Persistence and Hope in Science Fiction Films Pt. 11 (Interstellar)

Interstellar is a film that feels enormous. Its reach across narrative time and distance is immense, as are its conceptual set pieces. It extrapolates our present culture into a near future where a war has reduced the population and a blight has made food scarce. We learn that an alien power has opened a wormhole accessible from earth into a distant galaxy with possibly hospitable worlds. The plot is concerned with the attempt to find another home world and save the human species.

Interstellar’s central thesis is similar to that of Tomorrowland: the necessity of continued innovation and the importance of ingenuity and hope. But whereas Tomorrowland builds an adventure movie façade around blunt repetitive statements and old advertising copy, Interstellar presents stunningly realized conceptions of cutting edge science and envelopes us in a world where the stakes feel real. Even though it could stand to dial down the solemnity in a few key spots.

Much of the tone and method behind Interstellar is in the direct lineage of Kubrick’s 2001, which is surprising for a successful post-millennial blockbuster. Nolan’s ingenuity in set building and visual effects owes more to the practical genius of a Kubrick than the tech obsessions of a James Cameron. And he has clearly learned pacing lessons, how to communicate scale of space and time through long takes and wide composition, from 2001. 

But thankfully he has also brought his own genius for action and high-energy payoff. There are no scenes like Nolan action scenes. Even in his weakest films a viewer leaves having seen things they would likely never have imagined. A planet of water on the cusp of a black hole with tidal forces causing waves the size mountain ranges, a planet of ice where clouds shatter like glass when hit, a wormhole rendered as a translucent planetoid sphere, the passage of a man through a black hole, and a trans dimensional chamber of infinitely recursive space time: even if the film doesn’t connect with you as entertainment it’s always worth seeing what Christopher Nolan and company imagine.

Interstellar’s attitude toward people is pretty broadly positive. Even the characters it shows as standing in the way of progress are motivated either by love or a survival instinct warning them against unnecessary risk. There are no real villains or brutes in Interstellar. There are the misguided, the frightened, and the selfish but all are sympathetic in some degree.

The main division in Interstellar is not between good and evil but courage and reserve, vision and fear. Even when, as in Tomorrowland, the plucky intelligent schoolgirl is reprimanded for questioning her school lessons, her teachers are not painted as glowering menaces but as sincere individuals trying to do the right thing. It’s a point on which Interstellar is far less cynical than Tomorrowland.  Interstellar manages to imply that people are good, and not just a herd of beasts from which arises the occasional golden child.