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By Sandra Olmsted

In an unspecified future, the world has been changed by a blight, which resembles the 1930s Dust Bowl, although America’s breadbasket still grows enough food to keep going. On the family farm, ex-NASA test pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) struggles to raise his kids, the precocious 10-year-old Murph (Mackenzie Foy) and her 15-year-old brother Tom (Timothee Chalamet), with help from Donald (John Lithgow), his late wife’s father.

In the most obvious commentary by writer/director Christopher Nolan Nolan, Cooper’s crop, corn, ubiquitous in American food, survives the blight — for now. Nolan makes the threat of starvation and suffocation real with pseudo-documentary interviews of elders remembering how the “earth turned on them.” Although Murph shares her father’s ability and interest in science, she also claims a ghost communicates with her by pushing things off her bookcase, and the ghost leads Cooper to an off-the-grid NASA operation charges with survival of the species and led by Cooper’s mentor, Prof. Brand (Michael Caine).

Soon Cooper embarks on a mission through a wormhole, seemingly placed there by a higher, friendly intelligence at just the right moment. He searches for new earth, along with Brand’s daughter, Amelia (Anne Hathaway), Romilly (David Gyasi), co-pilot Doyle (Wes Bentley) and the very-human TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin), a nod to the robots of Lost in Space and Star Wars. While time will pass uninterrupted on earth, time for Cooper and his crew fluctuates, and a visit to one planet costs them 7 earth years for each hour. Soon, a thirty-ish Murph (Jessica Chastain), who is still angry with her father, works for Brand, and a married Tom (Casey Affleck) continues to farm.

From an over-the-top contemplation of God’s navel to a geek-dream of space and time permutations, Nolan, co-writer/brother Jonathan Nolan, and executive producer/CalTech physicist Kip Thorne provide myriad philosophical questions to contemplate. Although discussions of theoretical physics’ black holes, gravitational singularities, and extra-dimensional space will give the geeks something to argue about, the central treatise focuses on the nature of humanity and its drive to survive, as well as on science’s relationship with the spiritual.

Interstellar also anchored on earthly consideration by celebrating noble explorers and pioneers and playing on child-parent relationships. Seeing Interstellar in an Imax theater is worth the extra cost because of cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema’s ravishing images of space and Hans Zimmer’s overpowering score, which literally rattles and shakes the seats. Nolan jammed-packed Interstellar with surprises, and the stellar cast, many more than mentioned, provide more surprises.

Interstellar, a Paramount Pictures release co-produced with Warner Bros., is rated PG-13 for some intense perilous action and brief strong language, runs a quicksilver 169 minutes, and opens in theaters Nov. 5.

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