Interstellar (12A)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain

EXPERIENCING Interstellar will make you feel small.

A tiny speck in a vast universe – but not insignificant. The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception director Christopher Nolan's film about a dying Earth explores man's incredible will to adapt and survive.

Set in the near future, the planet has been devastated by drought and famine. Corn is the last viable crop and its days are numbered. Dust storms are growing in intensity and frequency and making people sick.

Outside of farming most other industry has ground to a halt but, in secret, NASA is still turning to the stars for an answer.

The public has lost its stomach for space travel because they are struggling to make it through from one day to another.

But Nolan's film makes you consider what would happen if Earth could not be saved but, in a last throw of the dice, perhaps mankind could be.

Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey as the widowed Cooper, a former NASA test pilot and engineer-turned-farmer.

By chance or by fate, he stumbles across his old colleague Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and is reluctantly convinced to explore the potential to sustain human life in the vast reaches of space.

The great irony of this is that Cooper joins the mission to save his children, Tom and Murphy, and other families like them. They are Earth's last generation

But by doing so he may never see them again.

As much as it is space travel, Nolan's bittersweet film is about the ties that bind and what we would sacrifice to protect those that we love.

In the first act, Interstellar lingers on Earth as if reluctant to be torn away from home.

But when the film does blast off it is truly epic with incredible sweeping views of space and distant worlds.

The mission sees Cooper's team, including Brand's daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway), pilot an experimental spacecraft called Endurance.

They are to follow the astronauts of the one-way 'Lazarus Mission' who investigated planets that could sustain life and left beacons to follow if their discoveries were fruitful.

This is where you have to concentrate in the film because the crew have to travel through a wormhole, orbiting Saturn, which may or may not have been put there as a lifeline by extraterrestrial life (satisfyingly, this is never answered).

Cooper also experiences time relativity where one hour for him while exploring a planet equates to seven years for his crew mate Romilly (David Gyasi) – and of course everyone back on Earth.

It is a startling wake up call which might make you ponder the transient nature of human life and is one of the most emotionally charged moments of Interstellar.

The crew also have to weigh up the options between plan A – saving everyone on Earth – and the Noah's Ark-style plan B to set up a colony and start again with a heavy heart.

The result is one of the most high concept blockbusters to hit cinema in years and one that is not afraid to dwell on the difficult questions. This is no Armageddon.

It might have astrophysicists shouting at the screen but the film also interestingly promotes faith and the supernatural as well as science which will leave your mind swimming.

Following the likes of Inception, Nolan has proved himself one of finest filmmakers of our generation. The only thing to wonder now is, if space is the final frontier, where does he go from here?

DAVID MORGAN