Interstellar

By now, I have lost count the number of times I have watched this movie. And somehow I cannot resist myself going back to watch this one whenever I get a chance. I saw this again in the theatre (thanks to Jazz Cinemas to bring this back in IMAX). When the movie was released, there were lot of discussions about how close the movie was with respect to the science of Interstellar travel. And even the scientific community went crazy about the visualization of the wormhole and the Gargantua (the black hole). Apparently Kip Thorne, the renowned Physicist provided the math and the special effects team turned that math visually.

Beyond all the science and the fiction in the movie, I went back to this movie multiple times because of how “emotional” this movie is. Towards the end of the movie, Murph (the grown up one trying to solve the equation), hugs her brother and says “Daddy’s gonna save us!!!” after looking at the data being passed through the watch given by Cooper.

To me, that was the defining moment in the movie, even though it comes towards the end of the movie. It’s that love between the daugther and the father that really makes this movie so good and so different. She has always been so connected to her father that she could feel something in that room!!! Cooper, on the other hand, always wants to go back to his kids (I think its just Murph, he doesn’t care a damn about his son :)) and has always prioritized that before everything else. Every decision that he makes in the mission (including choosing Dr.Mann’s planet which causes less time delay vs Dr.Edmunds which is closer to the black hole) is backed by some data and more importantly the urge to go back to his daughter.

There are so many such examples throughout the movie. Take for instance the scene where Cooper leaves on his car to get on to the mission without able to convince Murph enough. He lifts those clothes on the passenger side of the car to check if Murph is hiding inside (the very blanket through which Murph comes out from the hiding when they go to the undisclosed NASA location earlier).

Or the scene where Cooper comes back from Miller’s planet having wasted 23 years, plays all the video messages from his kids and starts crying – I literally cried along!!!

The scene where Cooper is trapped inside the Tesseract and goes back to the timeline of him walking out of Murph’s bedroom. Murph is showing that she deciphered the ghost saying as “Stay”. Cooper, caught behind the bookshelf, cries “Make him stay Murph”, “Dont let me leave, Murph!!!” and keeps crying helplessly. My heart was so heavy by this time and may be I cried again in the theatre!!!

What about the dialogues?

“Once you’re a parent, you’re the ghost of your children’s future.” – has such a deep connect with every parent and Cooper was literally Murph’s ghost in the bookshelf 🙂

“Love is the one thing that transcends time and space” – Amelia says this in the ship and explains how she has a connect with Dr.Edmunds who is somewhere out there and she doesn’t even know if Dr.Edmunds is alive or not. All of us have some kind of connect with people who have passed away!!! While the NASA folks in the movie explained it as a gravitational anamoly and how gravity can transcend space-time, a layman like me do not understand all these. However, how brilliant it was of Nolan to translate that into something like “Love” which all of us can instinctly understand!!!

The very scene where Cooper plays 23 years of video tapes, he is listening to updates from his son. The last message from his son goes something like “You are not listening to this. Aren’t you. All these messages are just sent into darkness“. While it just sounds fairly logical, there is this deep aspect of human lives in it. Isn’t it? How many times have we looked up the sky and spoken to lost loved ones. We do want to talk to them and be connected; only to come back in time and realize that it was just meaningless. Something that we just spoke to someone who didn’t exist anymore and was just sent into a void!!!

I love Nolan’s movies for this emotional aspect of his movies. Beyond the fiction and the larger than life aspects, almost every movie that he has made has this emotional aspect that connects so deeply with the audience. If you think of Inception, Dark Knight series, the emotional aspect runs throughout these movies. And its probaby the reason why I would consider Nolan as one of the best directors of our time. Spielberg used to do it – I cried for E.T as a kid 🙂 But in the recent times, and the times when I had the maturity to understand movies deeper, I would say Nolan does it better for me these days!!!

I would keep going back to Interstellar, Inception, Dark Knight series – I don’t think I will ever be “done” with these movies in this life. And if at all, “they”, the fifth dimension people choose me, I request them to fill the Tesseract with these movies.