The spinning totem in Inception; A ticking watch in Interstellar. Must say Chris Nolan has an uncanny knack for conveying the labyrinth, through clever little objects, that might even go unnoticed throughout! Such objects are of vital importance to his new film; the plot of which is manipulated to the hilt in return for stupefy!
Regarding the genius of Nolan Matthew McConaughey said something evocative once in an interview – “He’s not a staid perfectionist. He won’t indulge in retakes unless he feels its completely necessary.”
It is amazing to see how much information has Nolan crammed into this sci-fi material with his brother Jonathan sharing the writing credits. Wormholes, Blackholes, Time travel, Exploration, Doomsday. The result is a ghee-whiz wonder in space, that works like more of a mind dance the second time you see it. Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick, one of Nolan’s touchstones for the technical aspects of this film.
Partly inspired by Kubrick, Interstellar is about a team of explorers who partake in a voyage to galaxies beyond when a devastating dystopia is heralded by dying crops, and dust ball storms. This is the kind of world where farmers are greatly regarded than scientists, and engineers. Cooper played by Matt MaCcnoughey is one such farmer/ Ex-NASA pilot, the widowed father of Murph and Tom his two kids. When Murph indicates his father of a supernatural presence in her room, Cooper identifies it as a gravitational anomaly which is causing the blights to occur, and the storms.
“When we were kids we used to look up and wonder about our place in the stars. Now we look downwards and worry about our place in the dirt.”
They drink beer in this scene. If crops are dying, then from where did they get enough wheat to manufacture it? Do you think Nolan has the answers? Well, fill in the blanks……
The anomaly serves Murph and Cooper with some coordinates that leads them to a hidden NASA camp, where Cooper meets Professor Brand: his former professor cum NASA head, who has plans of evacuating earth if not saving it. Brand’s outlandish plans centers around the “Endurance” spaceship that fully exploits the infinite potentials of an interstellar travel, with Cooper piloting the mission.
“Only you can get us there Coop. Nobody else has even left the simulator” Quips Dr. Brand. What follows is a sci-fi epic that questions our faith, our intellect and at times even our concentration.
For Cooper, Amelia, TARS and CASE finding new inhabitable planets is no mean task like “E.T Phone Home” mainly because getting there itself is a leap for humanity. The VFX team of this movie, lead by cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema has crafted some astounding visuals which illustrates the enigma and the vastness of outer space. So brace yourself for a massive tidal wave which the astronauts somehow manage to evade. A “docking scene” which leaves them, and the audience in a state of slack-jawed stupefaction. A gravitational pull near Gargantua the super-massive Blackhole which causes ridiculous delays in time – 1 Hr in space equals to 7 Years on earth. The magical moment in Sci-Fi genre is Cooper’s reply “It’s necessary” to a rhetorical – “Is it even humanly possible?” by TARS.
Hours of blitzkrieg has some light comic touches too that when TARS get up close and personal with Cooper, the father-daughter bits which are full of emotion. As the movie motors along to reach its so-called nonsensical climax, we see its protagonist grapple with what looks like a five-dimensional universe where TIME can be manipulated like a physical object! Its nerdy science fiction. Maybe its in this reference Albert Einstein once quoted – “Genius is the ability to see 10 things, where mere mortals could see only one.”
As I see it, or as Nolan would have it, there maybe even a sixth dimension called “Leap of Faith” and a seventh “Suspension of Disbelief."