He’s searching for a new planet so that the residents of Earth, ravaged by dystopian dust storms, might have a future.
Nolan’s most spectacular failure — which is to say, it’s a true failure, and also genuinely spectacular. It’s also the weirdest of contradictions: a heart-warming head-scratcher. Matthew McConaughey plays a pilot-turned-farmer who is called upon to lead a mission through a wormhole in the solar system. He’s searching for a new planet so that the residents of Earth, ravaged by dystopian dust storms, might have a future. “Interstellar” is ominously captivating as a sensual parable of The Coming Environmental Apocalypse, yet by the time that McConaughey circles back through the cosmic continuum to reconnect with his grown daughter, now played by Jessica Chastain, it has turned into the world’s most metaphysical father-daughter Hallmark card. Nolan strains to make some sort of reach-for-the-stars “statement” about how love will save us, but the real obsession at the film’s heart is the director’s desire to rekindle the time-tripping majesty of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The attempt leaves Nolan looking less like Kubrick than M. Night Shyamalan, though there are moments — isolated, but they’re there — when the film’s drive to turn Einsteinian physics into the ultimate poetic light show can sweep you away.