INTERSTELLAR: WHEN SCIENCE AND EMOTIONS MEET
A Topical Review
Interstellar is a grueling sci-fi drama directed by the legendary Christopher Nolan. The academy award winning movie is an intriguing look into the future of our planet and perhaps – the future without it. The movie is deeply rooted in science fiction lore, employing elements of space exploration, time travel/manipulation and space colonization/habitation. The setting of the movie sits in the tumultuous period between a period where earth’s capacity to house humanity is diminishing at a noticeable speed and a period where human beings have mastered space migration and human beings are able to inhabit terrains outside of the tiny blue speck many generations have called home.
Nolan is no stranger to the world of science fiction. He has stated in the past that he went to see the Star Wars film (none specified) on twelve different occasions as a youngster. His love for the Star Wars franchise pushed him to carry out extensive research on another “Space Age” classic – 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s safe to say that Chris was well suited to execute a project of this nature. Interstellar had a lot of work and calculation put into the scientific aspect (which is most of it anyways). Like any other non-physics practicing person, its very likely that you were a bit befuddled by a lot of the lingo used by the characters in the film. From talk of quantum theory to gravitational anomalies, black holes, time warps and all that jazz. If you ever wondered why the story was so science-accurate, then you’ve got Kip Thorne to be grateful to. The theoretical physicist had a major role to play in the film’s science. Thorne’s bestselling book Black Holes and Time Warps had a great influence on how the movie turned out from a scientific aspect.
The science behind Interstellar is nothing short of outstanding and in multiple ways, it makes the movie a whole lot more satisfying. Nolan’s film even captured the dead silence and unnerving calmness that exists beyond our stratosphere and it was a success, rating at 8.6/10 on iMDb and 74% on Metacritic. The science of it all was quite impressive but the emotional premise of the movie has a strong say on why this movie was so special. The plot of this movie is centered on the phenomenon of time, and the dynamics of a father-daughter relationship. The movie starts in the wake of a corn blight epidemic in the mid-21st century where Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) lives with his father-in-law and two children – his son, Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and his daughter who he named after Murphy’s Law, Murph (Mackenzie Foy). Cooper is a brave ex-NASA pilot and an engineer, who stumbles upon coordinates that lead him and Murph to a heavily guarded, top secret NASA base where he meets a few familiar faces from his more adventurous days. Among these familiar faces is Professor John Brand (Michael Caine), his former supervisor who reminds him of his more active days at NASA in a bid to convince him to pilot an interstellar journey to either develop a gravitational propulsion theory so that humanity can start a mass departure from the gradually uninhabitable earth or find a viable new home planet and restart the human race with 500 human embryos and the surviving crew.
The offer is alluring, and Cooper feels the need to perform this gargantuan task on behalf of the human race. This is where the first major conflict occurs in the film and it singlehandedly created the trajectory of the rest of the plot. Like any other 10 year-old with a single parent in the world would be, Murph was distraught at the thought of her father leaving on a journey that could potentially keep him away forever. While the science of the movie is fascinating, these are the moments that really tug at the heartstrings of the viewer. This is when the emotional tension begins to unfold and over the course of the film, the characters are involuntarily thrown into bouts of emotional dilemmas.
While Cooper is in space, spearheading the quest for the survival of humankind, Murph (Jessica Chastain) is still on earth. But she’s all grown now, she’s fulfilling her potential as an astrophysicist and she works with Professor Brand at NASA now. She carried the emotional trauma of her father’s departure from the planet with her as she works. She believes he’s gone for good and his promise of his return was a lie. Initially, aboard the spacecraft, messages are exchanged between Cooper and the people on earth, Tom and the Professor inclusive. Murph, who was closest to her father while he was on earth, refuses to join in communicating with him for the longest time until she was the same age with her father when he left in hopes that he’d be reminded of his promise to return. Things get even more complicated with her discovery of the fact that Professor Brand had covertly sent Cooper on a one-way journey to space. He confesses this to her on his deathbed with tears in his eyes. To him, its for the greater good of humanity. His stance isn’t totally unbelievable because even his own daughter was sent on the foray into deep space.
A lot of drama ensues and sentiments flare over the course of the movie but at the end of it all, Murph’s resilience pays off. She has to deal with a now abusive and ignorant Tom (Casey Affleck). Tom’s egregious spiral into abusive aggression stemmed from his anger about his father’s departure. He blatantly retorts “Dad didn’t raise me, grandpa did and he’s buried out back with mom…” in response to Murph telling him that Cooper didn’t raise them to be “that” dumb as the film began to reach its heartwarming climax.
The climactic scenes serve a wonderful denouement. Cooper is plunged into the endless night of space and he realizes that he is back at the beginning of the movie, trying hard to communicate with his then 10 year-old daughter (sounds crazy right? Well, all’s fair in time and space, you have to watch it to get it), after which he mysteriously wakes up in a hospital, another odd turn of events which has become. Then Cooper wakes up as a 124 year old hunk, with his body still in its youthful form all thanks to some space-time astrophysics mumbo jumbo. Humanity has been saved, he’s on a station named the “Cooper Station”. That’s it right? Human extinction has been forestalled and he got credit for it, that should be it. Nolan’s pen had other ideas. Humanity had been saved, and the gradual death of all men has been successfully prevented for the foreseeable future. The climactic moments of this movie are special because at the end of everything, Murph’s work was effective, she helped humanity survive from earth, with help from her dad in space. The space station orbiting Saturn housed human beings as earth had already failed to do successfully and it was all a testament of the undying bond between a father and his daughter.
It’s definitely a must-watch for anyone who loves films, or time, or space, or rockets, or science, or math, or physics, or dads, or daughters or… you should get the point by now. Go watch Christopher Nolan’s INTERSTELLAR if you haven’t already, and if you have, go watch it again like I’ve done a couple hundred times.
“Do not go gentle into that Goodnight”
By Jojolola William Dopamu
@ jojotheoddity
