Nichole Rosanova
Staff Writer

★★★☆☆

With Christopher Nolan’s knack for visual intensity and his notoriety for spending near decades on developing his stories, “Interstellar” is expected to be the blockbuster film to take us into the new year.  Movie buffs and science nerds waited on the edge of their seat for the film to finally premiere in theaters, but did it live up to everyone’s expectations?

The setting of the film takes place in the somewhat distant future where humans can no longer rely on technology and science.  The central conflict of the movie is that Earth is dying with corn being the only food source available.  Nolan treats this devastation as a sort of Dust Bowl 2.0, instead with the concern of a dying planet as opposed to severe economic troubles from land degradation. With the dependence on agriculture, humans can no longer find solace in technology and the only gadget we see in the first act of the film is an out-of-date laptop.  The film goes so far to emphasize the distrust of science, implying that the new generation firmly believes in the conspiracy against the moon landing.

The premise of the film lies within a secret NASA team entering a recently discovered wormhole, in trying to find a potential new home planet in another galaxy. The journey becomes questionable.  The one believable quality of the film is Matthew McConaughey, serving as the team’s pilot, hoping to get home to his family alive. However, after viewing this film along with Nolan’s previous science-fiction flick, “Gravity,” I cannot help but get the impression that Nolan assumes all space personnel to be emotionally unhinged, yet somehow are all equipped to handle heavy machinery light years away from Earth.

As far as the visuals go, they were of course stunning.  Nolan accompanied the beautiful cinematography with a powerful poetic score. The added orchestral intensity to the scenes seemed like the director was heavily inspired by avant-garde filmmaker Terrence Malick, the 2012 Oscar nominee for “The Tree of Life.”

Given Nolan’s years of dedication to cinematography with “Inception” and “Gravity,” I was not concerned with whether or not the film would meet my visual expectations, but rather I was mostly hesitant about the quality of the story.  The entirety of “Interstellar” seemed to be comprised of one plot twist after another and the storyline lacked focus. I found myself aching for the end of the movie just to finally be gifted with a resolution.

I would not say that seeing “Interstellar” is a complete waste of time.  If you want to be thrilled with the cinematography and score, then this film will surely deliver.  However, I would not go so far as to say that it deserves the hype it’s been getting.