Interstellar

Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn, John Lithgow, Michael Caine, David Gyasi, Wes Bentley, Bill Irwin, Mackenzie Foy, Casey Affleck, Topher Grace David Oyelowo
Running Time: 169 min.
Rating: PG-13

★★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

Well, at least we can't continue claiming there aren't any fresh, original ideas left in movies. Christopher Nolan's gigantic sci-fi think piece, Interstelllar, is full of them. Whether I could explain them or decipher what they all mean is another issue entirely but no one could leave the film disappointed that it didn't have enough to say. Every time a space-set sci-fi entry is released, inevitable comparisons to the trailblazing 2001: A Space Odyssey are made, whether warranted or not. Here, they are, and not just visually either. With an overreaching ambition that spans across time, space and humanity, Nolan hasn't just swung for the fences, he's run right through them. If someone asked me to explain what exactly occurs in the film's final hour, I'd give it a decent shot, but would likely fail. But it is surprising that many of these scientific facts do hold up to logical scrutiny even when the actual plot's gone too far off the deep end.

At times, you'll be wondering if this has anything to do with science at all or co-screenwriters Christopher and Jonathan Nolan are just making this up as they go along. It turns out they're not, as Caltech physicist Kip Thorne actually consulted on the film and it's at its best when playing in those waters, which is luckily 80 percent of its running time. Faltering only when awash in Spielbergian sentimentality that's partially earned, the whole thing is kind of unprecedented terms of the number of influences it draws from. If Kubrick, Spielberg and Shyamalan raised a cinematic child, it would be called Interstellar, so it's easy to understand how it's garnered such polarizing reactions.  It may take years to calculate or comprehend its creative worth, but any picture aiming this high had little chance at achieving perfection. Instead, it's Nolan's most gloriously imperfect endeavor, and one sure to be discussed and analyzed for a while to come.

In the near-future on a resource-depleted Earth, former military pilot and NASA astronaut Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is struggling to run the family farm the midst of a crop blight that's slowly destroying civilization. His 10-year-old daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) is not only struggling in school in the wake of her mom's death, but claims her room is being haunted by poltergeists. But these "ghosts" are really unidentifiable intelligence leaving coordinates to a secret NASA facility being overseen by Professor John Brand (Michael Caine).

Brand's discovered a wormhole by Saturn leading to three potentially habitable planets in the galaxy that could offer a chance for humanity's survival. Cooper joins Brand's daughter, biotechnologist Amelia (Anne Hathaway), scientists Romilly (David Gyasi) and Doyle (Wes Bentley) and a pair of robots named TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin) and CASE (voiced by Josh Stewart) aboard the Endurance shuttle in search of a new home. But the clock keeps ticking faster, as Cooper's torn between reuniting with his family on Earth and insuring the future of the human race. 

The opening hour of the film is confounding, with the viewer dropped into this post-apocalyptic wasteland without much of sense of time or location. Nolan trusts us to figure it out  Everything that happens initially becomes clearer by the end, but what a strange trip it is getting there. With depleted resources and the crop crisis, the biggest fear early on is that we're heading into Shyamalan territory. The mention of poltergeists and the appearance of a rogue NASA unit operating as covertly as the CIA, does little to quell those concerns. Fortunately, the explanation of the mission doesn't involve aliens or Twilight Zone twists, but a very real mission more rooted in scientific fact and placed into fantastical fiction. It's when the crew takes off and enters that wormhole that the craziness begins and the story starts to peel its many layers.

Rarely has a space epic been so thoroughly concerned with the passage of time and all the consequences surrounding it.The realization of a massive gravitational time dilation ends up being the foundation on which all the film's most powerful themes rest, with one hour on the surface equivalent to seven years on Earth. It is a "race against time" in the strictest, most literal sense, as each minute Cooper spends investigating could represent a birthday missed or a wedding passed. And the more details we learn of Professor Brand's plan, the less likely Cooper's reunion with his kids seems, especially considering they're now adults his age.

The moment Jessica Chastain takes over for Mackenzie Foy as Murph is emotionally brutal, if not only for the transmissions Cooper sees from home, but the moral quandary the screenplay presents, testing the boundaries of sacrifice and selflessness. It's the ferry boat dilemma from The Dark Knight taken to a cosmic scale with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance. Well suited to their roles, Chastain and Casey Affleck are completely plausible as the adult counterparts of Cooper's kids 23 years later, with Murph still harboring a grudge against her father for abandoning them. When their story of trying to survive on an inhabitable Earth starts to take center stage, Nolan juggles it well with the ongoing space mission, which quickly deteriorates from a potential return home to a race against the clock.

For the first time since 1997's largely underrated Contact, McConaughey finds himself in a giant sci-fi space epic, and while he was clearly the weak there, he's now entering this project as not only an recent Oscar winner, but ten times the actor he used to be. Much more relaxed and confident as a performer compared to his rookie years, he must this time carry the entire load of this movie on his back, appearing in every scene and selling some pretty heady stuff in the third act. He's a farmer, father, pilot and equally adept at playing each and all in a role that actually earns him all those Paul Newman comparisons that have been made over the years.

Anne Hathaway joining McConaughey enables us to watch two of the best at the top of their game, feeding off each other with their characters' differing philosophies toward the missions' ultimate purpose and steps toward fulfilling it. The biggest discussion point isn't whether Hathaway's more believable as an astronaut and scientist than Sandra Bullock was in Gravity (hint: she is), but just how much she manages to do with Brand's eyes and subtle facial expressions. That's why it's disappointing whenever Nolan gives her too much to say about feelings that should be demonstrated rather than discussed. There's a cringe worthy speech she has in the vessel about that would have been unbearable had any actress but Hathaway delivered it. In a way, when given clunky dialogue she proves just how good she is, as this deserves to rank amongst her most rewarding performances.

There's also a third major name uncredited the film whose identity has been concealed in the advertising for mostly valid reasons. It's not a well kept secret, but I was still completely taken aback by the magnitude and importance of the part, which heavily informs the film's themes. Again taking from the Spielberg playbook, it can't be a coincidence that the character is named "Mann" given the nature of the role, which is fleshed out to perfection by the star playing him.

Viewers wouldn't even need to be told that this project forgoes the use of CGI in favor of practical effects and miniatures since it's plainly obvious just watching it. Or maybe I should say it's not obvious at all, since the effects sequences don't call attention to itself like green screen work so often does. If ever there was a case not to use it, Nolan wisely knew it was here, as a hard science fiction tale with big ideas is basically begging for a traditional approach that's the antithesis of what's in theaters now, making it easy to see why he rejected a 3D release. While there were supposedly numerous complaints from those who saw it on the big screen about the sound drowning out dialogue, the only sound-related issue that caught my attention was Hans Zimmer's score, which seemed to be constant in every scene, as rarely a minute passes without it. 

It's questionable whether the ending's a complete success. It is somewhat incomprehensible and gutsy, not to mention the closest mashup of the 2001 "stargate" sequence and the final scenes of A.I. as we're going to get, strangely without cribbing either. There's again probably a bit too much discussion about what Cooper's experiencing to reach the transcendent heights Nolan's aiming for, but we could only hope an eighth of the movies released each year had as much ambition as this picture's final hour. It isn't strictly a survival story set in space, as Gravity was, but a hardcore sci-fi fable hinging on thoughtful ideas  As if it wasn't already apparent, Nolan solidifies his status as a visionary storyteller whose decision to leave the Batman franchise is justified by just how much he has to say outside of it. While many currently rank this effort among his least and most flawed, I'm not entirely sure whether that assessment will stick. Ironically enough, that's something time will have determine.       
       

Rachel Getting Married

Director: Jonathan Demme
Starring: Annne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Ana Deavere Smith, Tunde Adebimpe, Debra Winger
Runnning Time: 114 min.
Rating: R

★★★ 1/2 (out of ★★★★)

Rachel Getting Married is a film full of painfully real moments, to the point where it's almost suffocating you with them. It isn't easy to watch and many times during it I was unsure if it was worth the effort of doing so. By the end I was as exhausted as its characters and wondered why I even spent my my time absorbing a situation this full of unhappiness and conflict. Let's face it, watching characters emotionally victimize one another and throw tantrums for two hours isn't anyone's idea of a great late night rental.

About ten minutes after the credits rolled I realized it was all worth it. I appreciated the film because it accomplished something that so few are able to anymore, and did it despite the fact that the situation depicted is fairly typical. It got me to care and made me invested in what happens to these people who, for a change, do actually feel and act like real people rather than scripted facsimiles of them. It stayed with me longer than I thought it would, probably because I felt as if I was really there. It just takes you in.

Director Jonathan Demme abandons his unusual mainstream bent to make us uninvited guests during a very uncomfortable day and everything that works seems to come from an acute knowledge of how people sometimes can't stop themselves from hurting each other. That isn't news and far from a groundbreaking revelation. But it comes from a real place and is told in an uncompromising, unflinching way, which is more than you can say for most other character driven dramas released by these days.

The film's title and topic may invoke memories of last year's Margot at the Wedding starred Nicole Kidman as the older sister who returns the weekend of her sister's wedding to wreck havoc. That movie's title character was a monster who seemed to take glee in destroying everyone's lives. This more complicated. And it isn't about the title character, Rachel (Rosemary DeWitt), but her younger sister Kym (Anne Hathway), fresh out of rehab for the ceremony and nine months sober. Unfortunately for overprotective (and extremely tolerant) father Paul (Bill Irwin) and step-mother Carol (Anna Deavere Smith) she's determined to complete the "make amends" stage of her 12 step program and plans to do it as publicly as possible, making things very difficult for her sister and groom-to-be Sidney (T.V. on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe).

Kym, self-centered to her core and feeling like an outsider in her own home, lashes out when she learns Rachel has chosen her best friend Emma (Anisa George) instead of her as maid of honor. She starts by sleeping with the best man Kiernan (Mather Zickel), then works her way up to a horrifying toast as things just get even worse from there. It's the reappearance of her estranged mother Abby (Debra Winger in a comeback of sorts) that really sends Kym off the deep end and brings to the forefront the real reason no one in the family can tolerate her. Let's just say by the end of the film your opinion of her may be significantly different than when it began...or it may not be.

Because this seems to be on the surface an ordinary story told in an ordinary way it's up to the script and performances to lift the material to another level, and do they ever. Screenwriter Jenny Lumet (Sidney's daughter) refuses to round off any of these characters' rough edges, which can make for some uncomfortable viewing but the film is more truthful and brutally honest because of it. Many have complained everyone in the film is "unlikable" which falsely operates under the assumption that we should only see movies featuring characters we love spending time with. Sure it would be nice but along that train of thought it would also be nice if we all got along perfectly with all of our family members.

These are difficult characters but I didn't hate them, not even the one character everyone seems to. Hathaway's performance as Kym is everything you've heard it is and more, conveying an entire movie's worth of emotions in single scenes and investing her with a sarcastic, self-deprecating edge that gets under your skin. For me it's the most layered portrayal of any of the Best Actress nominees, an impressive designation considering that as far as we know Kym can read, isn't a child molester and never once served as a Nazi guard. She has her own demons, but the big difference is that I actually felt sympathy for Kym even though Hathaway's performance never suggests that she wants it. Unfairly snubbed during most of the awards season and in the shadow of her co-star's breakthrough, DeWitt gives it out as well as she takes it in an almost equally important role.

Kym's a selfish horror but the nuance in Lumet's script lies in why. Her mother is absent, her father is a great guy but so wishy-washy he can't take a stand on anything and even though Rachel's celebrating the happiest moment of her life she's still worried her troubled little sis will steal the spotlight. Her family isn't free of blame, yet they can't possibly be held responsible either. Kym enters the house prepared for battle and everyone is ready to give her one except for Paul who desperately wants to ignore an issue that can't be ignored anymore.

There's that legendary rule that it doesn't matter what a movie's about, but how. Rachel Getting Married seems to break that rule because not only is what its about something we've seen before in dozens of other independent films, but how its told doesn't exactly re-invent the wheel either. Demme uses the hand-held shaky-cam to invest the proceedings the same claustrophobic quasi-documentary realism Darren Aronofsky used in The Wrestler. When the characters move, we move with them and we're right in their face but here it's much more jarring than in that film and if you're easily prone to nausea you'll be running for the bathroom. Cloverfield is probably a more apt comparison.

Would the film have worked just as well without it? Probably, but I can't say it's a distraction and this method does work well in a story where we're tracking many supporting characters Altman-style. Some of them have larger roles than others but because of Demme's method you're always aware that they're there. The best example is the uncomfortable toast scene, which seems to go on forever, but in the best way. We see everyone's reaction and hear what they have to say even though we're not introduced to many of them. It really does feel like you've just been dropped in on this. And what a relief it is to finally see a movie that doesn't needlessly turn race into an issue or feature writing that congratulates itself for celebrating diversity. It shouldn't be considered noteworthy at all if a white woman marries a black man and this is the rarest of films that actually understands most families would only care if the couple is happy and just want the best for them. Think of how badly another writer less in touch with reality would have screwed that up.

After helming a pair of recent interesting remake flops in The Truth About Charlie and The Manchurian Candidate it's obvious that Demme is relishing telling a smaller, more intimate story, though not necessarily an accessible one. He's commented in interviews that this is the film he's always wanted to make, and it shows. It there's one flaw it's that he seems to be enjoying it a little too much, overstaying his welcome a bit in the third act. When you have characters this interesting the temptation to just keep shooting and give them more room to breath is probably too great to ignore.

Demme keeps going and the actual finale loses a little bit of steam because of it but he's forgiven. Especially when he gives us a musical moment during the ceremony that's not only unexpected, but memorable. What should come off as syrupy instead in surprisingly genuine and I didn't doubt for a second this character would do what he did. Without spoiling too much, it's one of those cases where just the right song is used perfectly at just the right moment in a film and you have trouble hearing it exactly the same way again after that. Once the actual wedding occurs there aren't many places left to go, but I appreciate that Lumet's script refused to take the easy way out with a pat resolution.

This isn't an easy picture to get into and it's no mystery that the Academy didn't embrace it as whole heartedly as many felt they should have. Rachel Getting Married requires some effort and patience on the part of the viewer to fully get behind, but if you surrender to its prickly charms you'll find yourself far better off for having experienced it.