There was a time when Nolan used to be a complete filmmaker, a puppeteer if I may, controlling everything happening on screen and inside your brain with just two hands. By the time Prestige became an instant cult, Nolan had by then gotten a name for himself for pulling all the strings at his disposal to drive home a single idea. Then Batman happened. As his visions started getting grand, the compulsion to set up every string in the film towards that single idea became paramount. In a black and white world it would be easier to say this fetish of his is undoing him; that now he has a string attached to himself to which he will always be binded. But if you look at the glass as half full, this string isn't a chain around the neck, but around the torso to not let him fall as he reaches for the stars. And with Interstellar he has gone beyond the stars into a new galaxy in the safety of this string.
Yes, Interstellar is convoluted, delusional and at times fabricated to drive home that single idea. True to Nolanverse, we have a protagonist who keeps throwing punch lines at moments notice. The scene structures are such that a scene must follow from a cue in the previous scene akin to forced poetry. But once we are acclimated to the fabrications and eye-roll worthy punch lines and once I saw where he is taking me I started enjoying the journey. It is a journey that swiftly shuttles between the original Star Wars and Gravity and showcases the best of both worlds in typical Nolan style. If it was about finding the force within you to fight for the universe in Star Wars and finding the determination within you to go against all odds to survive in Gravity, Interstellar is both and beyond.
Beyond the glossy layer of space travel, Interstellar is basically a Nolan's version of M Night Shyamalan's Signs. Here too a father and his child's relationship in a farmer's land is as important as the deep crisis the world is embroiled in. Here too things aren't as we see it and once the key to decipher it appears a whole new level of understanding prevails. But where Shyamalan scores big with the 'eventual payoff' interpretation, Nolan fails. In his usual obsession to do justice to the single idea, the concoction he creates feels natural only rarely. But in this journey of Interstellar where though I didn't like some of the routes for the bad roads I still ended up liking the view it provided. For from what I saw, the point of focus seems to be on how creatively and engagingly the simplest of events can be expressed on celluloid. In that aspect, Interstellar is a journey where my sensories gotten heightened to appreciate even the bare basic elements of the nature as I saw it through Nolan's eyes and Hans Zimmer's ears.
Interstellar may be the weakest film from Nolan the writer. The title Interstellar itself doesn't embody the single idea the film represents. But as a director he has gone into a new level with the visual narration, reiterating that he may sure be attached to strings but knows for sure which string to pull to make me laugh or cry or sometimes both in joy at the ability to be manipulated intelligently.
PS: Didn't Irandaam Ulagam deal with something similar?
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