Why I love and hate Interstellar

Ever since I watched a Christopher Nolan movie for the first time, I knew I was going to love the artistic endeavours of this director and his brother Jonathan. Their imagination gives birth to films that are aesthetically rich, thought-provoking, complex and deep, an example of quality entertainment.

In spite of this, or maybe because of this, there are things I love about Interstellar, and other things I absolutely hate.

The film starts with a slow pace and takes the audience by hand into a journey on the edge between science and fantasy, with many sequences that are awesome in the most literal way, and are impressive technical achievement. What could go wrong? Well, a lot of things.

Almost every dialogue felt weird to me. The characters spit poetic words like they’re reading a book, and their philosophical insights sound carefully constructed, not spontaneous at all. Even their more colloquial interactions didn’t feel authentic to me, it always looked like they were saying what they were saying because the movie had to go in a specific direction.

I’m under the impression that the Nolans overthought the screenplay, to the point of overseeing some obvious but key elements, for instance the fact that these people are nearby the most beautiful and gigantic things a human being can witness, yet they don’t seem to care that much. A warmhole isn’t something that might actually exist, and it’s even hard to simply think about it, yet in the movie it looks like it’s just another space thing, you know. Ah, and there’s a wormhole. Oh, cool.

The dialogues problem extends to the construction of some characters. Anne Hathaways’ one, in particular, doesn’t work very well, as pointed out by The Atlantic:

Hathaway, however, is an awkward fit as Dr. Brand fille, too loose at times and too tight at others. She’s certainly not helped by plot developments that quickly render her the Girl Who Needs Rescuing and, later, have her argue for making decisions about the survival of the human race based on whom she wants to canoodle with. Yes, the movie itself may ultimately come to the conclusion that love conquers all, but making Hathaway an early advocate for this thesis does not exactly bolster her scientific credentials.

Let’s move on. You’d think that the screenplay of a movie that takes itself so seriously would be bulletproof, but it’s far from that. The story has many flaws, and I couldn’t even fully realise it by watching it in the theater. If you’re curious, read 21 Things in Interstellar That Don’t Make Sense. Yes, this is nitpicking and it’s fair to say that there’s no reason to actively try to dissect a story and find its flaws this way, but when the weaknesses are so relevant and numerous, they’re hard to ignore.

Among the problems with story and dialogues, there’s the one I find more hideous and intrusive. The infodumping. A lot of infodumping. For those not used to the term, here’s a description from Wikipedia:

Infodumping, where a concentrated amount of background material is given all at once in the story, often in the form of a conversation between two characters, both of whom should already know the material under discussion. (The so-called As you know, Bob conversation.)

Infodumping is necessary for any film and audience but, when abused, it totally ruins the experience of a movie, making dialogues sound a lot less genuine and believable. This movie is full of them, because many things simply don’t work without explanations (and that’s not good). For instance, some characters explain basic concepts to the protagonist, who is a NASA pilot. I mean, he’s a goddamn NASA pilot, he’s supposed to know. Romilly, one of his teammates, explains to him how a wormhole works, and it does that with pencil and paper. Cooper should have said “Hey, I watched Donnie Darko too” or “Hey, I’m a NASA pilot, not the audience of this movie”. It felt awkward and out of place every time it happened.

White writing this piece, I realised I’m not the only one who’s been bothered by these infodumps. I share many of Daily Dot’s Nico Lang critiques to the movie, for instance when he writes that “Hans Zimmer is a monster who needs to be stopped”; that, as I mentioned, “the dialogue is utterly laughable”; that, and this is brilliant, “it might be the first movie in history whose plot hole is an actual hole”. I nodded with extreme energy when I read his comment on the worst family reunion ever:

The film’s most ridiculous cameo, however, has to be Ellen Burstyn, who shows up briefly as Old Lady Murph. After waiting centuries to be reunited with her father again, OLM (now on her death bed) has a brief conversation with her dad (to, like, catch up and stuff) before telling him to go off and make space nookie with Brand, who is conveniently stranded on a planet somewhere with a few hundred human embryos.

So, to wrap this up, the reality is that I realised something during the movie, and then thinking and reading about it: I realised that the movie has some amazing, jaw-dropping sequences, but the screenplay is weak and it doesn’t seem to make sense at all. So what seemed to be “deep”, quality entertainment, is actually just that, entertainment.

And don’t think I’m crazy if I say that I’d recommend watching this movie and that I’ll certainly enjoy watching it again. I do it because I recognize that this film is indeed ambitious, undoubtedly made by people with amazing skills. Yes I will probably take the volume down during the dialogues and put some classical music instead — isn’t that how another great space movie worked? — but I know that the jaw-dropping sequences will make my jaw drop again. Ant that’s exactly why I both love and hate this movie.