Christopher Nolan is one of the most celebrated filmmakers of the 21st century. He’s one of the few modern directors that has managed to find a dedicated following among both critics and general audiences. He consistently produces movies that earn the perfect trifecta of rave reviews, high audience scores and solid box office receipts. He made a name for himself through his work on the Dark Knight trilogy, in addition to the mind-bending cinematic experience that was Inception and other gems like Memento and The Prestige. After Nolan’s run with Batman concluded in 2012 with The Dark Knight Rises, there was a lot of interest in what his career would look like moving forward. Naturally, the first film he released post-Batman was Interstellar, a nearly three-hour-long space opera starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain.
The initial response to Interstellar was generally positive, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as most of Nolan’s films had been up to that point. People mostly liked it, but it wasn’t anybody’s favorite movie of Nolan’s. Some people complained about how complicated the film’s overall narrative was, while others zeroed in on technical aspects like the movie’s sound mixing. Now, it has been nearly a decade since Interstellar first hit theaters, and Nolan has continued to deliver the goods with films like Dunkirk and Tenet. However, as time has gone on, Interstellar’s reputation has changed dramatically. Instead of being seen as a low point in Nolan’s incredible career, the film is now considered to be one of the director’s best works. It is one of three Nolan movies that has earned a spot on Letterboxd’s Top 250 Highest Rated Films list. Interstellar sits at spot #106, while Inception is #224 and The Dark Knight is #14. Here’s how Interstellar has aged over the last decade, and why people have come to love the film so much over the years.
Repeat Viewings and Overall Ambiance
Paramount Pictures
A key reason for the growing love for Interstellar over the years is because of how the film rewards repeat viewings. It’s the kind of movie that gets better with every watch, which in turn keeps people coming back to it year after year. The plot and science of the film are both incredibly dense, and because of that it is hard to really understand everything in just one viewing. It’s easy to leave the first viewing of Interstellar with a feeling of “What did I just watch?” or with more questions than answers about how the film ends and what it means. However, as the film’s layers are peeled back upon a second or third viewing, the whole picture that Interstellar paints really starts to come into focus.
As the story of Interstellar unfolds, there are a lot of individual moments that don’t make sense at first. Without going into any spoilers, the ending of Interstellar revisits the events of the entire movie and adds the necessary context to understand it all. It goes back and weaves its thread through the holes that initially left questions in the viewer’s mind, before pulling it all together to reveal one cohesive experience. With each additional viewing, Nolan’s vision for Interstellar and the artistry behind it all become more and more clear. There’s no scene or visual detail in the film that wasn’t painstakingly planned and executed. Everything in the movie is there for a reason, even if that reason isn’t immediately apparent. While an argument can be made that a film should be perfectly understandable upon its first viewing, it is more the complicated films like Interstellar that prove themselves to have more long-standing reputations and impacts. In that sense, the movie is a 21st-century equivalent to 2001: A Space Odyssey in more aspects than just its genre.
Another aspect of Interstellar that makes the movie infinitely re-watchable is the incredible aesthetic of the whole thing. Beyond the story and science of it all, the visual and auditory experience of watching Interstellar is unparalleled. The cinematography by Hoyte van Hoytema is able to perfectly capture the grandiosity of space while still maintaining the emotional core and personal touch of the film’s characters. Meanwhile, the score from Hans Zimmer is perhaps the best that the composer has produced in his lengthy and legendary career. He brilliantly balances the ethereal sound of the quieter and more personal moments with the sweeping and formidable volume created with the use of an organ for the film’s most stunning sequences. Through both of these avenues, the overall vibe of Interstellar is established as something that truly encapsulates its audiences and leaves its viewers with their jaws on the floor. Nolan uses the music and visuals of the film to suck the audience into the gravitational pull he has concocted, and once they are within its reach, there’s no escape from the experience that Interstellar provides.
A Grounded Sci-Fi Epic
Nolan’s venture into the world of science fiction differentiates itself from most of the genre by focusing more on science than fiction. The film is considered to be one of the most scientifically accurate films of this kind to ever be put on screen. That doesn’t happen by accident. Nolan went out of his way to present and make the science in Interstellar as real as possible. He consulted with many different physicists and experts to create a representation of space that is as close to the real thing as could be done effectively on-screen. The theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, specifically, was brought on board to serve as a consultant and executive producer for the film, in order to help ensure the film’s consistently accurate approach.
Interstellar plays into the inherent fascination that mankind has with the celestial. The film tells a gargantuan story that explores everything from our corner of the galaxy to the infinite. The film features wormholes, supermassive black holes, Einstein’s theory of relativity at work, and numerous other high-concept ideas that are typically reserved for endless chalkboard equations and limitless imaginations. The realness of the science in Interstellar makes the film a wonder to behold, as it makes the audience feel as if they are actually getting an inside look at how our universe works. At times, it feels like the world’s most expensive documentary, rather than a fictionalized narrative film. Now, that’s not to say that everything the film presents is 100% accurate. There are a few aspects, such as the clouds of ice on an extraterrestrial planet and the depiction of what can be found beyond the event horizon of a black hole, that have been singled out as being fictionalized cinematic embellishments.
With all that said, Interstellar is more than just an endless stream of cool science stuff. The story of the film is an immensely personal and human one. It’s a powerful tale of a father and his relationship with his family, particularly his daughter. It explores the sacrifice that he and his family have to make in order to save humanity and whether they felt it was actually worth it in the end. It’s a balance between the never-ending desire to explore the stars and a man’s boundless love for his family. The relationship between Cooper and his daughter, Murph, is the heart of the story that everything orbits around. While the science of Interstellar builds the film’s events in reality, the exploration of this relationship is responsible for the emotional grounding of the film, transforming Interstellar from an awe-inspiring film to one that is genuinely affecting and will leave its viewer with a long-standing impression.
