“Interstellar”: A promise
Warning: Some spoilers ahead
“They should’ve sent a poet”
…said Eleanor Arroway, an orphaned genius scientist and eager explorer as she gazed on the breathtaking starscape unfolding at the end of her unreal journey in 1997's Contact. We know, however, that no tricks of the human language could possibly do justice to that sight. The awe and beauty can be only conveyed by her words, which are, in fact, an urging: “Come see for yourselves.”
Upon her return, with no evidence to support her story, Eleanor, the skeptical scientist is forced to admit to herself and to a congressional committee, that she had what most people would call a revelation. For the first time in her life, she is first at a loss for words, then teary eyed but eloquent as she tries to communicate her experience to a group of frowning non-believers. The charming and witty Rev. Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), a Christian philosopher and advisor to the President comforts her as they exit the Capitol. They’re met by a huge crowd of believers and when asked by a reporter what he believes, Joss replies: “as a person of faith, I’m bound by a different covenant than Dr. Arroway. But our goal is one and the same: the pursuit of truth. I, for one believe her.”
Seventeen years after Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, Matthew McConaughey returns as Cooper, a former astronaut and single dad, this time taking on the role of an explorer torn between hope and despair, reluctance and bold curiosity. Paving the way for him and humanity in a Universe of awe and wonder is Christopher Nolan. This is Interstellar.
Cinema is back
What makes a good movie? This might seem like a pretentious trick question but the answer is rather simple. A good movie is one that we can enjoy as a whole, from story to edit without feeling the need to single out elements based on how good they are. Interstellar manages to do just that. True to one of the central elements of its story, Christopher Nolan makes a three-hour movie feel like a six-hour vision of things to come. The tapestry is so complex that it pulls you in completely. Cinema as we knew and loved it is finally back.
Tick tock
Humanity in Interstellar may be dealing with an environmental crisis but, thankfully, Mr. Nolan doesn't go into it too much beyond establishing a plausible premise which resonates in our psyches. The crisis is purely metaphorical. None of the crucial survival elements seems to lack. There’s plenty of real estate, water in abundance and, although a sort of plague that affects crops is mentioned repeatedly, everyone looks pretty well-fed and there’s always food to put on the table. There even seems to be enough arable land to allow for beer to be produced. The only commodity humans are really lacking is time. Even the dust that gets in everyone’s houses, eyes and lungs is a pure expression of time as our main limitation. Here, Nolan’s usage of footage from Ken Burns’ PBS documentary “The Dust Bowl” featuring real-life Dust Bowl survivors is brilliant on oh, so many levels. Time is pulling people apart, makes them old and forgetful, drives them crazy or just kills them. And in Mr. Nolan’s hands, time bends and turns in on itself, it accelerates and decelerates as we experience several lives, each ticking at a different speed. And it all makes perfect, beautiful sense.
A lesson in humility
From our perspective, the size of the Universe and the complexity of interstellar travel can only be matched by the enormous issues we face every day, individually, and globally, as a civilization. This means that while we can assign priorities for relatively short periods of time, we can’t ignore some big questions and challenges in favor of others, and have to deal with them simultaneously because the clock is always there, ticking away. Humanity in Interstellar reckons that feeding people takes priority and expensive space travel should be left for future generations. But as the crops fail, the answer becomes clear. One doesn't exclude the other. Cooper, while defending his daughter’s curiosity in front of her teachers, has to admit that, under the circumstances, his hard-working, faithful son Tom is better suited for farm work than he is for college. On the other hand, having once crushed his own love for outer space and exploration, he’s forced to leave his family and farm behind to don the space suit again and find a new home for mankind. For father and son the roles are set. Each of them must do his part. The humans of Interstellar don’t have the luxury of filling shoes that do not fit them, there’s no time for whims, wallowing or failure. Society needs astronauts as much as it needs farmers, plumbers, carpenters and teachers. Tom understands that and accepts, not without dignity and even a hint of pride, to begin his life as a farmer.
A place to call home
The Cooper farm is no ordinary one and remains central to the story, a Universe within a Universe within a Universe in the most literal sense and at the same time true to Mr. Nolan’s preference for a certain type of metaphor. Thanks to Steven Spielberg, the solitary prairie house has become a chest of mysteries and a telltale sign of future wonders. But this doesn't mean the farm loses its primary function. It is a safe heaven for the family, and a formative experience for everyone, regardless of their aims in life.
Even the most daring and solitary explorer needs a home where he can rest and prepare for his next journey, wherever that may take him. Sometimes the destination is a new home altogether. As youngsters, we are eager to leave the home of our parents, experiment, explore and be free. We want to follow our dreams but what we dream of is home as we imagine it. Oftentimes, however, we get stuck in one place and when curiosity dwindles, necessity kicks in.
“They still want an American to go. Wanna take a ride?”—S.R. Hadden
Just like an emigrant who has to fight the force of his homesickness, Cooper, the flesh and blood exponent of the entire human race, must come to terms with the fact that our home is not eternal. As professor Brand (Michael Caine) puts it with fatherly affection, “We weren’t meant to save the planet. We were meant to leave it.” Natural disasters aside, stagnation means death and our survival depends on our capacity to explore and expand.
Of gravity and other forces
In spite of the internet going supernova fueled by the hype around the science of Interstellar, this film is not about science. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Nolan pays a marvelous tribute to scientific achievement, keeps his science as accurate as possible, and his rendition of the gargantuan black hole is the stuff of dreams. But the humans in this film are technological infants, just as we are. They didn't create the wormhole, they don’t even understand it all that well, and they obviously have no idea what lies beyond an event horizon. Cooper’s grasp of relativity, black holes and deep space travel is that of a seventeen year old trekkie. “Cross our fingers and hope for the best” is the motto of Endurance’s crew as they’re thrown across space and time.
The opposing forces of space travel are Mr. Nolan’s answers to the big questions about our future. Gravity pins us down just as our attachment to home makes it hard for us to “throw off the bowlines” and “sail away from the safe harbor”. Escape velocity helps us break free of Earth’s gravity just as the struggle for survival and our childlike curiosity propel us towards the stars. The science of Interstellar is the science of accurate metaphors.
“…without Earth to look back to always, without Earth to set up a god of the past, they will establish a Galactic Empire.” — R. Giskard Reventlov “Robots and Empire”
The robot sidekicks on board the Endurance also give hints of deeper metaphorical layers. They might have receptacles where they fit perfectly and a couple of LED screens for eyes, but their sleek design makes them anachronistic and out of place when compared with the rather crude surrounding technology.
If the human crew of the Endurance needs a role model, then TARS and CASE are as good as any. Intelligent, incredibly resourceful, relentless and way, way smarter than their organic shipmates, they seem to always be in control. They exhibit a composure that could be attributed to a seemingly strict programming were it not for their quirky humor, resulting in a serene detachment characteristic to a superior intelligence. Which makes me venture and ask: What if the hand extended through eons and billions of years to save a dying human race belongs in fact to the descendants of TARS and CASE? R. Daneel Olivaw and R. Giskard Reventlov take on similar roles in the Robots and Foundation series.
Nothing is for free
When we began exploring our planet, the distances and challenges were daunting. We crawled across land and sea facing heat and cold, desert and water. Many times the transition from one place to another took a few generations. As we picked up the pace, the distances started to be more manageable. In the 16th century, Ferdinand Magellan embarked on an expedition around the Earth. The journey took three years but Magellan never got to see the end of it.
“My old man calls space travel a fool’s game. He says human beings are 60% water, that they eat, sleep, defecate, can’t follow directions and explode like piñatas when exposed to the vacuum of space. Lately, I've been wondering if he’s right.” — Maddux Doner “Defying Gravity”
In the three years it took Magellan’s expedition to circumnavigate Earth, we could maybe get to the Asteroid Belt. There’s no going around the galaxy for us; we can’t even think of going around our own solar system in one single lifetime. With our current technology, the trip to the nearest star would take us over three thousand generations (around 65,000 thousand years). That’s six times the span of our entire history as a civilization.
Since Yuri Gagarin became the first human to cross the threshold into space, tens of astronauts and ground crew personnel have lost their lives. We invested billions of dollars, millions of work hours and tens of years in the preparation of each astronaut. We learned a lot, made some good progress and sparked the imagination of millions. But with all this sacrifice we barely got to the Moon. On a cosmic scale, this is the equivalent of Magellan getting out of bed. At best.
Ad astra per aspera
Our evolution from an Earth bound to a space faring civilization will cost us dearly — money, resources, lives, tears, sweat and time. We must be ready to pay this toll but that alone is not enough.
A matter of faith
The vacuum and coldness of space, the enormous forces and energies, the distances, the sheer scale of the Universe and the sacrifices we’ll have to make are beyond daunting. We are about to embark on a fantastic journey into the unfathomable. And to deal with the unfathomable we need more than just science. We need something all great explorers and inventors have: Faith.
Because Interstellar is really not about the science. It’s about faith. Humanity in Interstellar is not on the brink of extinction because it is out of options but because it has given up. The mentally unstable Dr. Mann is resigned and accepts as a given the fact that plan A was a hoax. He even tries to find a rather flimsy justification for his defeatism in the inherent flaws of human nature. Cooper’s son wallows in self pity and endangers his family in the process. He too, has long lost faith in his father and in the chances of survival of his family as a unit and of humankind as a whole. Dr. Brand’s serene deception and deathbed confession is that of a man who renounced all faith. Finally, Murph, the prodigal daughter, now a fully grown genius scientist, almost misses the solution sent across space and time by her father. Her and humanity’s salvation hang on a single leap of faith she makes at the last moment.
Cooper, on the other hand, though reluctant in the beginning, is not only fueled by the desire to save and see his family again or by his love of exploration but also by his constant and unwavering faith. He looks for solutions and never gives up. Even when trying to save what’s left of the Endurance and one of the on-board AIs warns him that he’s attempting the impossible, he just replies: “It’s necessary.” Similarly, Brand’s daughter, in what looks like a momentary breakdown, pleads with Cooper to explore the planet where the man she loves was supposed to have landed.
This scene needs perhaps more attention. People seem to consider it cheesy and pointless, a product of “American cinema”, maybe because of a very theatrical delivery by Anne Hathway. Nothing could be further from the truth though. Love is, too, an expression of faith.
Cooper, while compassionate, makes his judgement on cold, hard science, a decision which seems right at the moment. As it turned out, his momentary lack of faith was going to cost them.
Similarly, Contact’s Ellie Arroway, the embodiment of the skeptical, cold scientist, bases her quest for extraterrestrial intelligence on faith alone, a fact that she has to admit to in the end.
We have rarely had any cold hard proof for most of the things that we discovered, and yet discover them we did. Just as Anne Hathways’s character in Interstellar is drawn to Edmunds’ planet, we too knew that something worthwhile was “there” or “out there”.
The promise
As Cooper heads into the launch bay of “Cooper Station” we finally glimpse what is in store for us, as individuals and as a civilization. This is not your run-of-the-mill happy ending. The film comes back full circle and resends Cooper on a new journey. That is Mr. Nolan’s promise - that through hard work, sacrifice and faith we will access a Universe of endless wonder. Or, as a Vulcan from Star-Trek would put it, “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.”
Prologue: The sounds of space
I love the Hans Zimmer that scored Inception or Man of Steel. I love the new, Philip Glass influenced one even better.
