This motion picture features the
elite of current Hollywood artists, including, for example, Christopher Nolan
as the director, brilliant Matthew McConaughey in the leading role, and also
the music composer, the one and only, Hanz Zimmer. Well, do you ask whether this
all-star team worked well to produce a masterpiece? Let’s discuss the premise
(but the answer is “no”, anyway).
As we might have expected from
Nolan, one of the major strength of the movie is its visual impact. If I am to
sum up the plot, it is about a space journey to find a “new World” to live in,
for the Earth is not co-operating with humanity anymore. Blight (whatever that
actually is) is destroying all grains except for corn which is unfortunately
also to be doomed by blight, (what I found quite peculiar was that the main
character drank beer all the time, sorry Mr. Nolan, you also need grain to make
beer). So there’s this secret NASA program to launch a shuttle with explorers
to find a new sufficient place for the humans to carry on living.
This is basically the synopsis;
however, the movie tries to function on an emotional level as well, very badly
though. For starters, the characters are not written very well, or not
presented in a way so that one could actually relate to any of them. To be
honest, I considered the on-board robot TARS (voice-acted by Bill Irwin) as the
character with most personality, all the other characters were plain and there
was always somebody new to show up for no reason (which is not surprising as
the film runs about three very long hours) which makes it confusing and
annoying. Overall I felt like I was
watching two very different movies, one was the new space odyssey and I more or
less enjoyed the spectacular views and the drama in space, and the other was an
incoherent emotional mishmash of personality-lacking characters (except for
Murph, who emerges as an adult in the second half of the movie).
The end of the film is just bad:
there is the “touching speech track” in the back as it usually happens in such
big American movies, about the resilience of humanity, while McConaughey’s
character Cooper sneaks into a super modern and for some reason unguarded
hangar, gets into a space ranger and flies away to help his friend... There’s
this feeling of cheesiness present throughout the movie, it always surprises
you, for the movie is basically about space stuff. But no, then they tell you
that love is actually the fifth dimension, erm…
There is something I’d like to
consider, that is, the fact that this film can be produced only in America. I
am not talking the money here, I am talking the Frontier, the imaginary line
which has been pushed forward by the American people, first into the previously
unoccupied West, then further! It is also an idea, a promise to destroy
poverty, to expand to new virgin lands, to conquer the outer space and so on.
This movie shows an attempt to push the Frontier once more; the New World is no
longer good for living and people, and it is the people of America that matter
and make action, design space craft to push the humanity forward, “again”.
Well, it certainly does look stupendous when there’s the American flag flying
on an unknown planet behind the curtain of a wormhole, I can give them that
one.
In conclusion I shall not surprise
you by neglecting my attitude, the movie is indeed a mess, a note-worthy,
overwhelming and at times entertaining mess, so don’t worry, just sit back,
relax and enjoy it.
Matěj Vašíček
