I want to be upfront—Christopher Nolan is a painfully overrated director. But hold your hostilities. Overrated necessarily doesn’t mean bad, as your typical film blogger might have you believe. Interstellar (2014) is a fine example of filmmaking, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. It’s also very long at almost three hours. I usually avoid lengthy films, but time’s been on my mind recently, so I suppose it’s a fitting choice. In Nolan’s defence, my viewing experience was marred mostly by the fact that Millicent and I couldn’t watch it together, rather than any of his directorial shortcomings. She was asked to cover someone’s shift at work, and she has a horrible tendency of wanting to please figures of authority. Watching the film all by myself, I now understand how Romilly must have felt spending 23 lonely years on the Endurance (spoiler alert).

Interstellar follows the life of spaceman Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) as he travels the universe and contemplates his relationship with his daughter Murph (Jessica Chastain), while not really giving a shit about his son Tom (Casey Affleck). The presence of Tom is a powerful thematic force throughout the film, being a metaphor for the neglect we all face in our day-to-day life. Whether it be your girlfriend cancelling a date or having everyone in your circle of friends show an interest in somebody who isn’t you, everyone at some point feels like a Tom; a suspicion that nobody is thinking about you or even notices your presence in the room. It’s reminiscent of my experience with parties. This one time in particular, a chap named Elliot invited me to his birthday party and I spent most of the evening sitting in a corner eating chips and wanting to cry. I wish I could say this was an anomaly, but I have hundreds of similar anecdotes. There was only one place in the world that provided respite to this feeling, and now even that’s beginning to lose its appeal.

Enamemates, our group of long fingernail connoisseurs, was everything until Colin arrived. He didn’t really contribute in the beginning, but like a kick in the balls, it wasn’t until a few moments later that it started to hurt. He’s now, as they say, “emerged from his shell”. Apparently, he was waiting for a patent application to be approved before revealing a supposedly groundbreaking discovery which proposes fingernails, under the right circumstances, can travel through time. Now everyone in the group worships him, even though he’s reluctant to provide any sustainable proof on the matter. He now hopes to sell us his patented concoction of lemon juice and prednisolone, a medication he calls “Tarlin” (a cross between Colin and the Tardis). He insists that his meagre two centimetre fingernails are the result of the other 965,000 being in the past. To prove his point, he moved his hand up and down while cackling and claiming to be scratching someone’s back in 1878. Much like the pseudoscience of Interstellar, it’s evident he’s just looking for attention (but for some reason, nobody can see it except for me!).

Interstellar is at its best with its remarkable cinematography, such as the shots of space (which was mostly just blackness) and that scene of Anne Hathaway watching a ghost in a chair. The latter was particularly striking, as it was reminiscent of my experience in a lonely theatre due to Millicent cancelling plans. She has this craven attitude where she needs to please everyone at work, even at the expense of not pleasing me. Afterwards, she’ll come home and complain to me about it, but I don’t understand why she doesn’t tell them they’re being annoying. Give the burden to those who deserve it, right? There’s also no way for them to improve if she doesn’t communicate these things, but instead she takes all her frustration out on me. If you’re reading this Jessica: stop asking to borrow Millie’s pen—please don’t make me break my streak of no fights with my girlfriend. Anyway, I spoke to Millicent about Tarlin and she agrees that Colin’s a scam artist. Apparently, fingernails get longer the further they travel back in time which means, if we ever take Tarlin, there’ll be a whisper of each nail in every moment of the past. This means the tip of the nail will be the furthest back in time. Colin believes his nails are now so long that the tips are interacting with dinosaurs! He even boasts he was once touched by Caligula from 36 AD. I tried to query him on this; I asked why his fingernails hadn’t snapped. Surely you would accidentally walk towards somewhere where a wall existed in the past? But ostensibly, in the past, it wouldn’t be a nail that bumps into the object, but only a portion connected to bits of nail that technically don’t yet exist. And because time’s a man-made construct, they don’t need to be aligned geographically either. They’re all just floating around somewhere in the past. The Tarlin makes fingernails immortal, but it also makes them appear short in the present.

Chris has arranged secret Enamemates meetings to debate Colin’s offer of Tarlin. Alice thinks it’d be a great way to promote awareness for those with long fingernails. Graham believes it undermines the very purpose of growing long fingernails if you can’t see them all in the present. Frankly, I agree with Graham, while adding that there are no tangible benefits of having our fingernails travel through time. It’d just be a matter of faith and daydreams; not unlike the hope that sustained Cooper in his quest to find a new home for humanity. And was he successful? It’s ambiguous, which is essentially just code for Nolan being too lazy to think up a better ending. Much like Colin’s fingernails, there are some cool ideas, but it isn’t accessible—we just have to trust that the substance is there.

Four Stars.

“At the Movies with Brian Novak” is a movie review column by the fictitious Brian Novak, otherwise known as the real James Gordon.