Interstellar (2014)

I have long found Chris Nolan to be a mediocre director. His whole schtick of using that grimy grey-blue color palate, frequent jump cuts, and making everything look depressingly flat represents what I find to be so dull and downright uninspiring about contemporary popular cinema. With Interstellar, though, he has finally made something that can be considered wondrous and adventurous, even while it wallows in his signature depressive myopia. He has managed to capture that vast feeling of awe we feel when as small children, we look up at the skies and wonder what could be out there. But more than that, he captures the sheer anxiety of space and infinity. I nearly had a panic attack watching this, thinking about what lies beyond death, beyond infinity, beyond eternity. These are not things we really want to think about, and Nolan does not handle the topic with the same sensitivity as, say, Tarkovsky did in Solaris. He goes in for melodrama, that is for sure, and I cried during the emotional last thirty minutes, but it felt forced, and blatantly manipulative. It lacks grace and humility. Nolan's inflated ego is all over the screen here, though not as egregiously as it has been in his prior films. Why is it contemporary movies made about the future are always about dystopias where humankind has screwed up beyond all belief? Maybe I am a stick in the mud for saying this, but why do we never see films about the great potential people can unleash? Is the openly utopian future of Star Trek considered too saccharine for audiences? It appears as to be so. What we need in such times of crisis are films that will give us hope that things can change now, not thousands of years in the future.