An apology for a blockbuster is the last thing I expected to write this year. One for the divisive Palme d'Or winner, Winter Sleep, of course. One for Roy Andersson's latest effort, maybe. One for Andrei Konchalovsky's The Postman's White Nights--that one's still coming. But not for Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. Though, in retrospect, I realize I should not have been so naive: a backlash against Hollywood most auteur-ish blockbuster director has been in the making with both some online critics and the blogsphere since The Dark Knight Rises and fanboys and fangirls are notoriously fickle and can turn on their object of affection with great ease and hate it or him or her with the same passion they employed when adoring it or him or her. Just ask George Lucas. So the current hostility towards Nolan, complete with defamation of character, mis-attributed quotes and even associating enjoyment of his films with being a mass murderer, is typical of the Internet and temporary, until it becomes fashionable (and click-bait-y) to loathe someone else. Meanwhile, film bloggers and reporters left and right swear they reviled his films all along, pay no attention to those articles and videos from two years ago.
The vitriol spilled onto Interstellar with numerous articles online attempting to make it look like a box office flop—it made over 450 million $ worldwide in three weeks; I dare say it's doing alright. Other exacerbated the rather polarized critical reception, though even in the English language, if you take a look at the actually credible critics (please do and not just for this film, while we still have them!), the reception, though much more mixed than that of Nolan's previous films, is fairly positive. Also, if the response to Interstellar counts as divisive, there are no words left for the critique of Lars von Trier's films. This hijacking of the critical discourse escalated so much and so fast, that respected American critic, Peter Travers, began his review by snapping at what he called the bitching of “neg-heads”. 1 That was three weeks ago. To say things things worsened since would be an understatement of galactic proportions.
Don't get me wrong: I am not at all bothered by any film being controversial, but the senseless nitpicking online and the cacophonist chorus of expletives shouted at its director snuffed the possibility of any rational debate where Interstellar is concerned, let alone that of a discussion of its numerous and complex themes. However, certain thoughtful attempts have been made, though they are all inevitable swamped by the sea of negativity and backed into the corner of first defending the existence of the film, its director, his choice of suits, his own favorite films, his impeccable manners in interviews, Interstellar's the composer, his use of organ, his previous work, his friendship with Nolan, the sound mixing, the formats, the distribution, the trailers not giving away spoilers... . I think it's safe to say that if you looked at this film's poster twice, there is somewhere an online article bashing you for it.
Backlash or not, this is bordering on hysteria and it made me puzzle over the indept reasons for it. From Last Year at Marienbad to every time Lars von Trier opens his mouth, I am no stranger to liking controversial films and controversial film-makers, but usually there is a reason for it other than a somewhat mixed critical reception. Setting aside personal taste, preferences and opinion, which are never up for debate, there are a few obvious causes for the current torches and pitchforks the virtual villagers are brandishing. The hipster pretension of hating everything the majority might like found a cushy home on the Internet. Equally true, an auteur with uncommon mainstream success and a public persona so squeaky clean, he doesn't even swear in interviews, will always bother a few inadequacy complexes so the psychological element cannot be discounted. I definitely don't buy that it is because of the antics of a vocal minority in the Nolan fandom. If fadoms really constituted reasons to loathe an artist, everyone would hate the makers of every TV show ever aired. (Some such shows would probably be even banned by now—I'll wisely abstain from naming titles.)
Personally, I think it is because Interstellar with its underlining plea for bold film-making shines a light onto our shared complicity in Hollywood's current crisis of creativity. Everybody from casual movie-goers to film critics complains about the overabundance of franchises, sequels, prequels and reboots that fill the multiplexes, while the numbers of original films dwindle constantly. Casting and Easter eggs are more important than plot and characters, as franchised tentpole productions become a year-round phenomenon. Every time this question is raised, we tend to point fingers at studio executives and rarely if ever at the stone-cold facts that franchise properties make the most money at the box-office, generate the most (social) media buzz, while being often even better received, especially online. There are bona fide masterpieces and superb art films that have lower scores on sites aggregating reviews than the weakest entries in popular franchises.
When one character in Interstellar says: “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt”, the line is rich with subtext and it can be viewed as much about original mainstream film-making, as about space travel. Interstellar is an ode to dying, grand-scale, daring and far-reaching, old-style Hollywood blockbusters that are fading into clouds of dust not so much with bang, but with a whimper. It is everywhere in the film: in its emphatic and much-trumpeted shooting 70mm with a mix of stunning IMAX, in its confident use of practical effects that allow for a stunning display of directorial competence, in the titanic achievement—in every sense of the word, even the physical one—of its cinematography and cinematographer, in the visuals that are literally cosmical, in the ambitions of the story and in the loving homages it pays to its forefathers, even the forgotten ones.
Interstellar's petition for pioneering films, even when they aim to be commercial and entertaining, is extraneous as well. The promotion campaigns included a focus point on educating the audience on the differences between various projection formats, as the movie makes itself available in each and every one of them. It also offers a perspective on the importance of the preservation of film as a shooting medium, an issue that usually never gets out of purist and cinephile circles.
But in doing this, Interstellar correctly identifies the problem and the solution as being us all, consumers, reviewers and producers of cinema. It surreptitiously co-opts us in its own experience and presents with the shared responsibility for the movies we get. And it's anything but comfortable.
1Peter Travers, The white knight rises: Christopher Nolan's space odyssey boldly blends the cosmic and the intimate for Rolling Stones, November 5, 2014: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/interstellar-20141105
This is the first part of a series on Interstellar. The next one will be: Of Fathers, Daughters and Not Going Gentle
The vitriol spilled onto Interstellar with numerous articles online attempting to make it look like a box office flop—it made over 450 million $ worldwide in three weeks; I dare say it's doing alright. Other exacerbated the rather polarized critical reception, though even in the English language, if you take a look at the actually credible critics (please do and not just for this film, while we still have them!), the reception, though much more mixed than that of Nolan's previous films, is fairly positive. Also, if the response to Interstellar counts as divisive, there are no words left for the critique of Lars von Trier's films. This hijacking of the critical discourse escalated so much and so fast, that respected American critic, Peter Travers, began his review by snapping at what he called the bitching of “neg-heads”. 1 That was three weeks ago. To say things things worsened since would be an understatement of galactic proportions.
Don't get me wrong: I am not at all bothered by any film being controversial, but the senseless nitpicking online and the cacophonist chorus of expletives shouted at its director snuffed the possibility of any rational debate where Interstellar is concerned, let alone that of a discussion of its numerous and complex themes. However, certain thoughtful attempts have been made, though they are all inevitable swamped by the sea of negativity and backed into the corner of first defending the existence of the film, its director, his choice of suits, his own favorite films, his impeccable manners in interviews, Interstellar's the composer, his use of organ, his previous work, his friendship with Nolan, the sound mixing, the formats, the distribution, the trailers not giving away spoilers... . I think it's safe to say that if you looked at this film's poster twice, there is somewhere an online article bashing you for it.
Backlash or not, this is bordering on hysteria and it made me puzzle over the indept reasons for it. From Last Year at Marienbad to every time Lars von Trier opens his mouth, I am no stranger to liking controversial films and controversial film-makers, but usually there is a reason for it other than a somewhat mixed critical reception. Setting aside personal taste, preferences and opinion, which are never up for debate, there are a few obvious causes for the current torches and pitchforks the virtual villagers are brandishing. The hipster pretension of hating everything the majority might like found a cushy home on the Internet. Equally true, an auteur with uncommon mainstream success and a public persona so squeaky clean, he doesn't even swear in interviews, will always bother a few inadequacy complexes so the psychological element cannot be discounted. I definitely don't buy that it is because of the antics of a vocal minority in the Nolan fandom. If fadoms really constituted reasons to loathe an artist, everyone would hate the makers of every TV show ever aired. (Some such shows would probably be even banned by now—I'll wisely abstain from naming titles.)
Personally, I think it is because Interstellar with its underlining plea for bold film-making shines a light onto our shared complicity in Hollywood's current crisis of creativity. Everybody from casual movie-goers to film critics complains about the overabundance of franchises, sequels, prequels and reboots that fill the multiplexes, while the numbers of original films dwindle constantly. Casting and Easter eggs are more important than plot and characters, as franchised tentpole productions become a year-round phenomenon. Every time this question is raised, we tend to point fingers at studio executives and rarely if ever at the stone-cold facts that franchise properties make the most money at the box-office, generate the most (social) media buzz, while being often even better received, especially online. There are bona fide masterpieces and superb art films that have lower scores on sites aggregating reviews than the weakest entries in popular franchises.
When one character in Interstellar says: “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt”, the line is rich with subtext and it can be viewed as much about original mainstream film-making, as about space travel. Interstellar is an ode to dying, grand-scale, daring and far-reaching, old-style Hollywood blockbusters that are fading into clouds of dust not so much with bang, but with a whimper. It is everywhere in the film: in its emphatic and much-trumpeted shooting 70mm with a mix of stunning IMAX, in its confident use of practical effects that allow for a stunning display of directorial competence, in the titanic achievement—in every sense of the word, even the physical one—of its cinematography and cinematographer, in the visuals that are literally cosmical, in the ambitions of the story and in the loving homages it pays to its forefathers, even the forgotten ones.
Interstellar's petition for pioneering films, even when they aim to be commercial and entertaining, is extraneous as well. The promotion campaigns included a focus point on educating the audience on the differences between various projection formats, as the movie makes itself available in each and every one of them. It also offers a perspective on the importance of the preservation of film as a shooting medium, an issue that usually never gets out of purist and cinephile circles.
But in doing this, Interstellar correctly identifies the problem and the solution as being us all, consumers, reviewers and producers of cinema. It surreptitiously co-opts us in its own experience and presents with the shared responsibility for the movies we get. And it's anything but comfortable.
1Peter Travers, The white knight rises: Christopher Nolan's space odyssey boldly blends the cosmic and the intimate for Rolling Stones, November 5, 2014: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/interstellar-20141105
This is the first part of a series on Interstellar. The next one will be: Of Fathers, Daughters and Not Going Gentle