For Enriko Kemlein
If I remember my relationship with the
films by Christopher Nolan in the last years, I have to say I am
still surprised by Interstellar. I am not yet sure if it is a
cinematic masterpiece like Kubrick´s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but I am
pretty sure that Interstellar did more for the Science Fiction Film
in the last 18 years than any other films of this genre. I never
really understood why the Science Fiction as a film genre never approached the versatility like for example the Western or the detective
thriller while this genre was already in the 1950s full established
in literature. And even though this groundbreaking masterpiece 2001: A Space
Odyssey remained for almost 50 years the finest achievement in science
Fiction film ever, a lot of other aspects of this genre remained
nearly unused. I do not want to reduce Science Fiction on this single
film (there are other respectable approached during the history of
cinema), but it is definitely one of the few films who used the range
between Science Fiction as a popular genre and as a philosophical
reflection. Though a masterpiece in its own right, Tarkovski´s
Solaris was focusing on a philosophical reflection, any flirt with
Science Fiction and its more popular, even pulp elements were shut
out.
My favorite Science Fiction writer is
Clifford D. Simak, an almost forgotten writer and for me one of the
very few who used the whole range of Science Fiction, a writer for
whom Science Fiction was not a pretense for his ideas about the
world, but he had a deep passion for this genre which was categorized as a
film genre mostly as a B – pictures or often brainless Blockbuster events..
Whenever someone will adapt a novel by
Simak for cinema, I often think they have to have a vision of both,
the future Simak described but as well the past (mostly the 1950 and
1960s) in which Simak wrote these novels must be researched very
well. This special “sense of wonder” which we can find in the
Science Fiction novels of this time must be preserved.
Coming back to Christopher Nolan, from
a film historical point of view view a very young director, made with Interstellar
not his first Science Fiction film. He revitalized with his Batman
-trilogy a classic of pulp fiction and at least The Dark Knight could
be seen as one of the most sophisticated super hero films ever made.
But Nolan is also an intellectual and in his effort to bring the pulp
myth Batman into the present, especially the traumatized America
after September 11, the films and even The Dark Knight (by far the finest of his three Batman-films) lack
often the fun and yes let´s say the beauty of the pulp genres. Nolan
outed himself obviously as a lover of popular genres but his
intellect works often as a kind of censor as if he he felt ashamed
for his fascination pulp fiction he had in his youth.
For avoiding a misunderstanding: I have
a lot of respect in Christopher Nolan. He is not only the most
intelligent blockbuster director of our time, his wiring try to
bring intelligence and sophistication into films made for a very huge
audience might have failed in most cases, but the try in itself
demands a certain kind of admiration. His Science Fiction thriller
Inception is an ambitioned approach but left me ice cold. But the
only film by Nolan I really disliked was the last Batman-film The
Dark Knight Rises. I saw it as overloaded with a lot of intellectual
references that the mythic fascination of Batman could hardly breath.
Nothing prepared me for the beauty of
Interstellar, which was released in late autumn 2014.
The film takes place in the near
future. Life on earth seems to be near its end caused by ecological
disasters. Failed crops, dust storms and a decrease of oxygen in
the earth atmosphere. Cooper is a former NASA-pilot who has to run a
farm for surviving. His wife is already dead and he lives with his
father in law and his two children.His daughter Murphy seems to have
inherited the passion for technique and space exploring. The first
shot shows a dusty model of a space shuttle on a book shelf.
While Cooper´s father in law and his
son are nearly "Simikian" characters who are rooted in this dying
landscape, Cooper and his daughter seem to be outsiders. Cooper is
dreaming of his failed career as a pilot after all NASA projects were
officially cancelled and Murphy has trouble in school accepting the new
censored school books in which every Apollo-project is considered as
fake for the benefit of propaganda. Just in the first 20 minutes,
Nolan does not only appear as the great technician (probably the
finest since Kubrick) but as well as a mythic story teller. Cooper is
at the same time the lonely hero in some westerns by John Ford, as
well the master of technical devices like Nolan´s Batman or the
magicians in Privilege but very often and at the same time very
close to the lost, homeless and very vulnerable characters in the
films by Terrence Malick.
From the beginning there is a very
sensitive balance between human drama and later in the film the
“sense of wonder” of Science Fiction. Nothing is an excuse for
the other but both elements live a life of its own. For now Cooper
appears as the most rational character, while his daughter Murphy
still explains gravitational phenomenons with “ghosts” A bit
later Cooper encounters that NSA still exists, but as a governmental
secret organisation. The situation of this dying earth is much worse
than Cooper already thought. The end is near and the generation of
Coopers children will be the last who can live on earth. Cooper meets
an old scientist he knows from NASA. There are only two options, the
one is to explore new planets where mankind can settle, the other is
to conserve human fertilized eggs in case the discovery of habitable
planet comes too late. The technique of the space ships NASA can offer have hardly developed much further. As scientists detected near
the Saturn an artificial worm hole which is a short cut to a far
distant galaxy, the limited speed of space ships are no problem
anymore. Cooper will be employed as a pilot. But the prize he has to
pay is to abandon his family and the certainty that (caused by
relativity) his children will be at best nearly in his age when he returns.
Coopers decision for the space expedition (they shall look for
astronauts of an earlier expedition who already detected habitable
planets). The exploring mission includes also a rescue mission. His will to “safe the world” includes the possibility
that the children he left behind will die before he returns. Murphy
who feels left behind and who insists that her “ghosts “ have warned him against the expedition, Her father´s decision separates both of them mentally before the expedition begins. The farewell is probably one of
the most heartbreaking scenes I ever saw in a film by Nolan. The film
will become more spectacular but we will remember this moment - unusual for a
film by Nolan – of a very intimate family story. It is bit like Hans
Zimmer´s wonderful score which paraphrases a simple melody sometimes
more intimate, sometimes more alienated. It is probably his finest
film music since the one Malick´s The Thin Red line.
Just in the first 30 minutes, I can mention a lot of reasons why Interstellar appears to me as Nolan´s
most lovable film. It is well known that he tried as much as
possible to avoid computer-animated special effects. The space ships
are handmade l models like Kubrick used once in his 2001. That the film was at least screened in
some theaters in 70 mm is another tribute to the analog
cinema. And another aspect is evident: Interstellar is far away from
the perfect styled action thrillers like the three Batman films or
Inception. Ironically, even the technology of the space ships demands often much more manual handling than the technical devices available for Batman. Even though there are moments when Matthew Conaughey´s
Cooper seems to be the cool action hero and even though there are
also moments when Interstellar celebrates the big screen spectacle –
there is a very strange balance between human drama, and Science Fiction
spectacle, The film lacks fortunately the cleverness of Nolan´s former action
movies. Even though Nolan was advised by scientists for this film, it
is the first film by Nolan I have seen where you don´t have the feeling
Nolan knows more than the actual film experience can finally offer.. The scientific research, this hard science
fiction element does not interfere with a certain kind of beauty,
this “sense of wonder”.
It seems that Nolan does not only
exposes his characters to the hostile earth of the near future, the
interstellar space, hardly habitable planets or a Black hole, he
seems to expose himself to the power of cinematic images and
movements. The emotions the film evokes have a certain power because
they seem less calculated but aroused from the situations the plot
offers by itself. The "space time machine" cinema which Nolan
controlled and conducted so perfect in his previous films seems here
in this film to scare himself. There is this wonderful moment when
Cooper comes back from a failed rescue mission on a planet. This
planet is so close to a Black Hole that according to Einstein´s
theory of relativity one hour on this planet means 7 years of earth
time. When he and his colleagues return to the ship, more than 20
years have passed by. When he watches the video messages from his
children who are now about his age offers another heartbreaking
moment. His children have aged and from the life they lead Cooper
gets only fragments. In this moment, Matthew McConaughey is close to
us, a spectator who watches a big span of a human life in a few
moments. One can see it as a brilliant analogy to the cinema and to
the power images have on us. But first of all it rather felt by heart
than by intellect. And Nolan this director with an excellent
education in the history of cinema seems here experimenting with the
power of cinema on himself as well. Just alone this moment is for me
evidence of a certain honesty, the majority of Science Fiction films
after 2001: A Space Odyssey do not have and that includes so-called classic like Star Wars, Alien and not to mention high budget
crap like Prometheus or Independence Day.
When Nolan´s Odyssey finally reaches
it´s climax, Nolan uses seemingly conventional cross cutting. But
even if we think the two actions happen at the same time, we have
forgotten, that the time slows down for the astronauts and the second
location, the earth where Coopers adult daughter tries to find a
solution for saving mankind is despite the cross cutting already past
for the astronauts. This seemingly very conventional dramatic form
appears now as a simple but very brilliant cinematic equivalent to
the theory of relativity.
The conclusion of the film is a bit
like a a sad odyssey. Nolan´s Odysseus/Cooper, was already a widower
before he began his journey. Having survived the journey through the
event horizon of a Black Hole, he reaches again the wormhole and his
journey ends in the future. In between his daughter finally has saved
mankind which lives now on several space stations. Odyssey´s return
to home and to the people he loves leads to another wonderful moment: Murphy is now a very old woman who is going to die. It will be his last
encounter between father and daughter. And here again - some critics
consider as a certain clumsiness in Nolan´s narrative style, it
appears to me as sometimes even very daring playfulness. The
spectacular space opera finally returns to the home drama with which
the film began. The civilisation has survived but there is no place
anymore for Cooper, an anachronism like John Ford´s Ethan in one of
the great American film odysseys called The Searchers.”A parent
should not see his children die”, his daughter says.
She suggests him to look for his colleague Amelia Brand who is
stranded on planet in another galaxy, the female Odyssey who never
will get home. The final images show Amelia on this planet, the
man she loved once is buried and she is alone.
It is interesting that there were some
critics who at least acknowledged Nolan´s ambition but most of them
concluded that he has not reached the depth of the “holy grails of
science fiction films" 2001 and Solaris. Actually I think Nolan
achieved something far more important: he created with his wonderful
space opera a bridge between cinema as an art and cinema as a part of
popular culture – even more Interstellar shows us how absurd this
borders really are. At least since Robert Zemeckis´ Contact and
Andres Niccol´s Gattaca, Interstellar is the most impressing science
fiction film, by far Christopher Nolan´s most beautiful film. We
have almost forgotten what a science fiction film can be and we have
almost forgotten the glory of the 70 mm-Format and the beautiful
result of analog special effects. I am pretty sure we will have to
wait for a long time to find a block buster and high budget film
which is made with so much passion and love like Interstellar.
Rüdiger Tomczak
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