Some minor spoilers below.
All this talk about despair and fight for survival is something that just didnt work for me. If you are going to make a survival movie, make us feel a connection with the characters otherwise every single sequence of said characters surviving just comes across as a setpiece. Like Uncharted 3. it's just one setpiece after another and you are disconnected from the film because the guy who is struggling for his life is just a nameless soldier who wore a mask for the first half of the movie.
Nolan also failed to capture the desperation of the soldiers stuck on the beach. They just stand there waiting to get bombed. they dont react. maybe that's how it really happened. but again, there is a disconnect there. if you are going to make a survival movie, you cant have characters who dont act desperate. there are only two scenes in the movie where you can really feel the drama b/w characters and they are two of the best scenes in the movie. the rest of the movie is about surviving some bombing runs. it's really that simple.
The whole interconnecting stories didnt work for me either. like someone else said, it's like you have seen the entire movie in the first act and the second act just shows you stuff from a different angle. i have loved scenes like this since TDK, it worked to perfection in Inception and i even liked the somewhat unnecessary cuts back to Earth in several Interstellar scenes. But here aside from that a ha moment at the end, it didnt do anything for me.
Still, Nolan's camera work, the cinematography, the incredible score (which might not be something i would listen to months like i have with every Hans Zimmer/Nolan score since TDK) and some of the best goddamn sound design makes it an easy movie to recommend. I have seen every Nolan movie 3-4 times in the theaters going back to TDK and i have not been able to stop thinking about the movie since i came back last night. i am just a bit shocked by the reception this film is getting. In terms of audiovisual design, Interstellar beats this. Inception captured survival/escape/desperation better* and they all had great character moments that critics love so much. i just dont understand why some movies get thrashed and others get lauded with despite having the same flaws.
*I once read that Inception was going to be a straight up heist movie, but then DiCaprio told Nolan that it had to be more than that and had him play up the kids angle. Cobb's struggle to get back to the kids not only gave the movie an emotional core, it also created this great dynamic with his subconscious' projection of his wife and some really poignant flashback scenes b/w the two. oh and the memorable cliffhanger ending simply doesnt work if his kids werent involved. i feel like Nolan needed someone like DiCaprio in this movie. someone not afraid to tell a filmmaker of his stature to go and make some changes to the script.
Are they? I thought it was a thread by thread basis and this one doesn't say "spoilers". But if so then carry on.
Yeah, we need a spoiler thread. It's hard to discuss the movie without going into details.