Movie Review: Interstellar

After Christmas, my sons Aaron and Kenneth and I went to see the movie, Interstellar. Wow! What a ride! Trying to keep up with the physics was effort enough – time and relativity, wormholes and ghosts that aren’t really ghosts but someone from the past and future communicating through a bookshelf. Really? The story, in brief is that the Earth is a goner. Crops have failed the wind blows dust everywhere and there is little hope. The only hope, it seems, is to find another planet. A wormhole just off Saturn has been found that transports some pioneer explorers into another galaxy where NASA has found a few planets that could become humanities new home. Off go our heroes through the wormhole to visit the pioneers on these planets, only to fail, largely. But there is this Black Hole nearby and if they can get to the singularity in the Black Hole they may be able to retrieve data that will link Relativity with Quantum physics (which physicists have been working on for decades – actually). The number one hero, Cooper lets himself fall into the Black Hole and he enters this weird box like arena where he can see other places in time. (He actually is the ghost behind the bookshelf – but that’s a long story.) The end is left open regarding whether humans will be able to leave Earth and inhabit a new planet. The implication is that it will happen. The data linking Quantum and Relativity was retrieved implying that there is hope. One could simply say what a cool movie! We spent some time talking about it and it was difficult to make all the connections. We all decided that when it gets on Netflix we will watch it again. Then I asked, what is the message of the movie?

There is an implied critique of humanity for ruining Earth but not much of a focus on repentance for that. The focus was on getting away from Earth. This is a movie about the salvation of humanity, not the Earth. The focus, regarding humanity is not on our past sins but our continual potential to solve the problems before us. The box like place into which Cooper landed was, we learn later, created by future humans. Humans from the future have heard the plight of we humans and have had a hand it saving us. At the beginning of the movie the scientists spoke of a “they” who were giving them messages about how to proceed. When I first heard about “they” I thought of God but as it turns out it was more advanced humans. In short, salvation comes from humans – where is God in this?

When they set off through the wormhole to the other planets in another galaxy there was a Plan A and a Plan B. Plan A was to find a suitable planet and transport human beings from Earth to that planet. Plan B involved frozen fertilized eggs that would populate the new planet at least saving humanity. Cooper was dead set on Plan A – how could we just give up on all those people left on Earth. (I wondered, how could all the people on Earth be saved by being transported to this other planet? All the people in China and India? Were they just talking about their own families and loved ones? That brings up ethical questions too.) I am glad that part of the message was that it was important to try for Plan A. It turns out that the scientist responsible for the formulation of the plans never intended Plan A but only used it to convince participants, including Cooper to go on the mission. In their desire to save the people on Earth I felt some sense of compassion. Also, in one scene they are trying to decide which planet to try next the one that seems more reasonable or the one where one of the participants friends is… lover may be better. She says, maybe we ought to follow love than reason. They make the rational choice and it turns out to be the wrong one and in the end the woman ends up on the planet where her lover was, but he’s dead. It is very convoluted. Anyway, in that quote some mileage is given to something more than survival of the fittest.

Aaron contends that the movie implied that God resides in the hearts of all of the humans. And that it was love that fueled the advance of human beings – and that was God. I am more skeptical, not about God and love but about what the message of the movie really is. I just can’t let go of the fact that humanity ruined the Earth and we should all be repenting! I fear that seeing this movie one could believe that if we just keep working on science, math and technology we will be able to save ourselves… so we shouldn’t worry about the Earth that much.

Movies are the parables of our time. It is important for us to ask, what is the message of this movie? It can be a lot of fun too. P.Jim