Environmental disaster has lead to war, famine and the prioritisation of simple survival over progress. It is not a post apocalyptic world, but one in steep post-industrial decline.
Farmer "Coop" (Matthew McConaughey), once an astronaut shortly before NASA wound down operation lives with his family on a dustbowl farm scratching an ever more precarious living.
A series of strange things begin to occur in his daughter Murph's bedroom, with objects being moved around and she begins to take notes. Deciphering a simple code from this they give coordinates to NASA's hidden base of operation. Here Coop finds out that mankind is in far worse straits than he thought but that NASA, what's left of it, has a last ditch plan. Well two plans actually...
Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is a movie I find I can easily admire but even after this third (maybe) watch I don't like it.
It is epic in scale taking in the problems of existential threat through the slow failing of things and loss of capacity and potential both for people and civilisation.
There are strong performances all round, not just McConaughay but also Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain.
Great pains have been taken to present difficult scientific and moral concepts and show harsh otherworldly environments.
Yet somehow it also irritates.
People who are shown onscreen to be the best of the best (of what's left) make stupid mistakes seemingly only to advance the plot. At other times information is withheld (from characters and audience) seemingly with similar intent.
When some future 'them' helps bootstrap mankind out of paradox to a sunlit Interstellar uplands it is framed somehow that love is a new universal constant in a mawkish monologue.
Nope.
It is a fantastic piece of filmmaking but some Underpants Gnomes seem to have whispered in the ear of the writing team.
Phase 1: Steal Underpants.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit
4/10