The concept itself is interesting and topical. The first 45 minutes of the film’s two hours and 49 minutes is devoted to the premise and personalizing it. In a near-future setting the earth is becoming inhabitable. We see frightening dust storms killing crops and a threat growing under which people will soon not be able survive. Matthew McConaughey plays Cooper, a widower and former NASA pilot, who works a farm. He has a son Tom, 15 (Timothée Chalamet), daughter Murph, 10 (MacKenzie Foy) and live-in father-in-law (John Lithgow). Cooper stumbles into a secret NASA site run by a physicist, Professor Brand (Michael Caine), and Cooper is tapped to go on a secret mission. The goal: find a planet in another galaxy to which the people of earth could be transported and survive. Murph is angry and feels betrayed by her father’s leaving.

The film then moves into the interstellar journey, and that’s where the main special effects take over, along with the ultra-strained dramatics of the elaborate screenplay. Especially in Imax the effects become amazing, but the huge screen also makes the screenplay seem even more pedestrian. There is so much scientific palaver going on (I can’t attest to the theoretical accuracy) that even Einstein might have found find the chatter-chatter overwhelming.

The personal stories get ever-more complex and far-fetched and sometimes the plot details seem incomprehensible. With the relative space-earth time difference, short periods in space equal much longer years on earth. Grown-up, Murph morphs into Jessica Chastain as her dad’s space exploration continues, with an important part of it concerning distant planets and the phenomenon of black holes. Those on the mission with him include Anne Hathaway as Dr. Amelia Brand, the physicist’s daughter, David Gyasi as Romilly and Wes Bentley as Doyle, in addition to a roving robotic contraption voiced by Bill Irwin. The complexities of this journey into the great beyond make the adventures in “Gravity” seem miniscule.

It has been 46 years since Stanley Kubrick unveiled his “2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which tried to capture the feeling of what space travel was like and explore the relationship of humankind to the universe. In the interim we have had the “Star Wars” series. “Interstellar” attempts to take the genre further with an implicit nod to our current global warming concerns.

The problem of the convoluted screenplay leaves one emerging from the special effects high with a feeling of having endured a cockamamie story, albeit trying to score points about sacrifices made for progress, as a price for the stunning visuals. But certainly Nolan’s work and that of Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography, Nathan Crowley’s production design, Paul Franklin’s visual effects supervision and Scott Fisher’s special effects supervision are to be admired and commended, along with the team that worked on the ambitious film.