Film Critique: Interstellar (2010) By Christopher Nolan (Movie Review Sample)

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Film Critique: Interstellar (2010) By Christopher Nolan
The film is set in some unspecified time in the future, likely to be around fifty to sixty years from now. The world has faced its worst ecological disaster where life is slowly fading away do to the failing of crops and lack of water. The soil is so affected such that only corn can be grown for human survival. With the severity of food scarcity, billions of people and animals have already died. Cooper and his family is still lucky to be alive but on the verge of being destroyed by the intense hunger and climatic changes. Being and ex-pilot and an engineer, Cooper has been struggling to grow corn on his farm in order to support his daughter Murph, son, and father-in-law. One day Murph alerts her father about the messages she is receiving from a ghost that comes to her room very often. Cooper dismisses her daughter’s claims of the ghost only to find out later that the messages were real and contained the coordinates to a secret location in a desert but can be accessed through driving. With the help from NASA, Cooper sets out to go any search for a planet that can support life for the desperate remnant of the human population.
Science Fiction
Interstellar is a science fiction movie where astronauts are traveling into space to go and search for a planet that is habitable for humanity. Professor Band tells Cooper that scientists discovered a gravitational travelling space known as wormhole near Planet Saturn. Presumably, the wormhole was created by the aliens who can only communicate with humans by use of gravity. Initially, several habitable planets have been discovered around the wormhole, and therefore, it is for Cooper to pilot a spaceship through the wormhole to isolate the best planet for habitation. Scientifically, it is somehow troubling that the astronauts in the movie have identified a three-planet system that is orbiting a black hole. This is not true in reality because a black hole is not a star and hence cannot produce light and heat needed from the planetary orbiting. In addition, it does not understand how Cooper and his team concluded that the planets are habitable, yet there is no source of warmth, say from the nearest star. This depicts a scientific misstep as far the theory of relativity is concerned (Draine 34). According to the film, the three planets seem to be very close to the black hole even as they orbit. However, this is likely to cause severe effects as a result of relativity. For a fact, it is true that time slows down as one approaches a black hole. Usually, an hour on one of these three planets will be an equivalent of seven years of back years on counted backwards on Earth. This explains why in the movie, Cooper seems to be younger than his daughter back on earth who has aged as a result of this phenomenon.
Interstellar shows the interdependence between time and space when one sets out to explore the universe. The fact that the only the extraterrestrials have the knowledge of how human beings can leave the dying planet to another habitable one explains the intelligence level that humans can only wish for. It is not clear why and how the aliens are so manipulative to the point of controlling time and space, which allows them to communicate with human both backways and sideways. The films contradict the fact that humans cannot survive in space once ejected from their spacecraft because the gravitational pull of the black hole is so powerful that can shred flesh within microseconds. However, the movie has corrected this obviously anomaly by introducing the concept of a "bookcase" where it is postulated that the futuristic human beings will have the intelligence to construct. Cooper uses the bookcase to communicate with his daughter through time. Other than the bookcase concept, the state-of-the-art sci-fi landscapes displayed in the Interstellar is a picture of how people will live in a few centuries to come.
Spiritual Dimensions
One of the astronauts says that it is good to pray so that one may have the hope of seeing fellow human beings after wandering in an interstellar wilderness. The movie is a depiction of how human beings can be pushed by desperation to explore some of the most dangerous and impossible missions in order to survive. The science fiction scenes and landscapes is an indication of the spiritual dream of humans to fulfill their basic desires; home, family, continuity of the generation, and culture. The film is also full of emotional trappings of just how we feel when people that are close to us are separated from us either by death, illness, or distance.
Although the film does not directly show that humans are manipulating the world themselves for their own selfish gains, the storyline offers clues on how humans are likely to behave in a post-apocalyptic world by clinging to mystical beliefs for the rescue. The presence of the ghost in the movie reinforces the fact that as humans become more and more desperate about the changing conditions of the world, they are likely to turn to ghosts for help. Here, the ghost seems to be helping out the human remnants to survive by writing messages that bear hope for the future. Interstellar features a family that is being tormented by the death of the mother and the missing fathers; a girl who is separated from her own father and mentor and again forced to reunite with a fiancé separated from her by unbridgeable distances that he might as well be inexistent.
Cinematography
One thing that catches every person’s visual attention in the film is the excellent use of the composition by the cinematographer in conveying the scale of locations. A perfect example is a scene where Cooper and his family come across a military drone. They enter it and deceptively fly low then Murph, Cooper’s daughter manages to land it on the edge of a cliff. It is clear that shots were taken deliberately from a location that could give a serious illusion of depth because the drone appears smaller from a distance but increases in size as Cooper gets into it.
The visual effects of Interstellar hav...