Interstellar

No one could ever accuse Christopher Nolan of possessing too small a vision. From Memento to The Dark Knight to Inception, the writer/director has consistently used high-concept projects to explore broad philosophical ideas. His first foray into hard science fiction, a genre that has always lent itself to philosophical considerations, seemed like a match made in cinematic heaven.

Yet while Interstellar (rated PG-13 for language) contains moments of visual brilliance, for once Nolan’s ideas run away with his story to the detriment of both.

The film opens in an undefined near-future with the currently trendy sci-fi trope that Earth is on the verge of destruction. Nolan makes no hectoring references to global warming. Instead, humanity, through the ingenious creative capacity of a team of NASA scientists headed by Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is the only hope of saving the Earth, or at least recreating it on a new planet.

This brings us to one of Interstellar’s most overt themes: that our culture is losing its sense of innovation and adventure. Nolan seems to suggest the reigning educational establishment has robbed us of our historical heroes not merely by injecting realism into their stories, but by rewriting them. Cooper is incensed to learn that his daughter’s textbook teaches the Apollo moon landing was a fraud perpetrated to bankrupt the Soviet Union.

Cooper chastises this kind of sanctimonious, soul-squashing revisionism, saying, “We used to look up at the stars and wonder about our place in the universe. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”

But Nolan’s refreshing love affair with self-determination goes too far. Without spoiling anything, Cooper discovers that we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for, salvation the natural conclusion of our species’ upward trajectory to perfection. As a man clearly enamored with science, you would think Nolan would recognize that this defies the first principle of scientific theory—namely, it contradicts all observable evidence.