp what it was so impressively reaching for in a way that affected me as much as it's affected you and the other people who really love this film, then I think some of the other quibbles and things that I do have, I would have been able to just toss out the window. You know I love focusing on one thing about a movie and being willfully blind to a lot of other things in it.

24:41Josh Larsen:So the fact that I didn't have that sort of moment where the movie just grabbed me and shook me like Inception does, like Memento does, like The Prestige does, like Dunkirk does. The guy's got a high bar. That's all it is about my reception of Interstellar is that Christopher Nolan has an enormously high bar. He raised it for himself here and, at least to my mind, wasn't quite able to meet it. And I can only respond with some level of disappointment.

25:12Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. And, of course, there's people like me and my daughter Sophie and our producer Sam this time around, who I think liked it before, but this time felt like he reached for the stars and somehow he grabbed them. And I think that's what's so impressive for me. Honestly, Josh, this is a movie that I never thought would probably rise above. It's number two ranking in my Nolan list. And right now, I think it's going to supplant memento. We'll see when we do that ranking at the end of this overview. But watching the films in order and seeing all the ways that this film is so much like a Christopher Nolan movie, but that he manages to maybe get around some of the quibbles that even someone who loves almost every other film we've seen so far often has with his movies.

25:59Adam Kempenaar:and that emotional element is a key one here. That's why it feels like a masterpiece. It really does to me. And so maybe we can talk about some of those ways. We've kind of done this scorecarding throughout this whole overview. We're going in order. We're watching them chronologically. We're having these revelations about how these films truly are all connected. I mean, even before when you watch these films three or five years apart or whatever it was, you would always know that they were a Christopher Nolan movie, but watching them in order really has made us keenly aware of that. And here, most obviously, you've got his use of time.

26:31Adam Kempenaar:And just like we talked about with Inception a few weeks ago, the way in different universes, essentially, and here they truly are different, they're different galaxies, right? Time functions completely differently, and everyone has a different experience with it. So that seems so perfect, going back even to following to an extent, going back to Memento. Certainly, we understand that he's still preoccupied with that. Protagonists who are driven by performance. And here it's not performance in the sense that Cooper is an entertainer, but he's a professional. And he's someone who is only truly living when he's doing what it is he feels he was probably put on this earth to do.

27:11Adam Kempenaar:We've seen that throughout these films, including people who just discover their vocation. Maybe someone like Dom back in Following, for example. Inception really gave us that emotional or attempted for me emotional through line of returning home. You think about how important that is to the Batman films as well, among others, and seeing your kids' faces again. I mean, here, it goes without saying that's the angst that drives this entire story. there's always cases where lies are revealed truths are revealed and we have a character at his core who like all of these protagonists is trying to deal with not only grief but trying to deal with his guilt right there is there is complicity here there is cooper trying to make this all matter trying to make this count because he knows as i said before what he's done to his family and his daughter specifically truly is unforgivable there's a lot about memory in here We have Murphy at the end saying there's too many memories.

28:08Adam Kempenaar:I can't even go back to the bedroom, but that's what draws her back and ultimately unravel the whole puzzle. We've got not maybe thieves in this movie, but we definitely have con men like we've seen throughout so many of these films. Professor Brand, played by Michael Caine, we come to learn is a version of that. And man, obviously, is a version of that. And that's where you're right. We left out a lot probably back in 2014. I didn't think about how we probably didn't dive into that because we didn't want to reveal too much about the movie. And that is a big reveal. But now here was some distance.

28:40Adam Kempenaar:I mean, that man storyline is so crucial to what makes this film such an interesting one to discuss. us, we have a character again, who is making these enormous moral compromises. And he praises someone like Professor Brand for the incredible sacrifice he makes, the personal sacrifice that he lies to everyone around him who he loves, because he is trying to achieve something greater. And that's what man is doing as well. And of course, it's not a surprise. Nolan loves to be really on the nose with names. We've seen that quite a bit and that he is Dr. Man as if he is, I think supposed to be this representative of all mankind.

29:18Adam Kempenaar:He creates his own moral universe, basically, right? He decides what ends justify what means for him having gone through this experience all alone on this planet. He reminds me an awful lot of Leonard from Memento. And it reminds me of Jackman and the sacrifice he makes. Cooper even calls him a coward, which I think someone in the prestige near the end calls him a coward, calls Angier a coward. And he says, no, He explains the bravery it took every night to go through what he did. So there's some crossover there as well. But where we disagree, of course, is this is the first one where even though I wasn't a person who felt like I needed an emotional core to his films, I didn't need to have that little tickle in my throat or feel like it was getting dusty in the room to love Christopher Nolan movies.

30:06Adam Kempenaar:As I said on our Inception review, I just needed to see the humanity. I needed to feel for these characters as flawed and even sometimes terrible as they were. Inception was the first movie that pushed that to the fore with the dead wife storyline and the kids he's longing to see. So when it's there, as much as it is, and you don't feel that ache at all, that's disappointing. And I didn't feel it at all. And all I feel in Interstellar is ache. You know, I felt it constantly. So for the first time, this is Nolan really reaching, ambitiously striving to hit emotional notes. And it resonates with me.

30:43Josh Larsen:Yeah. Yeah. And to be clear, I find this to be emotional. I don't, I'm not taking sort of the position you took with Inception where you couldn't connect with it at all on an emotional level. I think particularly the early scenes with Mackenzie Foy as a young Murph and McConaughey together, just, you're right, the family relationships there. It's very Spielbergian, right? How he's establishing this family unit, this domestic group that we're going to follow. And I think those are very strong. And in some ways, I find his departure from young Murph to be the most emotionally wrenching moment, that choice.

31:20Josh Larsen:Also, we can mention the editing here because I love how it's intercut with the countdown of his takeoff. So it's not that he leaves Murph and then we're in the cockpit. Exactly. They're happening simultaneously. And that's just a brilliant way of handling that and because it makes it much more emotional. So I do agree that this is an emotional film. But I also have to say, if you can't find emotion in Interstellar, you may need to go talk to someone because this is a movie that is going to bludgeon you with emotional content. I mean, the scene, it's almost like if Nolan had heard all the talk about him being a cold director and he said, OK, you say I'm a cold director?

32:08Josh Larsen:Get a load of this. I'm going to sit Matthew McConaughey down in front of 20 some years of footage. And again, I'm not saying that this isn't effective or this is a bad choice. But come on, you've got tears. And yet you're laughing and mocking it. Well, I'm not mocking it. You heartless bastard. What I'm mocking is saying, yes, of course you're going to feel emotion in this movie because he's like holding your arms behind your back and wringing it out of you. And it works and it's fine. But the reason I guess maybe I would say this is an element that I feel is almost more effective in something like Inception is because it's more subtly woven in with the other themes of the film, which we talked about back in our overview of that movie.

32:47Josh Larsen:And that's where I found the emotion being really hitting me hard because it snuck up on me, I guess. So I'm not saying that I am not moved by Matthew McConaughey. I mean, he goes full Captain Phillips. We've talked about how that scene with Tom Hanks is so overpowering and overwhelming and impressive in terms of what the actor is doing. I think McConaughey is working in the same range here. But yes, of course, this movie is going to be emotional. And that's fine. That's good.

33:13Adam Kempenaar:But it's because we're so grounded, Josh, in understanding what was lost in that space. It's because of how much we feel for those characters and understand the incredible, I suppose, tragedy of it. We feel that. It's not just that it's a father and daughter across time who are experiencing emotional things together. It's because the screenplay works.

33:37Josh Larsen:And that's what I'm responding to as well. I'm not saying it's manipulative. I'm just saying, okay, if you could measure the emotional quotient in a test tube of Inception, you have like a quarter of the test tube of that quotient. In Interstellar, it's flowing over the top of the test tube. And I am just saying that I responded more to having it that more subtle amount. That's all it is. It's just maybe how people respond to this sort of thing when it's in movies. And I will say you're right, Adam. You mentioned this in our original review, and it stood out to me more so this time, maybe because I had you in the back of my mind, but the emotional implications are always part of the scientific equations as well.

34:23Josh Larsen:This kind of gets into the explication element, which we don't really need to revisit. But just to credit you a little bit on that end, I did recognize where whenever they, mostly when they were talking about the science, we understood some of the emotional reasoning behind what they were saying. And so that is an element of the film that I think does work. Um, now on the other hand, I, I can also say watching that scene with McConaughey, um, you can see Nolan kind of as a filmmaker figuring his way. How do I edit a scene like this? How do I take such a, such an expressive actorly moment and how do I edit it?

35:01Josh Larsen:And that sequence with McConaughey watching the old videos is interesting because he breaks down about two seconds in, um, which again is affecting and, and understandable. but I, you almost wonder if, what if Nolan had let that play a little bit more? Like he breaks down when he sees Timothy Chalamet, who I totally forgot was in this, by the way, as, as his son, the age he was when he left. And again, I could understand why he did that, but Nolan could have also let that moment breathe and saved like that expression for when we see Casey Affleck as, cause that's when it hit me, you know, just, just as a viewer, it was like, Oh, like when all of a sudden he turns around, Casey Affleck turns around with a little baby and says, here's your grandchild.

35:46Josh Larsen:Like that's, that's when it kind of washes over me. And, and McConaughey had already kind of blown the moment earlier, you know, which, which again, it worked for me, but something similar happens a little bit in what is also an affecting moment for me, but maybe limited in a degree when he, when Cooper has his reunion with his quote unquote, older daughter, you know, at the very end, Ellen Burstyn. Great scene. Burstyn is fantastic, but also cut short. Like just when we're getting involved in this reunion they're having, she says, you go, and sends him off to Anne Hathaway's brand. And I'm sorry, that's not the relationship we have been invested in.

36:29Josh Larsen:This whole movie, we've been invested in Cooper and Murph, and we're finally getting there. And it gives us just a hint of that, but I'm ready to sit down with those two and just kind of be in that space with them together. And he goes and tracks down Anne Hathaway. It just strikes me as one of those moments where you can see filmmaking choices, someone, as you said, we don't maybe need Nolan to be an emotions first director. Maybe it's not his strongest suit. And sometimes when these good scenes are not what they could have been, And that's what we're being shown.

37:03Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. I mean, in relation to the two examples you just gave, it's funny because I think it speaks to not only our different, very subjective experiences with this film, but with performance and with movies in general. That I remember having the exact opposite reaction to that McConaughey breakdown scene. I remember watching it. And you're not wrong in the sense that I bet if we put it on our screens right now and we timed it, whatever moment we both describe as him getting emotional, going from stoic and curious to. To obviously sad, he's he's kind of time it. Well, see, that's where we that's where we differ.

37:43Adam Kempenaar:Like, I think we would we would pinpoint a similar moment where he starts to break down. But the notion of him convulsing that that wasn't my sense. In fact, it was just the opposite. I was surprised at the trajectory of the scene, actually. It seemed too subtle to me. It actually was completely the opposite. No, I mean, that's what was so great about that performance. If anything, all I thought watching it this time, I didn't remember from my two previous viewings whether or not Nolan just left the camera on McConaughey or not. Speaking of Chalamet, I thought it might have been a call me by your name and scene moment.

38:16Adam Kempenaar:And he certainly could have done that. And I'm not necessarily saying Christopher Nolan could have made a better choice there. I really like, obviously, not only the whole trajectory of that performance beat by beat, but I also like the choices he makes to cut back when he does to showing those faces on screen. That said, you could have done Captain Phillips. You could have done call me by your name and just left the camera on McConaughey and just let us hear the voices. Just let us hear those voices and watch him react. And maybe that would have allowed McConaughey to stretch it out even more, right?

38:44Adam Kempenaar:He would have had to because he knows the cameras on him the entire time. Maybe he would have held back a little bit as it is. It did work for me. And you know what? That scene at the end, I don't disagree that it does feel clipped. but there's something about that that i actually i guess respect or i'm fascinated by because it's certainly a moment where as you said the what was your analogy the the vial or whatever is overflowing and we get to the moment that so many other films would have milked they would have milked it so hard and made it so emotional and nolan keeps it grounded in the reality of who both of those people are and even accounting for to an extent how no matter what bond they have and how deep it is and that's actually kind of the point that they can be apart from each other and it still exists i feel that anyway but but no matter how far apart they are they can still have that that connection that is something i'm definitely aware of or feeling in that moment but it also just acknowledges that there is now such a gap in age between them as she says i have my kids now, there is a reality to that that's really bold for him, I think, to acknowledge that they're not the same people they were and that there is a distance between them that just can't be overcome in those moments.

40:01Adam Kempenaar:But really what it is, Josh, that worked for me this time, especially, or what made me not feel like Nolan somehow took something away from me that I really wanted, it's the fact that again he uses sound in a transition to bridge coming out of their reunion into then what he goes and does next which is him deciding it's time to leave and he's going to go on this adventure because what it does is and it's classic Nolan right it it elides time and it in a way elongates it it does elongate that moment even though we know that he walked out of the room we see him walk out of that room at that point we know that their conversation based on everything she's saying to him went on so much longer.

40:42Adam Kempenaar:That was enough for me. Just the fact that they did have that dialogue, that she continued to express to him what she thought he should do. I knew that the moment really lasted longer than what we see on screen. That was enough for me. I'm here now, Laura. I'm here. No. No parent should have to watch their own child die.

41:11Josh Larsen:I have my kids here for me now. You go.

41:21Where?

41:26Brand.

41:38she's out there

41:46Josh Larsen:setting up camp yeah and the score there is a fair amount of bridging as you say with the score the Hans Zimmer score here that I do think is effective throughout the film. Um, and I also like, I don't know if you consider this part of the score, but the stopwatch ticking effect we get throughout this movie, um, which is something that could be applied to any Nolan movie. Um, you know, it, it's still, I can intellectually understand all that. It still just feels like an awkward choice in the moment for me. And I don't object to us seeing him moving on and catching up with brand at some point. I like the idea of him going on another mission.

42:22Josh Larsen:It's just there's something awkward to that little moment. I do want to get back to the visuals because as I said, we didn't really give that a lot of time. These are brilliantly envisioned planets. And here's a way I think where, you know, with all the predecessors of space epics that came before, I think Nolan and his team did step up to the plate, at least for me, and give us like this water planet with these waves the size of Florida or those frozen clouds hovering over his spacecraft. What I really like. And he hits it. Yeah. He hits it at one point. That frozen cloud, right? To let us know.

42:56Josh Larsen:Great touch. You mentioned the fixed camera point of view. And I'm not sure if you were referring to the one that's on the wing of the Ranger spacecraft throughout his journey. What I love about this is it's really helpful orientation for all of these different vistas that are going to come our way. so that no matter how weird things get, we return to that camera perspective fixed on his wing and it kind of orients us. And it also, I think, adds an element of realism, right? It feels like a real airplane. It feels like if you've ever flown and you look out your window and you see the wing there.

43:30Josh Larsen:So it's once fantastical because we're in space, but also you feel sort of the nuts and bolts of it. And that shot of the film for me is probably the one where Cooper's craft is so tiny and it's just, this is what I'll remember from IMAX. slowly moving across the expanse of Saturn. And just the enormity of the mission and the smallness of his chances are emphasized there in a way that's really remarkable.

43:58Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, and I think we touched on, obviously, that moment where he's flying down to the planet and they just clip the mountain, which is Nolan just reminding you that this is real or it's more real than you think, right? This isn't just computer-generated movie fantasy. there are stakes involved in all of this you make a misstep you could hit something that you shouldn't hit and there's a moment too that really hit home for me when a character i think it's one of the robots says do you want me to shut something off and he says no i need to feel the wind and it goes back to that wing moment right or i need to i need to feel the the force or he says something like they're not the force like star wars but you know what i mean no it's like a feel something Yeah.

44:39Adam Kempenaar:And you realize that that's what's so special about this movie and the way it is visually designed is that you never for a second feel like any of this is just all make believe. It goes back to the idea of stakes for me. Everything is grounded in a certain reality that raises the level of tension that raises the level of suspense. And it even gets back to another moment in the film where he's talking to David Jesse. He's talking to Romilly and Romilly points out, wow, we just have we just have this metal that's separating us from the void. So there are all these little reminders like that. Nolan is very deliberately putting all these little reminders so that we are always aware of the potential consequences.

45:21Adam Kempenaar:And it adds that level of fear. It adds that level of suspense. It adds that level of us feeling for the characters and hoping that they can overcome these circumstances that, as another person says at one point, nobody in history has really ever had to face before. You know, so so knowing that knowing that these are things no one has really faced and probably never even imagined. How do you make it feel real? And those are some of the techniques that Nolan does to pull that off.

45:50Josh Larsen:Well, this isn't the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of space, right? It's hard to know what choices are made, what tools are used exactly. I'm sure less CGI is part of it. But you know when you're in this outer space, it feels. Whereas the MCU outer space can be fun, but it doesn't often feel.

46:13Adam Kempenaar:right are we gonna stop there i mean we have talked about this movie for probably enough time as i look at the clock ticking away i think it's moving the same speed for both of us i don't know maybe for you it's been an hour and a half yeah for me it's i think it's gone a little less a

46:28Josh Larsen:little more slowly for me but how many pages of notes did we get through art do you feel good do you feel like you know what i'm about three quarters of the way there yeah i think we're

46:37Adam Kempenaar:I'll leave some in the tank. I'll leave some in the tank when we have a 2024 10-year anniversary revisit. How's that? Sounds like a plan. We'll find a way. We always have. Look for new Nolan content coming soon. As we said, that movie Deathmatch Battle, Inception vs. Interstellar, Monday, July 6th. And we will have our review of The Odyssey coming in mid-July. As well, access to the Film Spotting Archive is just one of the benefits of being a Film Spotting Family member. To join, learn more at filmspottingfamily.com. Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

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