Cooper (McConaughey) is a rocket scientist in a future America where it's more important to be a farmer. Relentlessly tinkering with technology while working his corn farm, he and his daughter Murph (Foy) discover a gravitational anomaly that leads them to a secret Nasa project run by father and daughter scientists (Caine and Hathaway) to solve the problem of a dying earth. So Cooper heads into deep space, leaving his daughter (who grows up to be Chastain) to carry on the work back home.

The story's first half is packed with intrigue, sharply directed, acted and edited to propel the story through a wormhole to the possibilities beyond. But our intrepid crew merely discovers a series of big action-effects sequences, including an inexplicable twist that involves a villain, explosions and lots of cross-cutting drama. Motivations evaporate between nicely pungent conversations about five dimensions (time and gravity being 4 and 5), with love as the glue that holds the universe together.

Nolan shoots this as a big space epic with heavy echoes of 2001 and comic relief from the robots, Star Wars-style. Effects are nicely grounded in Hoyte Van Hoytema's gritty photography and a clever sound mix that uses silence especially well between strains of Hans Zimmer's operatic score. All of this combines into a heady mix of science, philosophy and, most importantly, emotion. At the epicentre, McConaughey, Hathaway and Chastain give their characters a realistic sense of drive, feeling and feisty stubbornness. And there's solid support from Damon, Affleck and Gyasi, plus veterans Caine, Lithgow and Burstyn.

So it's somewhat frustrating that the plot comes unstuck in the middle, with seemingly random causes and reactions. This makes it difficult to get get a grip on what follows, a series of deeply thoughtful events that are never genuinely revelatory. It's still one of the most impressive and thought-provoking films of the year, far more sophisticated both plot-wise and thematically than last year's Gravity. But the final act feels oddly lighter than air.

themes, language, violence

3.Nov.14