I've watched Interstellar twice now and my mind is blown! As usual, Christopher Nolan enveloped me with new, thought-provoking possibilities that totally took me to another dimension (pun intended) and played on my curiosities. The film is set in the near future in a world plagued with drought and famine. With a scarcity of food and a severe change in climate, humanity is on the brink of extinction. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is asked to pilot a spaceship inside a rip that had appeared in the space-time continuum near Saturn years before in order to expand the lifespan of mankind. The crew of the Endurance are forced to think farther and wider than ever before as they are challenged by space and the great unknown. Consequently, Cooper must choose between seeing his children again or saving humanity.
One of the factors that put this movie on my all-time favorites list is how realistic it is. Lately, the book and movie plot fetish has been all about high-tech, dystopian features with a mockingly corrupt government. Although in some foregone reality this might happen, Interstellar is much more realistic. It takes place in the very near future, where the climate has shifted. In the section of the world where our main characters inhabit, it is a dustbowl. The ability to grow crops is difficult and only corn seems to grow as the earth becomes more sickly. People are beginning to consider that earth is planning to expel their race permanently.
In this world, everybody is assigned a job; farmers, engineers, teachers. . .
Cooper is an ex-pilot as is explained in the beginning when he awakes abruptly from a nightmare of his plane crashing. This is how he is introduced to us.
When we met his daughter Murph, I thought she was just a kid trying to get her dad's attention. You could tell right away that she was an intelligent girl but her childish belief of ghosts seemed foolish. She was convinced that they had one wandering around the house--or more so her bedroom. Books would fall off her shelf, sometimes moving in what she lately discovers is morse code. However, I was turned into a believer after the first dust storm of the movie in which she had forgotten to close her windows. The dust blew in, creating piles on her floor. In the piles, you could see what appeared to be lines, as if somebody had raked their fingers through it. It was sort of magical in a mysterious and creepy kind of way. Obviously, my first thought was aliens or something to do with the earth's magnetic force. Instead, Cooper insisted otherwise. "Gravity," he said.
I love space films. In fact, I'm utterly obsessed with them. They overwhelm me with wonderment. Nobody really knows what's out there beyond earth and conspiracy theories are in such an abundance it's hard to know what to believe. However, I was somewhat surprised (and somewhat not) at the appearance of NASA. At this point, they were very secretive. I can imagine the public would be enraged if they discovered the government was funding them instead of something more sensible. Professor Brand, assumingly the head of NASA or something of the sorts, had discovered an equation that might be able to save mankind and he wanted Cooper to pilot that the spaceship that would accomplish this.
A decade ago, NASA had discovered a rip in the space-time continuum and they believed that it had been placed there by an extraterrestrial presence. They had sent others into the wormhole, but they had neither returned nor had they been able to communicate back. It was hard to say if they had been lost in the void or they had found a habitable planet. The entire mission was shrouded in mystery because there was no way to really know what was in the great beyond. The only thing they knew for certain was that beyond the wormhole, they were able to see multiple possibly habitable planets near a black hole they called Gargantua.
Cue the Interstellar film score as Cooper decides to leave and you can feel your heart begin to tear. Murph was unable to accept that he was leaving and refused to say goodbye. As Cooper sat on the edge of her bed, trying to reason with her, she insisted that the Morse Code from the books was trying to say "STAY." He gives her a matching wrist watch to his, telling her that they will always be on the same time.
Atlas, he had to leave and as he is driving away, you can hear the sounds of the countdown for the spaceship to shoot into space.
Flash forward several months and the crew has awoken from a hibernation slumber in the cryo-sleep chambers. There's only four human members of the crew plus TARS, the robot (he's one of my favorite characters). Doyle, Romilly, Brand (Professor Brand's daughter), and Cooper.
As they furthered themselves from Earth, they are unable to communicate back via video chat, but they're fortunately able to receive. However, although Cooper's son is willing to send a video, Murph has refused since he left.
They enter the wormhole and Brand see's something strange as they're traveling through. A hand reaching out towards her. She touches it back through the glass of their ship.
They land on a planet to retrieve equipment from a lost ship. The planet--all water it seems--really warps my mind with it's time relativity. Every one hour there was seven years on earth. My stomach was knotted for Coop because his kids were aging while he was out there in the Great Unknown trying to save humanity and only growing old by ONE HOUR! I honestly can't wrap my mind around that.
Something terrible happens on that planet and they are delayed. By the time they make it back into space, twenty-three years have passed on Earth. They receive several videos from over the "years" and finally Murph comes on the screen for the very first time. She is a woman now. She tells her father how it's a special day--her birthday. Not just any birthday, though. Cooper had told her that he'd be back by the time she was the same age as him but now she was the same age and he was not home.
I just about cried.
The perspective changes to Murph back on Earth. She now works at NASA and she discusses the equation with Professor Brand that still hasn't been solved.
The POV is changed back and forth between the members of the Endurance and Murph back on Earth. Earth has become increasingly worse. The people are becoming ill as all the dust is inhaled into their lungs.
Fast forward through some fascinating but uneventful space travel and the Endurance crew land on another planet--one that is mostly gray stone, cold, and snow. They emerge Mann (Matt Damon) from from cryo-sleep. He was one of the astronauts who had bravely traveled into the void years ago and had been testing this planet's probability of housing humankind. Unfortunately, Cooper's goal to reunite with his children clashes with Mann's goal to save humanity, and after taking a hike with Cooper, Mann shoves him over the side of crater that leads into a gaping hole. Fortunately, Cooper doesn't actually fall inside the hole but after a brief brawl, Coop finds himself on top of Mann. Mann headbutts his opponents helmet, cracking the glass and creating a hole. I also forgot to mention that Mann tore off the radio transmitter piece of Cooper's helmet prior to pushing him into the hole, making him unable to contact his crew. In fact, the entire time they were fighting, Mann continued to babble on about how all humans have this survival instinct. While Coop is suffocating on the ground, Mann turns off his head piece and begins to trek back towards the ships.
Miraculously, Cooper is able to retrieve the radio piece back, click it back into place, and call for help all while suffocating. Brand hears his cries for help and flies the ship over to save him. However, by the time they come back, Mann's base has exploded with Romilly inside and Mann is already on his way to orbit.
On Earth, Murph flips her car around and turns it into the corn field, which she sets on fire. Using this as a distraction, she flies back towards the farmhouse while her brother goes to battle the flames. She goes into her room, deep in thought.
In space, Mann tries to dock with the gravitational system (I don't know what's it called but it's the spinny thing in space that creates gravity) but because Coop and Brand had disabled the autopilot system, Mann is forced to dock and does so imperfectly. He attempts to open the airlock but the pressure blows it up, sending it spinning away. Of course, Coop being the brave soul he is, attempts to dock with it despite the dangers and they successfully regain control of the gravitational ship.
Now things get weird. They are approaching Gargantua, the giant black hole in which they'd received encouraging data from in the beginning of this space venture. After a short discussion, they decide to go see what's beyond but in the middle of the crossing. They planned to eject TARS, because they needed less weight on the ship but then shockingly, Cooper ejects himself too so that Brand can safely travel to the other side (greatly against her will, I might add). Coop finds himself sucked into the black hole and is force to eject himself from his seat, sending him sprawling into what can't be explained other than a fifth dimension.
Around him, he sees Murph's room everywhere from different angles and different times. Actually, it's not something I can really describe but rather something you would have to see for yourself. He sees her reading her books, thinking, figuring things out. He sees himself the day he leaves and since he can access the back side of the bookshelf in this dimension, he desperately tries to send the words STAY in Morse Code all the while crying out for himself not to leave.
The film flicks back to adult Murph in her room, walking around, looking through some of her childhood notes and things.
TARS suddenly tunes into Cooper's radio and it is only then that understanding dawns on him what is happening.
He is in a fifth dimension and gravity is the only thing that is not bound by time or space. In those moments, he attempts to communicate with adult Murph by using the watching on his wrist. The hands on Murph's watch began to move and she finally understands that her father is with her and trying to communicate. Her brother finally comes back from the fire but Murph runs out of the house and hugs him.
The dimension that Cooper is in begins to fold on himself and a bright light blinds him for a moment. When it fades, he is floating in space and you can see the rings of Saturn in the background. A ship is seen coming around the planet, towards Cooper.
Finally, he awakes in a hospital bed and when he wakes, he discovers he is on a space station inhabiting mankind temporaily. . .and he is 124 years old. Like what. . .!?!
We also learn that his daughter is now a 95 years old and dying. He goes to visit her and I couldn't help but cry, because my mind was twisted by the physics. Technically, he was older than her but his body wasn't. However, she was an old lady on her deathbed, surrounded by her family. The minutes he spent with her was brief, as she didn't want him to see her die.
The end of the movie shows Coop entering a spaceship. Brand is showing standing on a planet that is clearly the savior for mankind. She has set up base and is waiting. . .waiting for him.
And then it ends.
As most Christopher Nolan movies are, this one left a lot of room for imaginations and the QUESTIONS.
Gahhhh!
However, after this long description of the movie, I can conclude that IT WAS GOOD! Really good. One of the best movies I've ever seen.
