Interstellar is a movie where love saves the day. That may sound paradoxical since science and emotional sentiment are framed to be binary. However Nolan’s film showed me that to safeguard the future of humanity, both logic and emotion must work together. Anne Hathaway’s character, Dr. Amelia Brand states “Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space, maybe we should trust that even if we can’t understand it yet.”
Nolan’s film depicts a world plagued with dust storms and blight. The human race is an endangered species. A team of astronauts is set out on a mission to search for an inhabitable planet for earth’s people to relocate. However by the end of the movie only astronauts Cooper, Amelia Brand, and the robot TARS remains. Cooper and Tars both detach themselves from the spaceship and head into a black hole to increase the odds of Brand to make it to the next planet.
Many essays have been written to decypher Interstellar’s ending but I want to evaluate Interstellar’s message of love. Many of Nolan’s films are set up with a protagonist that is separated from their loved ones either through death or the burden of responsibility (Inception, Momento and the Dark Knight). Nolan uses this premise to investigate the power of love as it continues to endure despite being illogical. Anne Hathaway’s character Amelia Brand states that “we love people who have died, wheres the social utility in that?” In Interstellar, the characters who love each other but can’t be together are Cooper and Murph. However, unlike previous films, Nolan uses this father-daughter relationship to not only to showcase how love lasts against all odds but also how all of humanity finds a way. This film pushes viewers to care about the relationship between Cooper and Murph in order to broaden our perspectives. Their relationship helps viewers to invest in faceless future generations. This is very relatable to me as a 19-year-old since I currently find it hard to care about the future offspring I’ll never meet. Prior to this film, I had the unanswered question of why I should care about future generations that I’ll never be able to meet?
This movie reminded me a lot about the current conversation around climate change. While proven to be a large issue, it seems only a few people are contributing to reducing global warming’s effect on the world thus leading toward a bleak future for humanity. It’s natural to care more about the people we are with today than for the future people we’ll never know. Matt Damon’s character Dr. Mann reflects this instinct stating that “we can care deeply, selflessly about those we know but that empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight.” This statement holds true with the way most people look at the world today. His character is focused on the immediate future and his own survival rather than a big picture perspective on what is good for the entire species.
Contrast this with Michael Caine’s character Dr. Brand, the father of Amelia Brand and the professor that sends the astronauts on their mission. It is revealed that Dr. Brand lied tremendously in the film and uses the astronauts love for their current family against them. He deceives the astronaut team into thinking that by going on this mission, they will save their loved ones on earth. Dr. Brand later admits that he had no plan to save the remaining people on earth, but instead to restart humanity on a new world. This type of thinking is unethical and impersonal. Although this solution strikes us as heartless, the professor’s perspective is strictly logical and looks forward at the big picture for humanity. It is instinctive for us to feel that preserving our species is much more than simply being able to pass on our genes. It also involves protecting those that already live, which is why viewers are disheartened by Dr. Brand’s view even if the situation on Earth was truly hopeless.
Overall, Nolan shares the message that if humanity actually wants solutions to global problems such as climate change, we need more people like Cooper, the protagonist that blends both Dr. Mann’s personal emotions and Dr. Brand’s impersonal logic. Our protagonist’s deeply felt love for Murph guides him through the film to make the logical choices that are good for all people. By departing on his mission, he leaves behind his daughter on a quest to save her which ultimately allows him to save all of humanity.
While it can be easy to dismiss future generations as anonymous, this reminds viewers that both ancestors and descendants are a part of us. In the beginning, young Murph is haunted by a ghost who turns out to be her father in the tesseract. But after all, an ancestor is a ghost- someone whose presence is felt even after they have passed. This scene shows the connection we still have with our ancestors and how their efforts have helped us to achieve what we can today. When an elderly Murph is surrounded by her extended family on her hospital bed, the film uses this scene to help viewers make the leap from caring solely for their immediate family to caring about their unborn kin. Ultimately what is humankind if not a collection of distant relatives anyway?
While other movies about space reflect a fear of the unknown, Interstellar is unique in its genre by integrating its emotional positive outlook on humanity with scientific reasoning. While our future kin seems distant and our existence meaningless and brief, Interstellar reminds us that love is what humans add to the universe. Nolan’s film not only implores individuals to extend our love beyond our immediate family but reminds us that love is the force which defies science and connects all of humanity together.
