I saw Interstellar last night and made three tweets about my experience.
- Interstellar was okay, except the score. Koyaanisqatsi had all the deafening pipe organ arpeggios anyone ever needed, this was inexcusable.
- Also Matthew McConaughey has seated himself on Marlon Brando's throne as Crown King of "Acting With Mouth Stuffed Full of Toilet Paper"
- That said, Anne Hathaway's performances were excellent, and the story was a bit hokey but very nicely paced. Go see it.
I got a response to my first post on Facebook (which gets copies of my tweets) from someone who complained that I always point out negative things, and then said that the science and visuals were awesome and they'd love to see it again, with earplugs. (I'm not quoting because that's probably rude.)
There's a lot I could unpack here that would probably be fairly tedious reading but I would like to make a couple points anyway.
I don't think there are any true spoilers here, but I do mention a couple of plot points in a very abstract way, and those two paragraphs are clearly identified below in point three.
First, I will complely own being a "complainer." Actually, that's just a side effect, when I'm feeling talkative. I absolutely am one of those people who is often profoundly disturbed by seemingly minor negative experiences. I actually feel this is a fairly useful skill in someone who designs things for a living. If I couldn't perceive the details about what was wrong with a situation or an object or an experience, how would I know when it was right or know how to fix it? So, yes, I can focus on negative things. This doesn't mean I don't experience good things.
Second, for any form of professional endeavour, from an appliance to a restauraunt meal to a game to a movie, to there is a bar that one is expected to pass, and that bar is fails to suck. You don't get five stars if your product doesn't suck. You get two, maybe three. And in a triple A product, like a movie with a $168 million dollar price tag, I expect there to be no major and very few minor flaws. That's the price of admission: failing to suck.
And so when I have to strain to hear the dialogue because the lead actor is constantly mumbling (and it isn't relevant to the plot, like a story about someone overcoming a speech impediment), that violates my expectations for a triple A product, and I will call it out, because it sucks. Similarly, if the soundtrack for a movie is so intrusive that it repeatedly distracts me from the plot and visuals through sheer deafening volume and also renders essential if not critical dialogue sequences as basic exercises in lip-reading, I will call it out, because it sucks.
I consider "being able to understanding the dialogue" and "a relevant and complementary soundtrack" to be key components of a dramatic presentation. Interstellar failed on these fronts, and I said so.
Third, I don't consider scientific accuracy to be a key component of a dramatic presentation. A documentary, yes; I would expect it in a documentary. But not Interstellar. So though my interlocutor brandished that aspect of the movie as a positive, I can't accept it as more than a "nice to have".
[ very mild spoilers next two paragraphs ]
And if one really wanted to dive into scientific accuracy, really the only accurate part of the movie was the visuals, which were not essential to the plot. When it came to plot beats, science was both used and abused willy-nilly. In general, it's a movie about the consequences about the time dialation aspects of general relativity, and I'm sure they did ran some equations that made the passage of time to be reasonably realistic.
However, they completely ignored other aspects of general relativity and astrophysics that, had they been considered, would have made the plot not work. In particular, the extreme redshifting of signals transmitted near a black hole would have mooted any justification for visiting the first planet, thus throwing entire plot in disarray. Even worse, the vast amounts of high-energy radiation produced by matter falling into a black hole, especially a large one with a massive accretion disc, would instantly fry any humans or electronics that got anywhere nearby, which would basically have ended the movie right at the beginning of the second act.
[ end spoilers ]
So they used some science to tell a story and ignored some other science to make that story work. I'm okay with that. It's called suspension of disbelief, and it's why I can enjoy a superhero movie. I don't poke holes in dramatic presentations for scientific inaccuracy, because science isn't why I'm there.
Fourth, I also said some nice things. I said the movie was "okay"; it passes the bar for AAA dramatic presentations: the acting was good, the cinematography was decent, the script was pleasant, the pacing appropriate, characterizations seemed on target, and the story engaging.
I also said that Anne Hathaway turned in some great acting; not just acceptable, but really worth watching. I said the story was a bit hokey; its beats are just a bit too familiar to be really compelling, but not actually bad. And I said the pacing was very nice; it's a 3 hour flick, and it uses the "silences" between the words as effectively as the words themselves (I scare-quote silences beacuse the soundtrack rarely offered us any silence), and it didn't feel rushed or draggy.
And I said "go see it" which I stand by. It's worth seeing on the big screen with the understanding that you might be sticking your fingers in your ears one moment, and straining to hear Cooper's dialogue the next (and some times both), and if you do you'll enjoy a nicely paced if a bit hokey story with good acting all around as well as some inspired work from one of the next generation's best actors.
I would probably give it a somewhat resentful 4 stars on Netflix because I couldn't give it 3.5 and if I was using Ebert's star scale I'd give it ***.
Captain and Crew
11/13 '14
