Bennett Campbell Ferguson: "And My Favorite Film Of 2014 Is...."

WHY I LOVE “INTERSTELLAR” by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Last year, Jaden Smith (son of Will and Jada Pinkett) went to a screening of Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi blockbuster “Interstellar.”  Except he didn’t just go—he arrived dressed in a spacesuit (presumably an homage to the movie’s heroic astronauts).  And then, in the midst of the film, he cried out a tribute to its venerated director: “That’s my man, Nolan!”

            Thank you, Jaden.  If there was ever an action to symbolize what we, the Nolan geeks of the world feel for our hero, it was that.  Not that I need the competition; far from it.  I may not own a spacesuit, but I did go to the Hollywood Theater’s advance screening of “Interstellar” dressed in my own uniform—a light blue dress shirt and black slacks, my tribute to the ensemble worn by Mr. Nolan ever since his early days as a filmmaker.

            In an era where superheroes bask in near-religious worship and no one forgets their first “Doctor Who” doctor, I don’t feel self conscious owning up to my geekiness.  But that doesn’t answer the question—why?  Why do Christopher Nolan and his movies inspire such passion?  Is it because he’s a great filmmaker?  (He is.)  Is it because he’s an appealing celebrity?  (He’s that too.)  Or is it some combination of the two, some maelstrom of inspiration and fanaticism that we’ve all been captured by?

            My answer is none of the above.  Because the true reason why Christopher Nolan is subject to so much ardor speaks to what we crave as moviegoers—a certain kind of movie.  And it’s a kind of movie that I, with a keyboard in lieu of a rocket ship, will now explore.

            In the late 1900s, Mr. Nolan made his directorial debut with “Following,” a stark, sleek, black and white thriller.  It was about a dopey writer named Bill (Jeremy Theobald) taken under the wing of a dashing burglar (Alex Haw).  The result of their sinister meet cute?  A string of break-ins and philosophical conversations about the nature of intrusion and violation.

            At first sight, “Following,” with its wordy screenplay and nastily ambiguous ending, must have seemed like strictly art house art.  But cast Mr. Nolan’s cinematic debut in the shadow of his box office-busting “Dark Knight” trilogy and you can see that he was always a blockbuster entertainer at his core.  After all, “Following” was the story of a young man struggling to swim above the waves of his failings, trying to instill some meaning in his life; what is that if not the narrative of all great blockbusters, from “Star Wars” (the story of Luke Skywalker coming of age) to “Spider-Man” (the story of Peter Parker striving to uphold his superheroic responsibilities)? 

In other words, for all of those movies, proving your manhood (or failing to prove it) meant facing some sort of physical and emotional struggle.  Yet the struggles in Mr. Nolan’s multiplex epics are particularly potent.  Remember that moment in “Inception” when Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) tried to wrench himself out from between two concrete walls?  While corporate thugs loaded their guns behind him?  The scene was smoothly adrenaline-charged, not only because of the threat of death, but because on a grand scale, it symbolized Cobb’s desperation to be free, to return to the family he’d been forced to abandon.

In that vein, “Interstellar” is also a struggling-hero movie—except this time, the quest becomes entangled with the survival of our planet.  The movie starts in a future where food has dried up along with human ambition (“You don’t believe we went to the moon?” one character poignantly asks a dogmatic teacher).  Yet at a hidden location, the remnants of NASA are struggling to embark on a mission to new planets—planets that could be home to humans after Earth has wheezed its last store of supplies.

You have to love Mr. Nolan’s flair for drama.  He would never just have NASA send some astronauts into the unknown; he had to have them go in defiance of a depressed, disbelieving society.  Hope against hope, hope in the face of failure, hope in spite of everything lost—that is the credo of his movie.

That hope enhances the power of the story’s struggle.  The film’s hero is Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), the pilot of a pin-wheeling spaceship called the Endurance.  Aided by his compatriots (played by Anne Hathaway, David Gyasi, and Bill Irwin), Cooper steers the Endurance through a dizzying wormhole and down to two different cold, wet planets.  And each time, yet again, there is a struggle, whether it’s against a mountainous wave, the pull of gravity, or even time (which, due to relativity, passes faster on Earth than it does for our heroes, making their mission all the more desperate).

Still, “Interstellar” is not just an outer space adventure—it is a sadness-soaked movie, more disturbing even than Mr. Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” (which was rife with beatings and neck-breakings).  I figured that out early on when Cooper has to say goodbye to his daughter Murph (MacKenzie Foy) before beginning his mission.  “I’m coming back!” Cooper insists, before climbing into his truck and driving into the dusty distance.  He doesn’t see Murph running, trying to catch up to him, crying out, even as she’s drowned out by Hans Zimmer’s score, as it sears your ears painfully.

Unbearable.  Yet I now realize that that moment is perfect.  The struggle of “Interstellar” only matters because of the anguish.  Because why would it be important for Cooper to return home if he didn’t have to make amends, if he didn’t have to be sure that the last time he saw his daughter wasn’t when she was in her room, sobbing?  After all, to quote James Cameron, “The greatest of loves can only be measured against the greatest of adversities, and the greatest sacrifices thus defined.”

“Interstellar” is a brisk, smoothly constructed movie (it’s almost three hours long; it feels like it’s half that).  Yet it’s still hard to make it through all of its outpourings of grief and rage.  And that’s why Mr. Nolan’s creation is so wonderful—it tests you.  “Don’t recoil from the ferocity of this occasion—rise to it,” the movie seems to say, and it’s unbelievably satisfying to do just that.

For me, there weren’t a lot of other movies in 2014 that beckoned so forcefully.  Yes, I was enraptured by the tender sibling drama in “The Skeleton Twins,” the call-to-action in “Selma,” and the ferocious satire in Richard Ayoade’s “The Double” (which plugged into the zeitgeist of corporate politics, technological omnipotence, and twenty-first century morality).  But aside from those films, “Interstellar” was the only movie of 2014 that really, genuinely moved me.

And that’s fine.  In an era where we have over a century of movies to pour over, a year where you only connect with a handful of new ones isn’t such a terrible thing.  And besides, the thrill of seeing my faith in Mr. Nolan reaffirmed this past year was all-conquering.  Jaden Smith may have said it first but, at least to those of us who care about Mr. Nolan’s movies, he’s our man. 

But I don’t want to get too wrapped up in a Nolan career retrospective.  Because even if it weren’t enmeshed in the tapestry of its creator’s oeuvre, “Interstellar” would be beautiful.  It’s the way the emotions hit you—especially in the final scene, when a now hundred-something Murph (Ellen Burstyn) is visited by her father who, caught in the spell of slow time, is still the same age as Matthew McConaughey.

It begins as Cooper enters a hospital room.  A crowd of people surrounds a bed, hiding it from view and once again, Mr. Zimmer’s music surges forth.  But this time, it’s a hopeful crescendo, one that rises and breaks off as Cooper approaches the bed.  And then, the music quiets as a smiling Murph reaches for him.

The following conversation is odd.  Father and daughter exchange a joke; reflect on all they’ve experienced; and prepare to say goodbye for the last time, as Murph asks her father to take on yet another adventure.  But there’s one moment in that scene that I love the most, the sweetest moment of “Interstellar,” one of the sweetest moments of any film.  Murph tells Cooper that many people didn’t think he was coming back, but that she knew that he would.  And the reason she gives made me feel sad, alive, sad, happy, alive:

“Because my dad promised me.”