INTERSTELLAR believes in love and family as real forces in the physical world, and I don’t have the heart to tell it otherwise. (It also literalizes string theory as a multicolored pane of time-bending strings behind your bedroom wall. Think about that for a moment!) The ambition of INTERSTELLAR is inseparable from its clean-shaven nuttiness and its discreet romanticism.

Through scale and speed, Interstellar’s first half builds enough beyond-human momentum to sustain a not inconsiderable amount of entertainment value — but when Mann appears to explain man, it collapses under the weight of a repeated thesis that doesn’t merit such explicit, redundant reiteration.

A film of wide-open spaces and lofty ambition—and fields of corn literally as high as an elephant’s eye if you’re watching it in IMAX—Interstellar is Nolan’s most enjoyable film since 2006’s The Prestige and in many ways his least enervating movie ever, drained as it is of the acidic pessimism that infected so many of its predecessors.

Viewers have to infer the particulars of his futuristic scenario gradually, as evidence presents itself, and he trusts that we’re smart enough to do so. It’s a bold decision, but it has a strategic purpose, because Interstellar ultimately turns into the sort of hard sci-fi in which characters are constantly and necessarily spewing exposition. By providing no information at the outset, Nolan creates a context in which later onslaughts of practical verbiage feel like a gift rather than like a slog.

In its best stretches, which tend to come in the middle, it is a fatalistic adventure that pits peaceful science types against themselves and each other as they struggle to achieve a greater goal; in its worst moments, toward the end, it is a dopey exercise in humanist metaphysics, a movie about facing the cosmic unknown that explains everything several times over.

The films of Christopher Nolan generate emotion in much the same way that a supercollider generates particles, accelerating until they achieve a velocity that allows the abstract concept at their core to be seen and confirmed. Nolan may not be looking for the Higgs boson, but he uses a similar approach to distill and demystify the subatomic elements of narrative fiction.

Genius director Christopher Nolan reaches for the stars in “Interstellar” — and delivers a soulful, must-see masterpiece, one of the most exhilarating film experiences so far this century.

Brainy and exciting at the same time, Interstellar invalidates the need for mindless Hollywood product. No matter its shortcomings, the movie achieves an impressive balancing act. It turns the mysteries of the universe into a cinematic playground, but for every profound or visually arresting moment, it also encourages you to to think.