The Enduring Legacy of Interstellar

Upon its release in 2014, director Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar was met with largely positive, but hardly unanimous praise. Now, ten years on, some have even begun to herald it as one of the best films of the 21st century. With a new IMAX re-release hitting theaters across the United States that has seen sold-out shows and the film trudging past $200 million lifetime earned at the domestic box office, it is clear that Interstellar has established an enduring legacy that has far eclipsed its initial response. It is not hard to understand why Interstellar continues to thrill and excite audiences, while moving them to tears. It is a film cut from a world on the brink, all about the fight to survive, family, and the power of love to change the universe. Technically brilliant, immersive, and marvelous, Interstellar has established itself at the forefront of modern science fiction with great merit.

In many ways, Interstellar feels like the summation of 50 years of science fiction cinema. For his part, Nolan cited many films such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (felt in the film’s technological and theological approach), Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg’s sentimentality and ability to capture a sense of wonder and awe in the unknown are all over this film), and Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (I would also suggest another Tarkovsky film in Solaris, as well as the Steven Soderbergh’s remake in the film’s embrace of space’s ability to transcend our conventional metaphysical wisdom and in the power love and our human connections have on us even when one is millions of miles away). Combining these cinematic influences with scientifically accurate portrayals of such challenging concepts such as wormholes and black holes, Interstellar becomes a distillation of centuries of scientific thought played out in a highly cinematic and enthralling journey. It enables the audience to feel the fear of the unknown, the call of the explorer, and the genuine wonder and immensity of the world around us, making Interstellar into a film that may bear the influence of countless films and theories but it becomes a unique experience all its own.

Before filming began, Nolan noted that he screened The Right Stuff for the cast and crew, while he was inspired by how that film used the astronaut’s visors for reflections of their surroundings. It is also an apt parallel to Interstellar in director Philip Kaufman’s ambitious and epic scope that followed a highly detailed and exhaustive portrayal of the space race in the United States, its cultural influence, and the Americana around it, and then distilled this into a very personal and human film. Interstellar finds itself in a world where the United States has forgotten its past with Joseph “Coop” Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) incensed to discover that his daughter Murphy Cooper’s (Mackenzie Foy) school is teaching kids that the United States never landed on the moon with the space race being a propaganda tool. Later commentary from Professor John Brand (Michael Caine) reveals the general public revolt against NASA and space with people turning their eye towards the problems right in front of them: the dying Earth. 

The citizens of Interstellar’s futuristic world have been stuck facing famine and contemplating human extinction for so long that they have been left reacting to the daily horrors around them, rather than proactively innovating and developing ways to prevent more disasters the next day. As Donald (John Lithgow), Coop’s father-in-law, tells him, humanity has changed dramatically over the years, “When I was a kid, it seemed like they made something new every day.” For Coop, NASA provides this hope and an avenue to change the world, rather than sitting back to react. It is not hard to see why Interstellar would still connect with audiences in a world where a deluge of bad news attacks the common person everyday, while phenomena like global warming provide an omnipresent threat. There are some who feel humanity is doomed – even in Interstellar – but men like Coop or, in time, his daughter Murph (Jessica Chastain) see the potential and maintain the hope that humanity can be saved. As Coop says, “We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.” It is this limited viewpoint that has handcuffed the world in the film and while its world may have an environment more extreme than our own, even in this hyperbole, Interstellar stands as an urgent message to dream, hope, and have faith to take action for a better tomorrow rather than sitting back and waiting for the end.

It is that personal cost that makes Interstellar hard to shake. As with the best of the genre before it, Interstellar is not just a showcase of science, technology, and the wonder of the beyond. It is a very human story populated with characters that have ties and motivations that resemble our own. In this case, Nolan centers the parent-child relationship and the emotional burden of being a parent. The desire to save your child, to shield them from pain, and to leave a world for them that is better than the one you inherited. These fears and dreams associated with parenthood are found all over Interstellar, and not just in terms of Coop’s journey but also in Professor Brand’s and his own desires for his daughter Dr. Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway). In the film, Coop opts to leave Murphy – much to her dismay with Murph holding her father in contempt for decades – and his son Tom (Timothée Chalamet) to embark on a mission to travel into a wormhole by Saturn that opens a door to another planetary system. It is a mission that he believes can save the people of the Earth (NASA’s “Plan A”) and, especially, his children. 

Meanwhile, Professor Brand may entice him to take this mission to save the Earth, but he harbors the knowledge and fear that the Earth’s citizens are a lost cause. The only hope, in his mind, is to start anew with the mission’s “Plan B”: fertilized eggs that can be used to start a colony. The two fathers share their desire to rescue their children, but take different approaches. Coop is rather honest with Murph and leaves Earth to save her, even at great personal pain over this loss. Professor Brand also experiences great pain over losing his daughter, but he deceives her (and Coop) to save her, knowing that she will have a better chance at a tomorrow by being one of the people to start a colony. There is a clear moral right here – especially with how widespread Professor Brand’s deception went – but this dilemma over how to approach saving one’s children and the willingness to risk their child’s perception of them if it means saving them from a horrible end is at the core of Interstellar’s parent-children themes. As the elder Murph (Ellen Burstyn) is reunited with Coop, she tearfully looks up and declares she always knew, even when she hated him for leaving, that he would return because, “My dad promised me.” It is heart wrenching, wonderfully delivered, and the very ethos of this parent-child connection. It goes beyond conventional wisdom and known boundaries into something that truly bonds them at their very soul.

Interstellar’s earnestness on this front is extended to its championing of the classic theme that “love conquers all”, even that which we cannot see or, at first, understand. It is a heart wrenching film, a passionately told treatise on the limitlessness of love, what it can compel somebody to do, and the role it plays as a furnace for the soul, emblazoning the individual to reach beyond themselves to achieve the impossible. Human connection and nature are crucial to the film – both in good and bad ways, exemplified in Dr. Mann (Matt Damon), who led a solo mission to one potential host planet, forging his data to encourage people to come because he could not handle being alone any longer – and serve, in general, as a bedrock for society. The love and affection shared between people, for their planet, and for society encourage the study and exploration that see this fight to save humanity take shape. Even Dr. Amelia Brand’s admitted bias in wanting to see a planet occupied by her lover Wolf Edmunds is proven right in the end, as his planet is habitable. Where logic, science, and the bounds of human knowledge end, the heart can pay the balance, speaking in tones that the mind cannot comprehend.

This is an emotional journey, something Nolan never shies away from. However, it is in the story’s foundation in our own world that sets it apart from being merely a great and stirring film into being a truly landmark experience. Our world is one consumed by disillusionment. Great days seem to only live in the past, while the future is a harbinger of fear. Society is literally more connected than ever, yet figuratively more disconnected and less unified than ever. The aforementioned global warming is a worldwide existential threat, while socio-political and financial concerns drive one’s every thought. People cannot dream of the stars when they are consumed by fear over money and where their next meal will come from. Interstellar’s world may be extreme, but it is our own. Donald tells Coop, “You’re the one who doesn’t belong. Born forty years too late, or forty years too early… My daughter knew it, God bless her. And your kids know it.” It is a plight many of today’s youth can identify with, stuck working dead-end jobs while the pursuits they dreamed of exist only as hobbies or forever out of their reach. Coop has an explorer’s spirit, looking to what exists over the horizon as his guiding light for why he is alive, but he has been boxed into being a farmer to provide and to clip his own wings to ensure his family’s survival. It may come at great cost, but his journey to the stars is self-actualization, a chance to be what he was meant to be and to fulfill his soulful purpose. Murph, too, rises above her station and becomes a key figure for NASA, dedicating her life to cracking this equation of how to save humanity. She is, quite literally, called for a higher purpose and who among us would not dream of living a life of such fateful wonder? Interstellar is a call to dream, but it is a dream itself, a chance to disappear into a world where things exist in space that humans can explore up close, a world where people can sacrifice everything to pursue their purpose and come out on top, and a world where a person was truly put on this Earth to achieve something incredible.

Interstellar further adds marvelous technical aspects – in IMAX, the film’s incredible sound design, visual effects, and cinematography are able to shine in their full glory, a high-bar for the format – that create an immersive experience like few others. It is a genuine trip to the unknown for not just the characters, but for the audience as well. It tries to quantify the totality of the world around us, reaching to the stars to demystify and marvel at what could lay beyond our world. Nolan has, throughout his career, faced criticism for exposition heavy dialogue and yet as prevalent as it may be in Interstellar, it is hard to not be enraptured by every word, utterance, and idea. Combining so many influences, its own heavily emotional themes, and Nolan’s own unique vision, Interstellar is a trip to the unknown that is as capable of thrilling an audience with a docking scene as it is in leaving them trembling in horror as a giant wave builds in the distance or taking them on a hallucinatory journey through a black hole then making them cry hysterics as a middle-aged father reunites with his dying, elderly daughter. It is like many films and unlike any other experience at the same time, a true hallmark of modern filmmaking, a progression of the genre, and a film with an esteem and legacy that is catching up to its towering cinematic achievements.