Skip to content
The Catholic Leader
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute
No Result
View All Result
The Catholic Leader
No Result
View All Result
Home Culture

Suspense and excitement

byCNS
21 November 2014
Reading Time: 2 mins read
AA

Space traveller: Matthew McConaughey stars in Interstellar.

Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Interstellar: Starrin  Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, Bill Irwin. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Rated M. Running time 169 mins. 

AS befits a sprawling space epic, Interstellar aims high.

While its ambitions are admirable, and its visuals dazzling, the film’s roughly three-hour running time tries patience.

Other aesthetic miscalculations, combined with morally problematic elements, ultimately make for something of a flawed liftoff.

Director and co-writer (with his brother Jonathan) Christopher Nolan charts the exploits of a crew of astronauts who use a wormhole to speed their travel to distant planets.

Their critical goal is to find a habitable refuge for the entire human race, which is facing worldwide starvation back on a dystopian, dustbowl-plagued version of Earth.

Leading the mission is former test pilot and engineer-turned-unwilling-farmer Cooper (Matthew McConaughey).

With society’s need to cultivate crops having displaced interest in advancing technology, Cooper, a widower, has been forced to pursue an agricultural lifestyle on the farmstead he shares with his cranky father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow), his placid teen son Tom (Timothee Chalamet), and his precocious, adoring daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy).

So when an unusual turn of events results in the opportunity for Cooper to command a space expedition, he essentially jumps at the chance, despite the fact that the prospect of his prolonged absence is nothing short of crushing to Murph.

Cooper is joined on the journey by astrophysicist Romilly (David Gyasi) and science officer Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway).

Related Stories

Holiness is possible and the Church provides tools to attain it, cardinal says

Church workers have helped more than 1.2 million Ukrainians during the war, Caritas says

Minority Catholic woman takes pride in Asia’s overlooked saints

The latter’s father (Michael Caine) – a renowned professor who was once Cooper’s mentor – conceived the rescue program and is its overall supervisor.

Just as protracted separation tests Cooper’s bond with Murph (played in adulthood by Jessica Chastain), so Amelia’s relationship with her idolised dad is eventually subjected to other strains.

Interstellar has most of its values in good order as it weighs familial ties against the sacrifices necessary to advance the common welfare and ponders the place of love within a worldview shaped by quantum mechanics and Darwinian evolution.

But both the film’s implicit message about the dire consequences of overpopulation and a subplot involving frozen embryos call for moral discernment. Cinematically, unnatural situations resulting from the relativity of time and other environmental factors create a distance from ordinary reality that blunts the impact of the movie’s human element.

In this respect, Interstellar stands in contrast to Nolan’s masterful 2010 mind-bender Inception.

In that earlier picture, different strands of events simultaneously unfolding within varied chronologies made for suspense and excitement.

Here the playful feel of Inception is absent, as too is the driving sense of urgency.

Instead, like the character central to the climax of Interstellar, moviegoers are likely to feel trapped by the theoretical paradoxes of boldly going where no man – or woman or movie director, for that matter – has gone before.

CNS

Space traveller: Matthew McConaughey stars in Interstellar.
Space traveller: Matthew McConaughey stars in Interstellar.
ShareTweet
Previous Post

Little acts of love, kindness and faith add up to holiness, Pope says

Next Post

Reflecting on the season of Advent

CNS

Related Posts

Holiness is possible and the Church provides tools to attain it, cardinal says
Faith

Holiness is possible and the Church provides tools to attain it, cardinal says

18 May 2022
Church workers have helped more than 1.2 million Ukrainians during the war, Caritas says
World

Church workers have helped more than 1.2 million Ukrainians during the war, Caritas says

18 May 2022
Minority Catholic woman takes pride in Asia’s overlooked saints

Minority Catholic woman takes pride in Asia’s overlooked saints

18 May 2022
Next Post

Reflecting on the season of Advent

Desiring a deeper love of Christ and neighbour

Marriage annulment

Five ways to help a marriage

Popular News

  • Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI turned 95 on a ‘very happy’ day

    Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI turned 95 on a ‘very happy’ day

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Here are the stories of 10 new saints being canonised this Sunday

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Queensland election: The pro-life political parties committed to abortion law reforms

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Angel’s Kitchen serves hot meals to the hungry in Southport

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Minority Catholic woman takes pride in Asia’s overlooked saints

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Search our job finder
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

Holiness is possible and the Church provides tools to attain it, cardinal says
Faith

Holiness is possible and the Church provides tools to attain it, cardinal says

by CNS
18 May 2022
0

HOLINESS is possible, and the Catholic Church provides the tools for attaining it. That was the theme...

Church workers have helped more than 1.2 million Ukrainians during the war, Caritas says

Church workers have helped more than 1.2 million Ukrainians during the war, Caritas says

18 May 2022
Minority Catholic woman takes pride in Asia’s overlooked saints

Minority Catholic woman takes pride in Asia’s overlooked saints

18 May 2022
Bishops call out racism, gun violence after U.S. shooting

Bishops call out racism, gun violence after U.S. shooting

17 May 2022
Parishes unite for Logan deanery family festival this Sunday

Parishes unite for Logan deanery family festival this Sunday

17 May 2022

Never miss a story. Sign up to the Weekly Round-Up
eNewsletter now to receive headlines directly in your email.

Sign up to eNews
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Contribute
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

The Catholic Leader is an Australian award-winning Catholic newspaper that has been published by the Archdiocese of Brisbane since 1929. Our journalism seeks to provide a full, accurate and balanced Catholic perspective of local, national and international news while upholding the dignity of the human person.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader
Accessibility Information | Privacy Policy | Archdiocese of Brisbane

The Catholic Leader acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples of this country and especially acknowledge the traditional owners on whose lands we live and work throughout the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • QLD
    • Australia
    • Regional
    • Education
    • World
    • Vatican
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Life
    • Family
    • Relationships
    • Faith
  • Culture
  • People
  • Subscribe
  • Jobs
  • Contribute

Copyright © All Rights Reserved The Catholic Leader

0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyChoose another Subscription
    Continue Shopping