Interstellar - Christopher Nolan

I don't like Matt Damon either.

 

Nolan on the sound of the movie

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/christopher-nolan-breaks-silence-interstellar-749465

“I’ve always loved films that approach sound in an impressionistic way and that is an unusual approach for a mainstream blockbuster, but I feel it's the right approach for this experiential film,” Christopher Nolan said, speaking for the first time in detail about the use of sound in his new film Interstellar.

Nolan attributed Interstellar’s sound to “very tight teamwork” among composer Hans Zimmer, re-recording mixers Gary Rizzo and Gregg Landaker and sound designer Richard King. “We made carefully considered creative decisions,” he said. “There are particular moments in this film where I decided to use dialogue as a sound effect, so sometimes it’s mixed slightly underneath the other sound effects or in the other sound effects to emphasize how loud the surrounding noise is. It’s not that nobody has ever done these things before, but it's a little unconventional for a Hollywood movie.”

 

So, Nolan's gone on record as saying the controversial sound mix was an artistic decision... yet I'm willing to bet the home video release is remixed to emphasise the dialogue. After all, it's not the first time Chris has been forced to change the audio in one of his films this way - have we forgotten Bane's voice being looped in The Dark Knight Rises following the original IMAX teaser?

 

I had no problem with dialogue in the showing I saw, but I do understand where Nolan is going with his point.

John K.

 

Yea, the whole "it was meant to be" as an explanation for McConaughey showing up gave me fits. Other pilots had been sent up, did they all stumble upon the NASA site like Cooper did? Were they all "meant to be" or were they chosen/notified, trained, and sent up and, if they were chosen, why wasn't Cooper chosen/notified as well since he was "the best"? If they were chosen and he wasn't (wouldn't "the best" be one of the chosen???), that's not logical, it's a writer's plot device intended to add a "savior of mankind" dramatic element thus elevating Cooper's status to almost bigger than life.

Of course this may well have been explained to the causal viewer's satisfaction with the dialog lost in the score and went completely over my head. In that case please ignore this rambling and go about your business

 

I didn't see this in IMAX theatre, but one with a nicely equipped playback on big screen and big sound and I love the sound-design! The rocket-lauch was nice, had a fine rumble and the sound effects added to the excitement of some of the extreme space-scenes especially

Spoiler: bit of a spoiler

going through the worm-hole and into the black hole. The silences after that were even more deafening!

 

I can't remember it ever being explained, only it was meant to be, which is just ludicrous.

 

The IMAX I saw it - the dialogue was way more than slightly under the sound effects. It was impossible to hear what they were saying.

 

If a film takes science as seriously as Interstellar ostensibly does, it's begging to be held accountable to certain standard of narrative logic. In that case, it fails. Two points: any civilization sufficiently advanced to design, say, TARS, would probably could solve the nitrogen atmosphere/dust problem without leaving earth. O.K. then there's no movie... but anyways, the whole 3D-5D construct at the end made no sense when you realized that taking it to its logical next step would mean no reason for Cooper to be 'hidden' in the tesseract. After investing over 3 hours of time (with previews) I actually expected a logical conclusion.

The script seems to entirely comprise either constant on-the-nose-exposition and explanation or mush headed greeting card ruminations on love could have used a rewrite by someone like Richard Price. Or even the Coens! Dialogue that people might actually say would have been appreciated in a very talky movie.

That said, the film is worth seeing as a spectacle, and for its sometimes realized ambitions. I pretty much agree with the current metacritic score of 74

 

That's answered in the film. They volunteered as I recall. As i recall Michael Caine mentions that they lost contact with MC's character. Perhaps they were contacted but does it really matter? In the case of MC, it was revealed in the conclusion why and how he showed up there.

 

I've just read 15 pages of this thread. It's amazing to me how someone can go see a film, claim that it is terrible, then proceed to discuss it day after day, even popping back in with documentation to support your dislike. When I see a bad film, I'll perhaps remark on what I think about it, then move on with my life. I don't spend the next two weeks explaining to people how they should also not like it. That says to me that you did like it much more than you're admitting, or you have some kind of agenda. Anyway...

I loved the movie. I saw it last week and will be seeing it again tomorrow. It is a visual and emotional rollercoaster of a film, and much like Gravity, it demands to be enjoyed in IMAX if possible. I was surprised how emotional the ending was, and after the credits (which surprisingly about 80% of the crowd I saw it with stayed through) I saw more people wiping away tears and sniffling than any movie I've seen since Schindler's List (with one woman openly weeping). I'll admit to shedding some tears myself, and I'm not even a parent. I can only imagine how being a parent would allow the movie's themes to hit a lot closer to home.

 

Dunning-Kruger lives.

 

The film is doing well over all...$300 million worldwide.

http://variety.com/2014/film/news/i...m_medium=email&utm_campaign=breakingnewsalert#

 

So who are you calling incompetent/ignorant?

 

My 11 yr old, never wanting to miss a chance to 'get' her Dad. After the movie points out to our little group of girls who I took, 'my Dad had tears in his eyes'. To which I replied, with a dramatic flare 'oh yeah, well someday when your a Dad and you love your daughters as much as love mine you'll know why.' Which lead to several arm punches, hugs, general tom-foolery and 'you're such a Dad' comments. So, yeah, the parenting themes hit home.

So thanks Mr Nolan for ripping my heart out in front of my kids and squeezing it through an ole fashioned hand operated laundry wringer, then stomping up and down on it all the while yelling; 'take that Dad who loves his kids, I dare you not to shed a tear you heartless bastard.! Humph, well, maybe he didn't mean that BUT he could have and that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

For clarification purposes in this age of internet where dry, sarcastic humor doesn't really translate very well across the cosmic divide. That last paragraph was all in jest. Just fun. Lighten up the day. Didn't really think that........but I could have ......since all possible possibilities are possible in the quantum world......... Oh for cry in' out loud, I'm just going to go get another coffee.

 

For the first, I don't see the failure. Building a complicated machine is very different from terra-forming a planet. NASA is shown studying it, but they apparently haven't come up with an answer. And I would expect that the new anti-science bias has a significant impact: remember that this takes place some time in the future, after a worldwide famine and wars over scarce food, and (as one character says) there are only six billion people on the planet rather than the current seven+ billion. So at the very least over a billion people have died in the previous decades. Some may not agree that such a catastrophe would result in a turning away from science, but that's the scenario Nolan proposes and holds to that internal logic for the film.

For the second, I haven't studied tesseracts so I can't say what a next logical step would be, but the point of Cooper being in it is explained in that (1) he has to have access to the entire timeline to pick the right moment to influence events, and (2) whoever created the tesseract exists in a relationship with space/time that prevents them from interacting the way Cooper does.

As for Cooper showing up and being chosen, that is explained as a fortunate accident. The team was going to go regardless of whether or not Cooper was there. When he shows up and is recognized, it then becomes important to convince him to accompany them because he has actual experience flying the ship, whereas the others only have simulator time (hence the increased tension when they first dock with Endurance, as Doyle has never done it in real life). This is set up right at the very beginning, when Cooper is shown flying a similar ship, and then it becomes clear he was dreaming when Murph comes in she asks him if he's "dreaming of the accident again".

I saw it for the second time since my kids wanted to go, and my appreciation has grown. The second viewing allowed me to see that much of what is deemed "plot holes" is explained in the movie. But given the way dialogue has been mixed, and that Nolan makes viewers work to understand what is going on, I'm not surprised many people are walking away with low opinions.

John K.

 

It has nothing to do with Nolan making people "work" to understand his movies. David Lynch is my favorite director so I'm used to doing plenty of thinking when watching movies.

Again, here is the Nolan man-love. Those who don't like his movies must surely be too daft/lazy to put in the work to like or understand it. That must be it.

 

Well, one man's hero is the other man's overrated filmmaker. I think Lynch has made two decent movies. But that must be Lynch man-love then, I guess....
I found this movie far less hard to understand compared to Inception (let alone The Prestige!)...I was surprised people took the effort and time to make diagrams and timelines.
I think it isn't a ''faultless'' movie, but I had a great time, just with other flawed movies (2001, Close Encounters). It's about imagination, for physics I'd recommend books.

 

Exactly. I know that Lynch is a polarizing director and that his style isn't for everyone. Then again, I'm not going around telling his detractors that they're ignorant and just don't get it.

 

But don't you think some Lynch fans DO act that way? I suspect that's true of any director who makes "challenging" work - or any musician, too. If you don't like the work, some of the fans will imply - or directly state - that you're too dense to understand it.

And sometimes that's true - hey, stupid people go to movies/buy music, too! But sometimes it's simply a disagreement.

For me, I loved Nolan's Batman movies and have mostly enjoyed his other films. "Insomnia" is my least favorite, but even that's decent/good, IMO.

I'll need to see "Interstellar" again to form a real opinion of it. Still debating whether to go IMAX again - I wasn't wild about the movie, but man do I love those IMAX films!

 

Well, one person's Lynch man-love is another's over-rated director.

As far as I can tell you're the only one who's used the word "ignorant" in this thread.

 

I know he mentions "we did this" but the more I think about it, it makes more sense that the wormhole, and the tesseract, were created for us by benevolent aliens. It answer the "why" questions that "we did it" does not - why is the wormhole near Saturn? Because they wanted it to be found, but not so easily that it was found before we were ready as a species - far enough along in technology that we could understand it and properly utilize it. Why did he need to go into the blackhole and encounter the tesseract? Similarly, if we were ready, we would be looking for the answers to an equation that could only be answered by interacting directly with the blackhole (the quantum data that TARS gathered). And it solves the paradox of the wormhole being created by us in the future for the sole purpose of creating themselves. Nolan's not stupid, and he likes to leave things up to viewers (Inception's spinning top being one) so I think he's leaving this up to us. And, really, it's pretty inconsequential - does it really effect the story either way? Some might feel better closure with the story resolving as "future us" helping the in-distress "present us" of the film escape from our hellish earth. I like the idea that some creatures are looking out for us and helping us along. This is very similar to the monolith in 2001, and lots of this movie is reminiscent in tone to 2001. Best sci-fi film I've seen in ages.

 

I did not love this movie like I thought I would

 

Completely the opposite reaction of the audience I was with. No grumbling (though there was a rush to the bathroom!) but instead some sat to watch the credits, which I NEVER see. Also a group of 4 or 5 teenage girls flew out of the theater excited and talking about how amazing it was. Not that I would count most teenagers' reactions as ones to go by, but it does speak to how engaging the film was. If a teen can sit through 3 hours of a heavy science movie, then I think it worked its magic very well.

 

Exactly. MC's character is the one that also assumes its humans. We are never told but either way ot doesn't matter because it isn't relevant to the story we are being told. Nolan doesn't like to connect all the dots.