This is as close as you can get to the theatrical experience at home.
Warner Video gave a gift to cinephiles this holiday season, releasing Christopher Nolan’s nearly complete film catalogue on 4K UHD. Known for shooting exclusively on film, while also being one of the medium’s biggest proponents, Nolan is a director who firmly believes in giving his films the best presentation possible, and that also transcends to his home video releases. Seeing The Dark Knight playing on Blu-ray in a Circuit City (remember those?) was a watershed moment for me making the jump to HD, and now watching Interstellar on 4K UHD was a similar experience highlighting the potential of the platform in the right hands.
Interstellar takes place in the not too distant future, as the earth is slowly getting to the point it can no longer sustain human life. The planet has turned into a dustbowl where its inhabitants have abandoned technology, choosing instead to focus on simply surviving and growing crops to feed the dwindling population. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a farmer who once was a NASA pilot, a relic of a bygone era who is now running a small farm with his two children. Cooper’s primary focus other than growing and harvesting corn is trying to be the best father he can since the tragic death of his wife. Through mysterious circumstances Cooper is lured to a secret base, where he finds the remnants of earth’s space programs hard at work on finding a way off of the planet.
NASA reveals to Cooper that humanity will last less than a century on Earth. As the atmosphere is turning toxic the crops will start to die off, and the planet’s remaining inhabitants who haven’t starved due to lack of food will suffocate in the unbreathable atmosphere. Our only chance is finding a new home in the stars, and it just so happens some mysterious force is guiding humanity, communicating through gravity. After guiding us to a wormhole that appeared by Saturn some time ago, NASA found 12 possible candidates for a new home waiting for us. Cooper is recruited for a mission to find which of the 12 is best suited; the only problem is that to save humanity, he must leave his children behind.
Nolan does two things perfectly in the script for Interstellar, the first being that the mystery is not the main component of the story here driving the narrative. The question of who is guiding humanity and why are purely secondary to the human struggle in the film, as the mission brings out both the best and worst in all those involved. The second is, while I would classify Interstellar as hard sci-fi, and there is a lot to take in as the film doesn’t shy away from some pretty complex concepts. Nolan wisely chooses to make his primary focus the story of a father and his strained relationship with his daughter. Because of that Interstellar feels like one of the more personal films in Nolan’s filmography, as the narrative’s sci-fi framework is there simply to enable him to tackle some deeply personal themes in a very unique way.
Interstellar has a heart that most would agree has been missing from Nolan’s previous films up until this point. While the first two acts are near flawless in their buildup and execution, the third act faces its viewer with its biggest challenges. When the curtain is finally pulled away to reveal what brought humanity across the universe, it was a weird moment that didn’t quite sit right with me the first few viewings; but now revisiting the film a few years later I’ve realized hard sci-fi isn’t what Interstellar is really about. The film is about a man and his relationship with his daughter and how we remember those relationships and those that were dear to us once time has passed and they have passed on. It’s something that gave the film a whole new dynamic for me as the credits began to roll this time around.
The cast comprised of Nolan regulars Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine are joined by new faces Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastian, who are tasked with bringing this story to life and imbuing some hefty concepts with a emotional resonance. Matthew McConaughey’s turn as Cooper is still one of the best of his career for me, and it’s a role that felt tailor made for the actor in every way, shape, and form. There is a realism to Cooper that is rarely embodied in a protagonist in just how Nolan deals with his character’s flaws. While you do have to wait two acts for Jessica Chastain to show up, once she is finally in the mix the film moves along like a finely tuned machine. I was also very happy to see the women in Interstellar aren’t simply there for eye candy (no leather catsuits this time) or for romantic foils as Hathaway and Chastain are both given meaty roles; they are more than equals to the men in the predicament.
I was lucky enough to have caught Interstellar on its original theatrical run on both Digital DCP and 70mm Imax, and watching it projected from a 4K UHD on a 110” screen was the closest I feel like we as consumers can get to that theatrical experience. The presentation here is simply sublime; the image has that warmth of celluloid with a stunning clarity especially in the IMAX scenes. Something I have noticed about UHD disks recently is with these “definitive” releases you can tell which directors want their releases remembered as “films” as opposed to “movies.” Interstellar definitely wants to be remembered as a film since the film has little to no DNR scrubbing away the grain, and you can tell an obvious effort was put forth on this release to preserve that look and feel if you caught the film in a theater.
Also of note, the disc also replicates how the theatrical version would switch between 2.40:1 (35mm anamorphic) and 1.43:1 (IMAX) to highlight certain scenes with truly awe inspiring IMAX cinematography. I was relieved to see they kept these transitions given the same thing happens in Catching Fire, but for the 4K UHD disc they opted to keep the film in 2.40:1 for the entirety of the film. Another perk of these new Nolan releases is the inclusion of the original theatrical mix, which definitely begs to be played loud as possible with some extra sub-woofer for good measure.
Interstellar is a film I felt only got better revisiting it three years later. Gone are the hype and expectations of viewing the latest Nolan masterpiece, and what’s left is simply enjoying the film on its own terms. It definitely stands out in Nolan’s testosterone driven filmography as a film that feels like the striking visuals have something equally engaging emotionally to say under the surface. It’s a moving portrait of one man’s strained relationship with his daughter, which just happens to involve wormholes and solving interplanetary time travel. While I loved the film, I was floored by the presentation, so much so I went out and purchased the rest of the Nolan catalogue on UHD, and you can’t get a more ringing endorsement than that. This is definitely the way to experience these films at home.