So far as I can tell, the best vindication for Christopher Nolan's method in Interstellar
is its black hole. Like so much of this director's work, black holes are spectacularly
dense but ultimately empty, and yet the fallen star of this film casts a warm
afterglow. That most lethal of all world-killers—an appetite incarnate that
eats global warming for breakfast and Creation for doomsday brunch—is presented
not as the jaws of nonexistence but rather a swirl of molten glass. It isn't an
impediment or the object of dread; it's closer to being a miracle. Like so much
that comes out of Hollywood, this image seemed too beautiful to be true. But,
by feeding 800 terabytes worth of
astrophysical research into special-effects software, the filmmakers have
created the most scientifically accurate model of a black hole ever visualized.
The artist's instinct is to find truth in beauty; Nolan has found beauty in
data.
Interstellar wants to ascend to the heavens, but it's
pulled down by the blue ribbons that Nolan has tied to every last meteoroid.
Maybe ten minutes have passed before Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is told by his
father (John Lithgow) that this world was never enough for him. Those lousy
bureaucrats who don't believe in dreams have reduced this erstwhile engineer,
test pilot, and all-around gentleman and scholar to subsistence farming. In the
midst of something-or-other that somehow relates to climate change, our
intrepid hero's old employer, NASA, has been defunded. Instead of trying to
stanch this cataclysmic dustbowl, the powers-at-be are sticking every able body
with a pitchfork, and rewriting textbooks to remind kids that the moon landings
were faked. Strangely enough, for what appears to be a rapidly collapsing,
quasi-totalitarian state, the military has also been abolished. The plow is
mightier than the sword—until it comes time to take out the riot gear.
