Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Ellen Burstyn Director: Christopher Nolan

    Christopher Nolan’s grandly conceived and executed epic tries to give equal weight to intimate human emotions and speculation about the cosmos.

    PREOCCUPIED with nothing less than the notion that humankind will one day need to migrate from Earth to some other planet we can call home, “Interstellar” so bulges with ideas, ambitions, theories, melodrama, technical wizardry, wondrous imagery and core emotions that it was almost inevitable that some of it would stick while other stuff would fall to the floor. Feeling very much like Christopher Nolan’s personal response to his favorite film, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” this grandly conceived and executed epic tries to give equal weight to intimate human emotions and speculation about the cosmos, with mixed results, but is never less than engrossing, and sometimes more than that.

    While it technically occupies the realm of science fiction, this gargantuan enterprise brushes up against science fact — or at least intelligent speculation — as much as it can in an effort to make the idea of leaving and returning to our solar system as dramatically plausible as possible. But audiences tend to be accepting of even far-fetched premises as long as the rules of the game are clear. Where Nolan takes his big leap is in trying to invest his wannabe magnum opus with an elemental human emotion, that between parent and child; it’s a genre graft that has intriguing wrinkles but remains imperfect.

    Citizens of the world convinced that our planet and civilization are now in a possibly irreversible decline will readily embrace the postulation of the script, by the Nolan brothers Jonathan and Christopher, that life here will shortly be unsustainable. Shrewdly, the writers don’t reflexively blame the deterioration on the catch-all global warming or climate change, but rather upon severe “blight” resembling the Dust Bowl of the 1930s; wheat and other produce are done for, while corn growers, such as Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), may have a bit of time left.

    Cooper belongs to a lost generation; a former engineer and test pilot, he expected to become an astronaut, but dire economic conditions forced the closure of NASA and the abandonment of the space program. His precocious 10-year-old daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) shares her father’s long-ago enthusiasm.

    There are echoes as well of “The Wizard of Oz” emanating from Cooper’s remote farmhouse, which he shares with his 15-year-old son Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and Donald (John Lithgow), his late wife’s father.

    But, NASA exists after all; it’s just gone underground. Under the auspices of wise old Professor Brand (Michael Caine), the agency is secretly resurrecting its efforts to find a new home for Earthlings, with the suitably named Lazarus mission. The path to it, Brand explains, is through a wormhole visible near Saturn, and plenty of technical dialogue and physical demonstrations are devoted to detailing how the astronauts will slip through this envelope in space and emerge in a different galaxy near another planet that might support life as we know it (eminent theoretical physicist Kip Thorne receives executive producer credit for his contributions to this and other astronomical aspects of the story).

    Cooper cannot resist the invitation to pilot this secret mission, but the angst of having to leave his family behind, specifically Murph, gives him the emotional bends. ”I’m coming back,” he gravely intones, echoing “The Terminator,” but even if he does return, it seems that, on the other side, he and his crew will age at just a fraction of the rate that Earthlings do at home. Murph is inconsolable and single-mindedly remains so for years.

    The small crew also consists of Brand’s oddly guarded scientist daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway), thoughtful astrophysicist Romilly (David Gyasi, in an intriguingly underplayed performance that makes you wish he had more to do), insufficiently written scientist and co-pilot Doyle (Wes Bentley) and, last but not least, the mobile computerized robot TARS (voiced by Bill Irwin), an occasionally humorous cross between Hal and R2D2.

    It’s a two-year trip out to Saturn, during which the crew hibernates in what’s cleverly called “the long nap” prior to the rough ride through the hole. Perhaps the most implausible detail in the entire film is that, even from another galaxy, a degree of communication with home is possible. But 23 Earth years have passed, meaning that Murph is now in her 30s and is played by Jessica Chastain. She’s just as resentful of her father having abandoned her as she ever was, while Amelia is gratified to learn that her dad, who looked 80ish when they left, is still alive.

    What happens once they arrive on a barren, snowy but not entirely inhospitable rock is best left undisclosed, even if the identity of a surprise presence there of a previous voyager won’t remain a secret for long.

    The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen.

    (SD-Agencies)