By Christopher Nolan films tend toward complicated plot structures, baffling time structures and overwhelming cinematography that even the biggest film geeks amongst us can struggle to understand.
Put simply, he's probably not the man you'd call if you were picking out a pre-bedtime film for your five-year-old.
Nonetheless, he's got a suggestion. And it's not as crazy as you might fear.
In an interview with the LA Times the Dunkirk director revealed that, '“Interstellar” is very much, as people would say, in dialogue with “2001: A Space Odyssey.”'
He went on to discuss why he showed the film to his own children when they were around 3 or 4 years old.
"I think they’re able to absorb it on the most important level at a young age," he said. "That’s what happened to me. I saw it when I was 7 years old, and that’s the level I think it works the best — pure cinematic spectacle. I was extremely baffled by it, but excited by it."
Nolan added, "When people talk about the age of people watching a film, part of what they’re asking is, “How does a 7-year-old parse the content?” And if you look at “2001” and you think about it, you can’t parse it anyway as an adult. The experience is the thing. You don’t know what the hell is going on. You just let the experience wash over you and maybe talk about it later."
He then spoke about his own experience of seeing the film:
"I saw “Star Wars” when I was 7, and the movie changed everything for people my age. They re-released “2001” on the basis of that success and I went to see it with a bunch of my friends. We all had the same response, like you just said. “We don’t know what the hell that means, but it’s exciting.” We just wanted spaceships, we wanted space, we wanted that experience of leaving the Earth."
Sounds better than The Emoji Movie. Right, parents?
